Vinegar Girl
Anne Tyler
[Hogarth]
It is unclear whether Anne Tyler’s Vinegar Girl is a re-imagining of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew or simply a 240-page cry of “get off my lawn”. Protagonist Kate Battista is a 29-year old American woman of anachronic tastes and diction (“flibbertigibbet”, said no millennial ever), a purportedly headstrong individual espousing bafflingly outdated mores. Decidedly “shrewish” in her complete lack of social skills, Kate runs her household like a matron of yore, while her sister is almost a parody of so-called “Tumblr feminism”: the only person who defends Kate when their father arranges her marriage, she is portrayed as debilitatingly coquettish, brainlessly gambolling about before being married off to “her personal trainer” in an apotheosis of superficiality.
Tyler does wreak some notable changes: Kate is the protagonist, not her sister’s suitors, and the post-wedding “taming” is almost entirely elided. Although Kate’s unquestioned obedience is not the central point, her fiancé’s nebulous “science” retains an air of vague dogma. And Tyler maintains the tamed shrew’s ultimate declaration of allegiance to her new husband, including such gems as “It’s *hard* to be a man,” and “Women are a lot more free, if you think about it”. Perhaps this is the radical change Tyler envisioned: rather than taming the shrew, she goads the reader into a beastly foul temper. A triumph of modern feminism, indeed.
Words – Mònica Tomàs White
