Shakespeare's a Midsummer Night's Dream - Essay Example

The very famous play A Midsummer Night’s Dream, one of Shakespeare’s undying works, had intrigued the critics over centuries. Two main female characters, Helena and Hermia, their relationship with one another, with their lovers, and as a result of their relationships with their lovers/husbands, had been a matter of academic interest since the play is written and produced successfully in Elizabethan days. A much admired production of the time, in which Shakespeare, as usual, has shown the uncanny ability of writing the plays with absolute awareness of social, cultural and mainly political pulse of the country. Hermia and Helena, the childhood friends, have a sisterly bond till they grow up and fall in love. They are totally and constantly clear which of the two men they love even though the men referred, may change due to the magic drop. In the beginning of the play Hermia is told that she has a few days left for deciding if she would obey her father and marry Demetrius rather than Lysander. Paternal consent was an absolute necessity for the marriage of a daughter in Elizabethan days and the Duke in the play stresses upon this point of patriarchal importance: To whom you are but as a Form in Wax, By him imprinted, and within his Power To leave the Figure or disfigure it. (I-I-49-51) Mother’s role in the birth of a daughter seems to be rather obscured here. It is spoken as though the child is the property of the father alone, one of his possessions with which he could decide to do whatever he chooses. Rgeus accuses Lysander with the obvious show of this right over the daughter: Turn’d her Obedience, which is due to me, To stubborn Harshness. (I-I- 38-39) The harshness of the father’s unrelenting decision is clear when he says: As she is mine, I may dispose of her, Which shall be either to this Gentleman Or to her Death.. (I-I-42-44) Again the gender plays an important role here. Being a daughter is a decidedly much lesser role than being a son. The daughters are protected, shielded, but were dominated and decisions about their lives were informed to them and they were expected to abide by those paternal decisions. Hermia was given the choice of “either to die the Death or to abjure forever the Society of Men” or ‘she can endure the Livery of Nun.’ Those were the days when chastity was valued the most. The Queen, who had given up her pleasures and male company, for ruling the country as an absolute monarch, was ruling the social and cultural scenes of England too. We see in the play Hermia being definitely possessive about her virginity. Female virginity was a necessity for a good match and a subsequent married life. Male virginity was not a forced factor, but definitely was valued. Conversation between Helena and Hermia in the I scene, shows that Hermia is rather simultaneously smug and unhappy with two men loving her and Helena is longing to be Demetrius’ lover. (The more I love, the more he hateth me). Helena could not stomach the fact that Dimetrius has gone with Egeus to the court of the Duke to win Hermia’s hand. In her desperation to win his attention, she does not hesitate to beg her friend for advice: I teach me how you look, and with what Art You sway the Motion of Demetrius’ Heart (I-I-192-193) Rivalry and a kind of mild hatred begin from this point between the two. Hermia and Helena have a kind of ‘homosocial world of peer-group friendship’. Their innocent relationship continues very comfortably, till the heterosexual relationships disturb it, mainly when Hermia’s longing for Lysander brings distance to her relationship with Helena. Most of the time, they had friendship with men without much of intimacy and this is not disturbing their chastity in any way. It is like a celebration of companionship. But, the friends refrain from discussing their choices of men or discuss the men themselves. Prior to the influence of the drug, the two friends do not seem to be having any desire to relinquish their respective partners. During the wars of love, there had been jealousy and insecurity between them, which grows into a definite competition. Even in the end of the play, they do not revert back to the easy friendship of childhood days. They even go to the extent of insulting each other viciously. Helena warns about Hermia that she was a vixen while in school, though there had always been a bond between them and such a satisfying bond was disrupted by men.. Even though a healthy friendship ruled their relationship, there are many differences between the two. When the diversities are considered, it looks like a fragile friendship that could be broken by any excuse and here men play those excuses. Play dramatises the division between Helena and Hermia. Their difference in height and looks had been specified by Shakespeare in the beginning of the play. Demetrius and Lysander are divided as two different entities without any comparison or similarity and this dissimilarity extends to their lovers frequently. Their quarrelling looks like a disaster. They insult one another, trading words like ‘painted maypole’, ‘juggler and ‘puppet’. The name-calling they indulge in shows their desperation, hopelessness, confusion and frustration. Both have reached a stage, where they could not see any future for their love. Hermia seems to have lost both the lover and the suitor approved by her father, and that means death or nun’s life for her. Helena was absolutely in no control over the events, nor was in a position to take advantage of them. The name-calling episode presents a desperate attempt to regain what they have lost. They were giving vent to their insecurity by calling each other appalling names trying to hurt each other’s feelings. It reaches the astonishing limit when Hermia physically threatens Helena and Helena had to escape from the scene. The men were at loggerheads, but were not undignified enough to quarrel with each other. Both the lovers desert their female loves and subject them into indignity. Helena follows Demetrius in spite of his threats to rape her and she had been desperate for his love, and he was alternatively vacillating between insults and desire to tolerate her. But Helena’s devotion for him remains unaltered (I am your spanial…. the more you beat me, I will spawn on you). To some extent, he seems to be enjoying being hunted and pursued by her. He gives an impression that he needs her unknowingly, but tries to escape from her. Throughout he seems to be at crossroads. He makes her feel self-conscious (I feel like a bear). But when Lysander and Demetrius both fall in love with Helena, she becomes the more powerful of the two with Hermia’s power totally diminished. But she falls short of taking advantage of the situation, as she innocently presumes that she was being ridiculed at. You both are Rivals and love Hermia. And now both Rivals to mock Helena (III-2-155-156) She even begs for the support of her friend, which, at this juncture, must have looked more secure. (Good Hermia, do not be so bitter with me/ I evermore did love you, Hermia). Hermia had to bear the brunt of now loathing Lysander’s outrageous remarks (tawny tartar, Cat, Bur, Vile Thing). Even later, when they found themselves with their right partners, Helena and Hermia do not completely make up, but simply lose their voices, as though they have become obedient to their husbands and are ready to lead a homely life of domesticity. A Midsummer Night’s dream travels through the social relationships between the sexes in courtship, marriage and parenthood, which Gayle Rubin called ‘a sex-gender system’. It focuses on providing a sexual identity in the prevailing socio-cultural background. It tries to authenticate the difference of sexual identity and the effect on various relationships. It gives vocal strength to an appropriation of ‘human anatomical and physiological features by an ideological discourse’, and while doing so, it tries to stretch itself slightly more than the existing scenario, but it was not a very ambitious stretch. Shakespeare, the wisest dramatist ever lived, never believed in antagonising his audience and allowed himself to be ruled by the regulations of the day. The play has affinities with Elizabethan court entertainments. The unmarried Queen’s cultural presence, and her role as the virgin, unconquered queen, coloured every aspect of society and politics. Rejecting marriages in patriarchal societies were an act of defiance. Queen’s decision not to marry must have created mixed reactions in the society. The innocent pleasures and happiness of their childhood reflects in some remote way on the virginity of the ruler. In the political games and palace manipulations, the innocence cannot prevail for very long. If one can draw a parallel between the two situations, when Hermia bids farewell to Helena, both bid farewell to their earlier life of girlhood, sisters’ confidences, friendship of school days, happiness and sunshine and much more than that, to the days of innocence. From that point, they demean themselves by being aggressive rivals and jealous antagonists, a kind of political transformation. Their relationships keep altering throughout the play as a reaction to the play itself. They move on reciprocating to their altering friendship with their lovers, and this becomes the most important tool in their relationship with each other. They simply move away with the all pervading current of their love and hate romantic interest in Lysander and Demetrius. There is no doubt that in spite of having been ruled by a highly independent Queen, women in Elizabethan England had little freedom of choice or individual identity. Still in the play Helena and Hermia do carefully reveal their individualistic identities in the subtlest way possible in sentences like the following: Hermia to the Duke: So will I grow, so live, so die, my Lord. Hermia to the Duke: The worst that may befall me in this case If I refuse to wed Demetrius. Hermia: O Hell, to choose Love by another’s Eyes. Hermia to Lysander: To morrow truly will I meet with thee. Helena: Through Athens I am thought as fair as she. Shakespeare, who abides by the social norms of his day, does not forget to make the love triumph eventually. He was a traditionalist to some extent. Nevertheless, every time, he slips out of this role, to sow the seeds of a mild rebellion and its victory in the end. BIBLIOGRAPHY: Andrews, John F. (1989), ed. William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Everyman, London. Read More