Perhaps the most timeless author in literary history, William Shakespeare and his writings have remained popular and fascinating for the last 400 years. Although I’m a bit of a purist when it comes to Shakespearean plays, from time to time I enjoy creative retellings of his work. I’ve even seen a version of the play “The Taming of the Shrew” set in modern times as a surfer drama. Shakespeare himself didn’t claim originality, and I’m sure he would be pleased and intrigued by the multitude of modern retellings of his plays. One of the most recent retellings of his comedy “The Taming of the Shrew” is Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler, published in June 2016.
Vinegar Girl is the third installment in the Hogarth Shakespeare Project which started in 2015. The undertaking seeks to publish modern retellings of Shakespeare’s plays by today’s most popular authors. The list of novelists involved in this project include Jeanette Winterson, Gillian Flynn, Margaret Atwood, and Jo Nesbo. I have to admit, I’m a little sad that I have to wait until 2021 to read Flynn’s re-imagining of “Hamlet.”
There are many similarities between Tyler’s interpretation of “The Taming of the Shrew” and the original play. The novel’s protagonist has the same name and carries many of the same unattractive personality traits. Katherine, a 29-year-old perpetually single “shrew,” lives in Baltimore with her younger sister, Bunny, and her father, Louis Battista. As in the Shakespearean tale, Kate boldly shrugs off most notions of what it means to be a woman – she dislikes housework, only knows how to cook a select few meals, strongly dislikes children even though she works at a preschool, and is very awkward in her interactions with the opposite sex. While her father, a biologist, busies himself with some lofty research project, Kate is left to babysit her inappropriately flirtatious younger sister, Bunny, who has just started a relationship with her newest fling, a neighbor who is supposedly her Spanish tutor.
In Tyler’s novel, Shakespeare’s Petruchio has been replaced by Pyotr, a Russian immigrant who works as a research assistant to Battista. The novel’s primary dilemma focuses on Pyotr’s need to marry so that he can stay in the country after his temporary work visa expires. Desperate to retain his research assistant, Battista begins to play matchmaker between Katherine and Pyotr. Kate resists Pyotr’s initial attempts to woe her, clumsily pursuing her own crush on her preschool coworker, Adam. Pyotr’s attempts to make Kate fall in love with him are awkward, pushy, and lost in translation due to the language barrier. As Pyotr attaches himself to the Battista family, though, Kate’s initial contempt begins to fade.
Vinegar Girl, like the original play, is a comedy. Anne Tyler’s reimagining of the story as a plot to fool immigration authorities is hilarious. Unlike the original story, however, the “taming” of the shrew is not done by the male protagonist. Paying respect to modern feminism, perhaps, Tyler’s version of Kate changes her own personality – at first, as a ploy to appease her father, but later as she realizes it is more preferable to go through life with a partner instead of remaining stubbornly independent. The most shocking part of Shakespeare’s “Taming of the Shrew” is the conclusion, when Petruchio makes such a fool of his new wife that she has no other choice but to submit to him, and Tyler’s retelling of the play takes a much more conservative, modern stance.
Anne Tyler’s transformation of the original play was a lighthearted, simple read that I devoured in a matter of days. However, “The Taming of the Shrew” is my favorite Shakespearean play, and it was hard for me to truly embrace such a silly, simplistic take on a classic. Shakespeare’s plays are rich with language, symbolism, and characterization, all elements missing from Tyler’s novel. Even so, for modern readers who are too afraid to tackle the difficulty of Shakespeare’s works, Vinegar Girl serves a fine introduction into the complex Shakespearean tale. As a Shakespearean enthusiast, I appreciated Tyler’s imaginative retelling of the play and how she chose to cast the story in a modern light.
