Gender Roles In A Midsummer Night's Dream

Shakespeare uses language to explore the controversial gender roles. His use of two distinctively opposing female

Through Helena Shakespeare created a woman so pitiful and wretched that he openly mocked the modern sixteenth-century women who allowed themselves to be treated in such a manner. Had a man been the monarch of England when this play was written, the bard might have been more discrete in his support of feminism. Luckily, Queen Elizabeth was fond of autonomous women and showed little animosity towards such mockery.

“Beware of your stereotypes and prejudices, they can trap you in a box and make you miss what life has to offer you”─Med Yones. One has to see past the stereotypes in life, just as one should do for A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare. This literature masterpiece entails a quarrel of a pair of lovers caught entangled in a treacherous web of tainted love and magic. This comedy, viewed through the archetypal literary criticism lens─which focuses on the stereotypical aspects─, makes the audience wonder and push beyond the boundaries of the stereotypes with the tale. Combined with its other elements, A Midsummer Night's Dream is more entertaining and meaningful when viewed through the archetypal literary criticism lens; such as in Act 1: scene 1; Act 3: scene 2; and Act 5: scene 1 in both the printed text and the 1999 film versions.

Before someone has the ability to analyze a female character in one of William Shakespeare’s works, one must take into account Shakespeare’s views on feminism, as well as how females were viewed in the time period. Is Shakespeare teaching us that women have no greater value than a breeding mule, or that women are truly property, simply to be owned by men? Obviously Shakespeare’s opinion is that women are inferior to men, seeming that his views are clearly portrayed by Helena’s character in A Midsummers night’s dream.

The theme for honour and fidelity apply for both men and women in Shakespeare’s play ‘much ado about nothing’. Honour and fidelity is represented very differently for men and women as it would have been for the people in Elizabethan times. In this first section of the essay, I will be exploring double standards and Shakespeare’s awareness of the double standards between sexes and his feminist approach, the differences of honour and fidelity for men and women and upper class and lower class comparisons.

During the Elizabethan Era, gender role was a big thing. Every man knew his role and his class and every woman knew her role. When Shakespeare was writing, the gender expectation was that a woman should serve and obey to her husband. If a man told a woman to do something, then it was her job to fully submit to him. When women do not obey their husband, they get punished.

Shakespeare uses the motif of what it means to be a man/women to deliver this theme. He plays off of the idea that men are supposed to be strong, violent, and powerful while their female counterparts are supposed to be gentle, calming, and submissive. Throughout this play, gender roles remain a focus. It begins with Lady Macbeth pressuring her husband to murder King Duncan.

These different expectations are set by the patriarchal society we live in. Women are treated as objects and property of men and they lose their agency as full human beings, especially in Shakespeare’s plays. They are no longer full human beings because they are being treated as objects. Society forces gender norms on both men and women, expecting men to have public power and influence. When

The women were expected to be subservient to the men in the society. A part of these their roles were so restricted as they were only to be wives and mothers to their husbands and children respectively (Kakkonen & Penjak 2015). All these unfair treatments, manipulation, and discrimination of women in the society have been brought out through themes such as role of women in the society, feminism and even characters such as Lady Capulet, Juliet, Lord Capulet, Juliet’s nurse among others. First and foremost, women in Shakespeare’s society were expected to conform to all the expectations of the community or society. The men in this community found it very possible to control and manipulate women because they saw them as inferior and weaker beings.

Midsummer Night’s Dream is a great story by Shakespeare because it deals with many important the problems such as the issues of how men dominated women, power affairs, and the patriarchy. These matters are very obvious through the relationships between the gender members of couples of characters. Most men in Shakespeare time like to dominate women and to control their lives as they want. As well the Patriarchal plays an important role and it reflected in the society of ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream, and this is clear through the relationship of Hermia with her father. This essay presents the patriarchy how it plays an important role through the relationships between the king (Oberon) and the queen of Fairies (Titania) and between Hermia and Agues.

This essay examines the question ‘To what extent does William Shakespeare depict male superiority through Hippolyta and Titania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream?’. The essay commences by looking first at the social and historical context in which the play was written and identifying the methods of research used to obtain the facts and opinions in the essay. The essay continues, discussing the themes of love, relationships and sexuality, focused on the characters of Hippolyta and Titania and how Shakespeare portrays the superiority of males through these two themes and characters. The significance of male dominance in the play is then discussed, looking at how it adds comedy that may not be quite as apparent in a modern day feminist reading of the

One of the most notorious topics of interest in the works of Shakespeare is the role women receive in his plays. The way Shakespeare wrote his plays, women were very submissive to men and had no will and choice of their own. Women were extremely reliant upon the men in their lives, believing that they were inferior and thus following their desire for the women’s lives. This included that marriages were usually arranged by a powerful male, instead of giving the woman the opportunity of choosing marriage for love. It is not surprising that Shakespeare portrayed women in a way that was familiar to him and the time era in which he lived. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Taming of the Shrew, both focus on the development of love and not, with

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.

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.

Shakespeare and the members of the Elizabethan era would be appalled at the freedoms women experience today.  The docility of Elizabethan women is almost a forgotten way of life. What we see throughout Shakespeare’s plays is an insight into the female character as perceived by Elizabethan culture.  Shakespeare’s female characters reflect the Elizabethan era’s image of women; they were to be virtuous and obedient and those that were not were portrayed as undesirable and even evil.