The Power of Relationships

The Power of Relationships

            A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a play which focuses on the relationships dealing with love between men and women. Shakespeare gives females the attention of being superior, and these women are inferior to men and their own characteristic of superiority. During the Elizabethan Era, in which Shakespeare wrote this play, woman had arranged marriages where the marriage is arranged by the parents of the man and woman getting married, instead of the man and woman who chooses to marry each other. Egeus did not give his daughter, Hermia, permission to marry Lysander who she was in love with, but instead wanted her to marry Demetrius, who she was not in love with. Hermia’s friend Helena is in love with Demetrius, but he is in love with Hermia. This constructs a bad love triangle for them all. They fought to be with the one they love even though everyone in their society was against these individuals. They took a stand for true love and didn’t give up on what they really desired.

Hermia is very independent and strong individual who goes hard for what she wants when it comes to love. She not only demonstrates the hate she has towards Demetrius, but she also shows the true meaning of fighting for what she wants. Emily Squyer mentions in her essay, “Disregarding the standards imposed on women of his time, Shakespeare created many female characters that were strong-willed, intelligent, and daring. Hermia of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one such character (Squyer). She refused to let the decisions of her society to hold her back and stop her from marrying the one she loved, Lysander. She ends up ignoring her father and the Athenian laws of marriage, and running away from Demetrius and her father. In the play, Hermia speaks of how Athens will no longer be seen as paradise to her but as a place of hell, “that he hath turned a heaven unto a hell” (Shakespeare, 188). Egeus, her father has made her home feel like hell because of the pressure he has put on her to marry Demetrius. Hermia still remains strong and does not show any form of weakness throughout the whole process of her running away in the woods with Lysander.

            Helena the naïve and desperate character is also a strong woman with a dedicated attitude to get what she wants. No matter how much she explains her love for Demetrius to him, he still denies her heart. Helena begs to be with Demetrius, “I am your spaniel; and Demetrius, The more you beat me, I will fawn on you: Use me but as your spaniel, spurn me, strike me, Neglect me, lose me; only give me leave, Unworthy as I am to follow you” (Shakespeare, 193). Here she shows how desperate she is and how much she wants Demetrius to love her instead of Hermia. In the words of Neeley Greene, “These words and the entire alliance between Demetrius and Helena have the subtext of a sexually sadistic and masochistic relationship” (Greene et al. 151). Demetrius responds back saying, “tell you I do not nor I cannot love you” (Shakespeare, 193). Shakespeare presented Helena as a woman seeking for her pride and that’s exactly what she intended to get. At the end of the play she and Demetrius fall in love.

            These women, both Helena and Hermia, are independent, strong, and full of determination. They know what they want and show plenty of actions that will allow them to have what they want. Both women entire creation, emotional and sexual life is restricted by the power of men; Demetrius and Lysander.  Their actions also embody their different characteristic by the actions they set forth to reach their destination which is love.

Works Cited

Greene, Lenz, Neely, eds. The Woman’s Part: Feminist Criticism of Shakespeare. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1980.

Squyer, Emily. "The Feminist Subtext of Shakespeare’s Leading Ladies." public.wsu.edu. N.p., 10 N. Web. 7 Jun 2012.

Shakespeare, William. “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” Literature Fiction: Craft & Voice. Ed. Delbanco, Nicholas. New York, NY. 2010. (184-220). Print