Tying the Not(ting Hill)

Comparing “Notting Hill” to “The Taming of the Shrew”

The popularity of romantic comedies throughout time comes from the hope they offer women that love will find them and bring them the ultimate fulfillment in life - marriage, transforming them from angry, bitter “shrews” into fairytale, picture-perfect wives who live happily ever after with their handsome “prince.”

Girl meets boy. Girl behaves badly. Boy forgives her, woos her with kindness and acceptance. Romance blossoms. Sun sets on the beaming couple at their wedding.

In Shakespeare's romantic comedy, “The Taming of the Shrew,”a wealthy merchant in Padua named Baptista completely controls the fate of his two daughters. He has declared that the younger, gentle, and innocent Bianca, cannot marry before her older sister, Katherine, whose stubborn spirit and “foul temper” have given her the reputation of being a “shrew.” As many suitors as Bianca has, Katherine has none until the arrival of Petruchio, who considers himself “up to the challenge” of “taming the shrew” and turning her hostility around with a plan to “kill a wife with kindness.” In the end, despite the fact that he has deprived her of sleep and starved her to get his way, Katherine surrenders publicly and becomes the docile wife she is expected to be, giving up her own sense of independence and free will for the love of a man and a “happy” marriage.

Similarly, Anna Scott in the movie, “Notting Hill”, is a famous but hot-headed  Hollywood actress who seemingly has everything- wealth, fans, and fame. She lives a luxurious, jet-setting life of privilege that she has created for herself, by herself. Enter a chance encounter with the floppy haired, shy, and clumsy William Thacker, a mild-mannered travel bookshop owner, down on his luck romantically and financially. First she kisses him then pushes him away, not once, but twice. But in the end, love conquers both her spirit and her heart and finds them happily married and expecting a child.

But, what if it’s all a lie?

What if, underneath the light-hearted, theatrical vision of love, lays a darker, shocking subliminal message - love is not real! Romance does not exist! Both were created by society as propaganda to ensure the submission and sublimation of women to men. As women gained more and more independence and self-reliance, they could no longer be forced into marriage, the one role that society historically has wanted (and needed) them to have. A woman’s place was behind and beside a man, at a man’s will and under his rule. Societal standards deemed women as nothing more than property to be controlled and used to provide heirs and alliances for their fathers and husbands. But once women wised up to the idea that they didn’t have to let men make decisions about their lives and their futures, what could society do to bring them back to their obedient obligations?  And so the concepts of love and romance were developed theatrically as a form of propaganda to help entice women subconsciously back, seemingly of their own accord, to fulfilling their society duty of becoming wives and mothers.   

Petruchio: Come, come, you wasp, i’faith you are too angry.

Katherine: If I be waspish, best beware my sting.

Petruchio: My remedy is then to pluck it out.

Katherine: Ay, if the fool could find where it lies.

Petruchio: Who knows not where a wasp does wear his sting? In his tail.

Katherine: In his tongue.

Petruchio: Whose tongue?

Katherine: Yours, if you talk of tales, and so farewell.

Petruchio: What, with my tongue in your tail?

(Act 2, Scene 1, 207–214)

When Katherine and Petruchio first meet, this conversation between them should have been a showcase for Katherine’s intelligence because it’s clear that she could not only respond to Petruchio’s taunts, but equally match him with her quick and “sharp” wit. But in order to promote the propaganda of a woman’s need to be subservient, audiences of the time instead were given a comparison of Katherine to a nasty wasp, because a woman, after all, was nothing but an animal that had to be yoked. Even Petruchio was used to turn their clever back-and-forth banter into something sexual, undermining and bringing down an intelligent woman by turning her into a sexual creature who needed him.

Anna Scott, fresh off of a successful publicity tour for her last blockbuster hit and in London working on her next film project (a Henry James novel adaptation because William Thacker had mentioned it earlier), having “behaved badly” and pushed him away months before, now comes back to tell him that all of her fame, all of her achievements, which she’s done on her own, mean nothing without him. She stands in front of him begging for his love, not as a woman of independence and means, but as a “girl” who just wants him to love her, who needs his love if she is ever going to be happy.  Romantic love at its propaganda best - a self-sufficient, successful woman who has everything and should feel complete, willing to give it all up for a man, because without a man’s love, she is incomplete.

“Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper,

Thy head, thy sovereign, one that cares for thee,

And for thy maintence commits his body

To painful labor both by sea and land,

To watch the night in storms, the day in cold,

Whilst though liest warm at home, secure and safe,

And craves no other tribute at thy hands

But love, fair looks, and true obedience-

Too little payment for so great a debt.”

(Act 5, Scene 2, 162-180)

In this last scene in the play, Katherine has been “tamed” in a very public display to ensure that not only the people of Padua, but the audience sees her revert into an obedient and compliant wife with no further need for a spirited, independent streak because she now understands that her husband is there to rule and she is there to obey. Society’s propaganda used this play as an opportunity to show love from a woman isn't even sufficient “payment” for all that man does for her, making sure that everyone understands that a woman would never be able to survive and succeed on her own.

Similarly, in “Notting Hill”’s closing scene, the famous Anna Scott is seen gentling cradling her pregnant belly while blissfully laying her head on her husband's lap, utterly content away from the cameras and fans, no longer needing success or fame to define her because she is now married and in love.

In both the play and the movie, instead of characterizing a woman of independent thought and deed as someone to be admired and respected for their self-confident intelligence, society’s propaganda vilifies them as “foul-tempered shrews” who would only find happiness once they had found a man to love and marry them. With women who did not need a man in their life, there had to be a way for society to get them to want a man in their life. If force was not an option in a society that had no intention of letting women rise beyond their subservient station, then an alternative had to be found. Romantic love was created for independent-thinking women to subconsciously “force” them to believe that their lives would never be complete, no matter how independent they were, without a husband (and the subsequent happily-ever-after).