She still dislikes The Taming of the Shrew

Could a Mayoress also be a Suffragette? Apparently the answer is Yes. Former Mayoress Gladys Stringer from Ffestiniog, North Wales was an early member of the Suffragettes. Whilst based in Birmingham she met Emmeline Pankhurst on several occasions. Once in Coventry she was associated with other leading local women involved in the suffrage movement such as Enid Stacy, Miss Dawson, Miss Oliver and Mrs Wanley. By and large the Coventry cohorts were an orderly lot having mass meetings in Priory Row and the occasional parade. However sometimes they did destroy letters in pillar boxes and flout authority. From these beginnings Mrs Stringer became involved with the Labour Party and worked tirelessly with them and other bodies to empower and assist those she could. Even in 1967 she stood by her principles and disliked “The Taming of the Shrew” because of its implications that women are to be chased, caught and tamed.

Thanks to women like this, I've had a very emancipated life. In some ways I've been more free than today's young women. Maybe because of that I don't dislike Taming of the Shrew. The concept of it stinks but then so did much of life back then. I can look at history and not be oppressed by it.

Film - Burton / Taylor, well suited for the film, couldn't live together, couldn't live apart. Shakespeare, medieval and from the Middle East, their style of living those days.

Ah! But, Helen, that was on the surface - like history, you have to go deeper to the heart of an Englishman. Centuries ago a flower swept through Europe, stealing the hearts of men - about five countries called and spelt it 'Rosa'. Not the Englishman. This flower was so beautiful to the eye, so bodily in form, so rich in fragrance, and so soft and delicate to the caress, that it was so feminine and became the English goddess. Held high aloft in banners, dominating the English scene, adored in high praise by Englishmen, it became their emblem, but they needed a name in worthiness of its beauty and femininity. So they turned to the male God of love (Eros) and placed the first letter to last letter In honour of all women, and they had a name. 'ROSE'

Very poetic The past may be beautiful in many ways but I wouldn't want to live there. As a 20th/21st century woman I know when I'm well off. In some ways people were happier in the past but our modern gripes are often due to a lack of perspective and mostly because we have the opportunity to examine and then moan about our lot. We are stressed by our abundance of choice and feel deprived by our unfulfilled expectation of even more. The lives of women and men have been changed beyond recognition and mostly for the good. We are healthier, wealthier and wiser... better educated. Most of us posses certain riches that weren't even within the reach of royalty a few centuries ago. We have freedoms that were barely dreams of our ancestors. With so many of our basic needs sorted, we are at a point of not knowing where we go next. Relationships between men and women are particularly in flux. For Shakespeare's era, The Taming of the Shrew has a happy ending and in a society where women had little security, becoming docile was something of a safety feature for women. And for men for that matter. In the face of your master you said 'yes sir' and looked happy. Happy servitude was preferable to unhappy servitude. Petruchio essentially applies psychological and minor physical torture to his new wife in order to break her spirit (we now ‘tame’ animals in a different way). It could have been worse. Beating wives, kids and servants was standard practice, not a last resort, so in some ways Petruchio is a nice guy. Sort of. At no point does she appear with a black eye, busted lip and a few broken ribs. She doesn't fall down the stairs 'by accident' or die and be buried from 'a disease' before anyone can ask questions. Freedom from what was essentially or quite actually slavery, started a lot earlier than we realise and Coventry's history is a good record of the two steps forward, one step back progress of equality. The Domesday Book entry for Coventry lists 50 villagers, 12 smallholders and 7 slaves (who would have been white). These were probably mostly men as women and children didn’t count unless they could be taxed (eg Godiva as chief tenant). It's tempting to think that the invading Normans were the ones who had created all the slaves but the Normans eventually did away with slavery and it was our native Anglo Saxons who had enslaved between 10 and 30% of our native people. Old English law - slaves could be treated like animals: branded or castrated as a matter of routine and punished by mutilation or death; stoned to death by other slaves if they were male, burned to death if they were female. Puts a different spin on the Godiva story of her ride when you realise that 10% of the people weren't free, let alone earning anything that could be taxed. Leofric was considered a good Lord! An article about Engish slavery before and after 1066 Century by century us peasants became more free and powerful. Suffrage came quite recently as even most men didn't get the vote until 1918, a mere 10 years before women. The 20th century saw an explosion of progress in human rights and the 21st century is seeing attempts to put men and women on a level playing field. Not every attempt succeeds or is better than what it tries to replace but that’s the ‘one step back’ part of the effect.