Elizabeth Janeway, Man's World, Woman's Place: a Study in Social Mythology (Morrow) 1971, pgs 119-122:

There must have been witches since time began. Shrewish wives and henpecked husbands appeared as soon as the institution of marriage did, and fairy tales tell us that ogres and evil stepmothers were haunting figures before history was written. Dr. Fiels and other anthropologists report that witch cults still flourish today. All these creatures are aberrant types, deviates from expected roles. No wonder they persist, for there are always people who can't fit the patterns prescribed by any society, no matter how lenient...It is [Dr. Robert Jay] Lipton's hypothesis that 'the shrew', whenever she appears, is a specific product of social breakdown...

But the very fact that the shrew appears so promtly when shifting social circumstances call for changes in role behavior should warn us that she does not represent a true alternative to the old feminine role...

With no one to please or beguile into acting for her, she must act for herself. In turning away from her old role, she reverses it in a total looking-glass shift to its opposite, with the idea that if the old ways won't work, she'll get as far from them as she can...

As for the other participants in the relationship, we can understand their contribution to the negative role of shrew easily enough if we consider that what is happening is what they have always feared. The myth of female power is supplanting the myth of female weakness.