“The true republic: men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less.” (Anthony)

A woman today is a valued member of society, but she can still be valued only for her appearance. She is now accepted as a diligent worker, but still uncompensated for her caretaking duties. She may be legally the equal of a man, but in everyday society she can still face lesser treatment. Throughout history, it is apparent that the female half of society has not been treated equal to the male. However, what this mistreatment looks like changes along with the societal, legal and cultural standards it is paired with. Over the past five weeks, the PLP 11 / 12 class has done a deep dive into this idea, bringing in Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew as a case study, all in the hopes of answering…

But Why Shakespeare?

Hold on… our unit is focusing on continuity and change in the 20th and 21st centuries, so how can a play written in the Elizabethan Era help us explain anything? I was thinking the same thing at first, but similar to what we discovered in our Hide Your Fires unit, the study of Shakespeare has to do with its universality. According to Shakespeare instructor Maggie Trapp, his “plots still resonate, his characters still leave their mark, his language still moves and startles” (qtd. in Gray) despite being hundreds of years old. With this in mind, we can pair his plays with timeless human issues, such as The Taming of the Shrew and the inequality of women, to view them on a much larger scale as we know everything we are reading has been relevant globally for centuries. It is like when we studied Lord of the Flies last year. It is not simply a story about boys on an island but a commentary on fundamental parts of human nature, allowing it to stay relevant across all times and places

With this understanding, we dove into the usual PLP Shakespeare triad of play, movie and class discussion. Alongside this, we were asked to keep an ongoing document of relevant quotes that would act as our Milestone 2. At first, I was frustrated that I had to do this as now I had to spend an extra 15-20 minutes each night sorting through all my annotations. I trusted that there would be a reason for this assignment however, and set up a nightly block where I had to required myself to add at least four quotes per day and write a little reflection on each. I started off by just recording any interesting quote, but as time went on I focused both my selections and reflections more towards what we were later told the purpose of this was; to be the pre-writing research phase of the writing process. One strategy I used to know if a quote was relevant was to see if I could find a common thread between it and others. If I could, I knew I had accurately interpreted the text and found a relevant connection.

Despite just requiring note-taking, I found this milestone one of the most challenging of the project. This was because it wasn’t just an exercise in copying and pasting but in deep thought. For example, it would be easy to simply write down Petruchio’s quote of “To me she’s married, not unto my clothes” (3. 2. 110), but to then respond to this with an original idea, reflect on hidden meanings, consider the historical audience, etc. makes things more complicated. As Mr. Hughes would put it, this was the weightlifting work for our brains, and we would need to be lifting these weights regularly to get stronger.

Building Knowledge

Despite being excellent analyzers of Shakespeare, our class barely understood the meaning of betrothal when we started this unit and thus it was decided we needed to start at square one. Before even discussing the play, we were given some fun vocabulary practice worksheets:

Once again, I saw this slow start to the project as a hindrance at first, but more on that later. Besides working on this, we also began exploring texts surrounding the first wave of feminism, primarily the Women’s Suffrage Movement. The information gained from this we were then asked to synthesize in an academic conclusion for Milestone 1, or one of our first opportunities to practice essay writing of the year. I am quite happy about how I concisely made my points and connected the various texts together, but it fell short in not having a specific focus.

As Milestone 2 was an ongoing assignment, we quickly leapt ahead to Milestone 3. This was a group project where we were asked to create a women’s rights poster about a specific time period which outlined continuity and change. We would then present it to the class, creating a timeline which we could piece together from each other’s works. After asking my group if it was okay, I took on the “DRI” role and began to plan out our schedule. Understanding this was a group project however, I decided to make both the schedule and work blocks more flexible as it wouldn’t be beneficial for me to micromanage everything. Instead of creating a perfectly organized outline, I left a large amount of class time for informal planning and designing, which was beneficial as this allowed for open peer critique to be shared. It was also beneficial as the purpose of this presentation wasn’t just to rehash what we had learned in class but being in new perspectives, and by talking as a group these new ideas and external research was able to be brought in. After delegating research, I collected it and connected it to the criteria, then sent this outline to the script editor as we got ready to present: 

During this assignment, we definitely improved our information tracking from Marking History. In that project, there were so many moving pieces that people’s contributions got lost, but in this project I made sure to streamline and communicate what was needed right off the bat, leading to fewer difficulties down the road. I also felt I personally improved at using resources as I explored a wide variety of sources ranging from poetry to podcasts in order to complete my research and utilized various strategies, such as comparing information with other sources, to make sure the information was accurate. However, communication in general could have been improved. It was not made clear to the script editor that it was their job to cut the script into the time limit and thus we were close to 10 minutes over the time limit. Personally however, I am quite happy with how I managed this project. I kept things a lot more flexible than usual, which pushed me a little out of my comfort zone, and allowed everything from the thesis to the poster to be a truly collaborative effort.

Now what exactly was our presentation about? Our group focused on the 1940s and 1950s which of course brought up the “housewife” stereotype. We learned about how women during this time period were able to enter the workforce to a real extent for one of the first times in history, but despite this they were still trapped under the idea that they were “unaltered to toil and trouble in the world” (5. 2. 178) in any true sense and better to stay in the home. I didn’t realize it at the time, but this was the first piece of information which would help me answer the driving question. It showed me, as I made connections between our research, The Taming of the Shrew and modern-day, that women have continuously struggled to act how they would like to in the world, but how they have struggled has changed. Women are now allowed to present themselves as competent members of the workforce, but they still struggle with being taken seriously if they act overly emotional.

Modern Media Exploration

One thing I love about PLP is that our learning explorations are never confined to written texts. This unit took this to the next level however as each day we kicked off the class with a game of “Sexist or Not” where we watched a music video and determined if it promoted women’s rights or degraded them. Often times our class came to a middling conclusion on whether these videos were sexist or not, usually saying the determining factor would be which time period they were viewed in. Looking back at this unit now, I believe it was important for me to see the class coming to this conclusion as it helped me understand what historical perspective actually is. Before this unit, I thought it was simply considering that in history, there would be different points of view. I thought it was simply a term, but now I realize it is a tool, like a telescope you can use to view history through. Without a telescope you can’t really view anything on the vast ocean of history clearly, but with it, although you can only analyze a small part at a time, you can properly evaluate what you are looking at and determine if it is adequate to support a historical conclusion. For example, today we see the song Baby, it’s cold outside as leaning towards sexism, but if you consider the time period in which the actions of the man would be considered harmlessly flirtatious, you can use it as a case study of romance for the time period. I am going to keep this tool in my tool belt moving forwards in future projects.

https://youtu.be/t_3sFeQGNeo

Although we couldn’t agree if what we were watching was objectively sexist or not, we were undivided on the fact that most of it promoted the idea of objectification. This made me curious as all of the songs we explored were both widely popular and featured women who seemed happy to be involved with them. This raised the question for me if objectification was actually a bad thing. I did some external research, and according to a report in The Counselling Physiologist journal, sexual objectification is “likely to contribute to mental health problems that disproportionately affect women” (Szymanski). This gave me another piece of my answer to the driving question, which is that women have continuously struggled with presenting themselves as individuals over time, but what particularly they have struggled with has changed. The issue used to be more that women were considered property, and although they are now considered as equal to men, the fact that men still value them on the service they can provide has proved an unfortunate aspect of continuity.

Explorations in Essay Writing

Practice makes perfect when it comes to text analysis and response, which is why we were regularly given essay exemplars to read in our Basecamp project and through the website CommonLit. We were then given multiple-choice, short and long answer questions in which we could reflect on the texts and receive feedback on how to improve at this in the future.

On the CommonLit website, I discovered that you can have the text read aloud to you with the simple click of a button. Considering that I had recently learned that I am an external processor, I decided to try this out and found it helped me understand the nuances of the texts much better. I think I will utilize the strategies of either speaking with people about texts or listening to them in the future to enhance my comprehension. After a couple of essays, I also started to pick up the skill of retrieving information. What I learned to do was read the questions and look over the text briefly before I read it in-depth, and this helped me know and pinpoint what I was looking for. Another thing I learned that could be helpful is doing some simple research into the texts. Chances are, if you are reading an essay through a site like CommonLit it is a well known and analyzed piece of work. Through biblical metaphors in the essay “Sweat” by Zora Neale Hurston, along with using the two other strategies I mentioned before, I was able to produce what I consider one of my best text responses to date.

Each of the essays we explored had to do with women’s rights in some way. However, what I found interesting was that some competed against each other, even if they agreed on the general topics surrounding fair female treatment. For example, in the essay My Body is My Own Business, Naheed Mustafa states that it is right to reclaim the hijab “to give back to women ultimate control of their bodies” (Mustafa), but in a counter essay by journalist Catherine Meckes claims that wearing the hijab is “is a form of hiding, of crying uncle” (Meckes). Both give compelling evidence, but who is right? Surprisingly, I learned the answer is that they both are, and that by understanding this you can make your analysis a whole lot easier. When you find conflicting accounts on a subject, it is best to consider the factors which created the differences between these two accounts (which in this case is culture, location and experience with eating disorders). You can then either take the hard option by determining which one you feel gives more completing, accurate, relevant or reliable evidence, or you can take the easy path and simply find a point of continuity between them. For example, both of these essays agree that the bodies of women need to be scrutinized less harshly, and by finding this point of continuity I was able to get closer to my answer to our driving question.

Preparation and Launch

One thing I often notice about these summative blog posts is that they are excellent for reflection on big picture topics but not so great for getting into the content details. I think our teachers recognized this as well as they have now given us opportunities to write mini weekly blog posts. On my first couple of posts, I didn’t quite understand what the point of them was and thus pretty much emptied my brain onto the digital page. I spoke with my teachers about how I could improve my blogging however and they informed me that everything written should have a key topic it focuses around. For summative posts, this of course would be answering the driving question, but for weekly posts it would be up to me to choose my focus. With this in mind, each post moving forward, such as this one, was given a specific inquiry focus. I even extended this concept past blogging throughout the rest of the unit, ensuring that works such as my final essay were specifically focused around a central topic. By doing this, I am hoping to make connecting my thoughts personally easier and that I can better convey the messages of my texts to my various audiences.

After weeks of refections, research, discussion and inquiry, we were finally prepared to move into the major milestone (or rather three milestones) of our project; our essays. Recalling that the method was successful in previous projects, I brainstormed my thesis when walking home from school and going for runs. This gave me something to do and helped me organize my thoughts before I put them on paper. Once I solidified my thesis, I also taped it on my wall so I would bring it to mind anytime I saw it in my room:

From here, I created my own thesis organization chart and used it to formulate the skeleton of my essay. I found this method effective as it had no room for useless detail and thus only the main points were recorded:

Once my thesis and basic outline was approved, it was time to get onto flushing it out. I began with diving into a diverse number of external sources including websites, academic articles, a textbook, court cases, books such as Bloom’s Criticism of The Taming of the Shrew, songs videos and more, piecing it together the information in my Milestone 2 notes document. As these sources were not provided through in-class resources, I made sure to ensure they were adequate to support my historical argument by comparing the information with info in other locations, check for conflicting information and read laterally to see what other sources thought of the ones I was using. From this research, I created what I believed to be a perfect outline. It, however, turned out to be far from that as I misunderstood the purpose of the essay. As I mentioned earlier, The Taming of the Shrew was supposed to be used as more of a timeless text rather than a case study of the Elizabethan era, but I made the error of focusing my continuity and change between this time period and modern-day. Due to this, I had to spend hours revising my outline which was definitely a setback. This occurrence has reminded me that it always pays to measure twice, cut once before going into an assignment as big as this one, something I will keep in mind moving forward. After this was all settled however, I had my final draft prepared.

I am quite happy how it turned out as I felt it was organized, simple and yet detailed at the same time. It rambled less than my typical outlines which made converting it into a written work a whole lot easier. Speaking of writing the essay, I actually found this one of the easiest parts of this project as I had done all the heavy lifting beforehand. I even made sure to refine it by checking it over myself and with my family before handing it in. When it was time to revise, all I needed to change was the format of some of my quotes (something quite interesting that I learned is that a shorter quote often says more than a longer one) and the addition of citations for certain research pieces.

Looking Back

It is incredible to consider that this entire project was completed within a five-week timeframe. It took incredible work and heavy lifting from the beginning, but by the end, all of the pieces, almost seamlessly, fell together. When I realized how easy it was to write the essay, it finally made sense to me why I was doing things like Milestone 2 and the vocabulary practice. By lifting a small amount of weight each day, I was slowly building my brain muscles up so that when it was time for the task at hand they were ready to perform. This has taught me that moving forward it can be invaluable to build a strong foundation before diving headfirst into the work.

Writing our essay has also shown me that academic work can far exceed the rote five paragraph structure. You can write with any tone, in any amount of paragraphs and with any other structure you would like as long as you can effectively present your argument. I have also learned that a good way to build your structure is through what I call “structure synthesis”. This is a fancy way of saying look for literary works you find effective and then copy what you think they do well. For example, I found the essay How Wise is it to Separate Our Emotions From the Rest of Our Being particularly persuasive, and thus copied its case, point, counterpoint and then evidence structure, but used the figurative language of Susan B. Anthony, The Woman. Just because I was inspired by other works however does not mean I did not put effort into my own. I am quite proud of how much time and work I put into creating my final essay and believe that it is a well-written, persuasive piece of writing.

As you may have noticed, I have not specifically spoken about the content of my essay yet. This is intentional, as I wanted to bookend this post by discussing what my essay did, which was present an answer to the driving question. In my opinion, societal appearance standards have continuously caused women to struggle in presenting themselves as they would like to, but the nature of these standards have changed over time. Whether they are struggling to present themselves as individuals against an objectifying society or being dress coded by the agendas of men, there have always been extra barriers women have to overcome in terms of how they look and act. My essay focuses on tearing down any belief that these struggles are not real for women, presenting historical and modern-day examples to prove the reasons for these struggles have changed but that in some form they have always existed.

It took researching everything from Sex in the City to a Shakespeare play to come to this conclusion, but I am glad I have. I recognize that it is by no means the complete or even the only answer to the driving question, but at least by understanding this piece I will be more prepared to face the world as a woman in my future. I have truly learned an incredible amount in this unit, and I cannot wait for our next one in the spring!

Works Cited

Anthony, Susan B. “16 Susan B. Anthony Quotes to Make You Treasure Your Independence.” Goalcast, 15 Jan. 2018, https://www.goalcast.com/2018/01/15/16-susan-b-anthony-quotes/.

Gray, Lori. “Why You Should Study Shakespeare.” Voices, 18 Jan. 2018, https://voices.berkeley.edu/writing-editing-and-technical-communication/why-you-should-study-shakespeare. Accessed Nov. 9th, 2020.

Meckes, Catherine. Wearing a Uniform of Oppression. Accessed 11 Oct. 2020.

Mustafa, Naheed. My Body Is My Own Business. 1993. Accessed Nov. 12, 2020.

Shakespeare, William. The Taming of the Shrew. Hungry Minds, 2001. Accessed Nov. 9th, 2020.

Szymanski, Dawn. “Sexual Objectification of Women: Advances to Theory and Research.” Apa.Org, 2011, https://www.apa.org/education/ce/sexual-objectification.pdf.