Word: shrewish
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...bumbling lovers, sly lovers to be slyer servants and witty servants to be wise old men. Baptista Minola, a patriarch from Padua, thinks his problems are solved when he tells the suitors of his submissive daughter Bianca that she cannot be married before they find a husband for her "shrewish" sister Kate. But problems are never entirely eliminated in comedies. They are only, humorously, compounded. When Kate, the shrew, finishes the play as a lady and Bianca, the lady, is unmasked as the true shrew, the switch testifies to the natural comic order of things. And in doing...
...women do learn to use their bodies and their sexuality. Sometimes it seems hard to get men to listen to a woman unless she humbles herself a little--there are too many jokes about the shrewish type. When a woman says no, her body tends to find ways to soften or deny her words; Chesler and Goodman call it using her body "deferentially." She adopts certain mannerisms as a way for daring to threaten, rather than to put men at their ease. It is more acceptable for women than men to behave childishly, thereby rendering themselves less imposing as sexual...
...Virgin and the Gypsy is a cariacture of D. H. Lawrence at his worst--all violent passion and sensuality in lush color without any character development. The only relief in this romantic melodrama comes when a flood washes away the virgin's shrewish grandmother and the entire vile English country estate to our intense delight. Another dull melodrama to be avoided is Sidney Lumet's Dog Day Afternoon, unless you go for two and a half hour fag jokes in the guise of sympathy and relevance. Al Pacino's acting is excellent but does not overcome the ridiculous role...
William Shockley is a name that arouses more hatred and anger than any other in academia. The shrewish, white-haired Stanford professor, who was awarded the Nobel physics prize in 1948 for inventing the transistor, has become in recent years the prime symbol of the school of thought which maintains that blacks are genetically inferior to whites...
...more autobiographical vein. It tells the story of an adolescent dreamer making the best of a crummy life. His parents don't have time for him, they are busy fighting. His mother, dyed cheap blonde, is overworked; fatigue has robbed her of her patience and made her shrewish. His home is cramped and dreary with dirt. His school teachers are rigidly middle class, authoritarian and intolerant; his classmates tell on his prankster efforts to escape ennui. Harvard Square...