A Midsummer Night's Dream - A Feminist Perspective Essay

If there was no such thing as sympathy, empathy, or love in our world, it would be a hard place to live. If there was no hard law or reason in our world, it would be a crazy place to live. Neither of these worlds would be anybody’s first choice as a home - it's just common sense take away either of these two fundamental aspects of life, and everything is immediately chaos. In fact, it is only in a world such as ours, where legal and human emotion work together, that we are happy. In William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare recognizes this truth and uses the two settings to represent the city of Athens as law, order, civility, and judgment, while the woods represent chaos, incivility, dreams, and love.

Auld’s behavioral and the descriptiveness in which he writes about is surprising. The use of imagery creates an exaggerated picture for readers of a lamb turning into a ferocious beast. The term “lamblike disposition” makes readers believe she was a very kind women, but the term “tiger-like fierceness” displays aggressiveness. Having full control over a person gives a feeling of superiority y and dominance, that leads to a breakdown of a person’s moral conscience. He describes Mrs. Auld’s transformation the same way he describes how slaves are "brutalized." The image he has painted for his readers is that she starts out as a human being, kind and caring, but soon becomes almost like an animal, a tiger in this

Marie Howe created an ode for all the females that she had intimate relations with called “Practicing”. It backtracks to middle school as Howe ambiguously states the acts they performed. This poem is organized into ten separate couplet-stanzas without a rhyme scheme or a distinct meter. Her imagery does not contain specific details on the physical attributes of any of the girls or if there was one she really admired. However, the imagery goes into their sexual explorations with one another behind closed doors. By using metaphors and sentence structure Marie Howe creates imagery that is correlated with the form, and syntax that stays consistent with age.

Shakespeare's works have persistently influenced humanity for the past four hundred years. Quotations from his plays are used in many other works of literature and some common phrases have even become integrated into the English language. Most high schoolers have been unsuccessful in avoidance of him and college students are rarely afforded the luxury of choice when it comes to studying the bard. Many aspects of Shakespeare's works have been researched but one of the most popular topics since the 1960s has been the portrayal of women in Shakespeare's tragedies, comedies, histories and sonnets.

Women in today’s society feel as if they are given less power than a man and are fighting back for their rights. In his comedic romance novel, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, William Shakespeare portrays women as the weakest of the sexes. Throughout the tale, Shakespeare makes it a societal normal to treat women in this manner, which in old times, was accepted. Women in the story even see themselves as weaker than men and accept they are below them. Shakespeare’s conflict, imagery, and symbolism sets the stage for how the sexes are portrayed in this novel full of comedic irony.

You seem to me as a Dian in her orb as chaste is the bud ere it be blown; but you are more intemperate in your blood than Venus, or those pamp’red animals that range in sensuality” (4.1 54-58). In this case, Hero is considered indulgent because she displays human-like qualities and contradicts what men had fantasized females as –

In the play A Midsummer Night’s dream by William Shakespeare, the readers learned about two lovers who run away to the forest, a fairy king and queen who are fighting over an Indian boy, and actors who are trying to entertain the duke and the duchess. A fairy named Puck tampered with relationships and caused confusion, anger, and sadness. Although there are many options on this play the one that stood out the most is how important of a role Puck played in the play. The first key idea is that Puck puts the flower juice on Lysander's eye making him fall in love with Helena. The second key idea is that Puck changes Bottom’s head into a donkey and how Demetrius falls in love, and the third key idea is how Puck changes Bottom’s head back into a human head.

We share love with many people, love exists in many ways, one of them is romantic love, this type of love can only work when you are with the right person. In a Midsummer Night’s Dream, the playwright reflects love in his characters. Shakespeare does this by using Hermia and Lysander to demonstrate true love. While Helena and Demetrius represent a false love. He uses Hermia by creating a test whether she chooses duty over love. The catalyst of all the drama where Hermia needs to marry Demetrius was Egeus, Hermia’s father. He is in total disagreement of Hermia marrying Lysander that he decides to give her two options: she marries Demetrius,get killed, or stays nun.

Johnathan yet to be married is moved by her beauty perfectly describing her as a “dreamy fear.” Kissed into a sudden sexuality, Lucy grows “voluptuous thrill her lips redden, and she kisses with a new interest. This, metamorphosing Lucy sweetness” to “adamantine, heartless cruelty, and her purity to voluptuous wantonness” (252), terrifies her suitors because it entails a reversal or inversion of sexual identity. Suddenly, Lucy is now toothed like the Count, takes the function of penetration reserved for males.

Each night Clara profits from Lucy’s eccentric beauty. Men toy with her limp body, lift her from the satin sheets, and are left reminiscent of their youth as it lies unattainably in front of them.

Where Shakespeare's tragedies will tell the story, chiefly, of a single principal character, this is rarely the case with his comedies. The comedies are more social and deal with groups of characters. In the case of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the principal groups are, at first, introduced severally. Though, one group may interact with another (as when Puck anoints Lysander's eyes, or Titania is in love with Bottom) they retain separate identities.

Shakespeare may be the most known playwright of all time, however, you may be surprised at how many unfair stereotypes this very famous writer incorporated into his plays. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a comedy play written by William Shakespeare in the late 1500s that portrays events surrounding the marriage of Theseus, the Duke of Athens, to the extravagant Hippolyta, the former queen of the Amazons. Such events included Demetrius jilting Helena at the altar and falling in love with Helena’s rival instead, Hermia. However, Hermia is in love with Lysander, not a disdainful youth known as Demetrius. According to feminist theory, the theory that focuses on gender inequality. A Midsummer Night’s Dream would not be considered a feminist empowerment play because throughout the play Shakespeare portrays women as timid/easily frightened. He shows men having more power than women, and perpetuates the unfair stereotype that all women must act a certain way.

What literary criticism lens is most effective in creating meaning and entertainment throughout Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream? The play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, has several characters involved in a love triangle. Many scenes in the story involves power being used or taken away and use of money. Throughout the play, readers and viewers experiences Hermia’s power is being taken away by her father, Eugues,which is her kindred, not letting her marry the man she truly loves,Lysander. Later throughout the story, Robin, character from the story contains a enthrall love juice that has power and makes another character from the story, Titania, fall in love with a donkey.The marxist literary criticism lens is the most effective in creating meaning and entertaining readers and viewers in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Women have a specific role throughout the Elizabethan society and are known as inferior. In Shakespeare’s play, A Midsummer Nights Dream, women are told how to act by men, that reveals superiority towards men. This is portrayed by the characters-Hermia, Helena, and Titiana throughout the play. These characters were represented as powerless and blind because they fail to receive what they what and are told what to do countless amounts by the men in the play. Women's’ inferiority in the play makes it impossible for them to achieve true happiness attributable to the superiority the men in the play believe they have.

Mandy Conway Mrs. Guynes English 12 16 March 2000 A Critical Analysis of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" William Shakespeare, born in 1594, is one of the greatest writers in literature. He dies in 1616 after completing many sonnets and plays. One of which is "A Midsummer Night's Dream." They say that this play is the most purely romantic of Shakespeare's comedies. The themes of the play are dreams and reality, love and magic. This extraordinary play is a play-with-in-a-play, which master writers only write successfully. Shakespeare proves here to be a master writer. Critics find it a task to explain the intricateness of the play, audiences find it very pleasing to read and watch. "A Midsummer Night's Dream" is a