‘The Right Foundation’: Re-racing Romance from The Taming of the Shrew to Deliver Us from Eva

Adaptations of The Taming of the Shrew started appearing early in its theatrical life and repeatedly focused on its endorsement of patriarchal privilege. Gary Hardwick’s 2003 film Deliver Us from Eva not only dispenses with Shrew’s enshrinement of fathers’ authority but also—and more importantly—legitimizes black women as desiring (and desirable) social subjects. In the process of reflecting backwards on the ways in which The Taming of the Shrew subordinates the possibility of romantic love to money, family, and the exchange of women, Hardwick’s film richly contextualizes its love story within principles of black sociability and mutual support. Doing so, Eva uses its heroines’ blackness to decenter Shrew’s enshrinement of patriarchal authority, and to materialize them as agents in the imaginary of romantic love.