This 10 Things I Hate About You character isn’t hostile. She’s annoyed, and with good reason.
March to the beat of your own drum.
Katarina Stratford doesn't fit into cookie-cutter categories like the rest of her peers — or, as she explains it to her younger sister Bianca, she isn't "Susie High School." The teen's personality, interests, and belief system all exist beyond the confines of traditional binary thinking and predetermined standards set by society. Kat opposes social norms and refuses to blindly conform just because it's what she's "supposed" to do. She does her own thing, and she's proud of it.
Don’t let your dad make important life decisions for you.
Walter Stratford tries his damndest to keep his daughters under close surveillance — especially since he's a single dad who spends his workdays helping other women deliver babies — but he can be pretty suffocating at times. Kat doesn't fall subservient to his rules just because he's her dad; in fact, she makes it pretty clear that she plans on following her own agenda despite his attempts to restrict her (Sarah Lawrence or bust). She explains to him, "I want to go to an East Coast school. I want you to trust me to make my own choices, and I want you to stop trying to control my life just because you can't control yours."
Challenge your teachers when you think they’re wrong.
Just because teachers are authoritative figures doesn't mean they're always right. When Mr. Morgan tells his English class they'll be reading Hemingway, Kat doesn't sit idly by without contributing her two cents. "He was an abusive, alcoholic misogynist who squandered half of his life hanging around Picasso trying to nail his leftovers."
Read Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar.
In order to counter the male-dominated literature from her English class and the "oppressive patriarchal values that dictate education" (as she gently puts it), Kat balances her perspective by reading female authors at home. The Bell Jar — the literary classic by Sylvia Plath — is seemingly one of her favorites.
