Stereotypes Of Women In A Midsummer Night's Dream

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a popular comedy written by William Shakespeare around 1595. The play within a play features four young Athenian lovers and a handful of unskilled actors who are controlled by magical fairies located within the forest for most of the play’s setting. A Midsummer Night’s Dream has many examples of direct and indirect characterization within two of the funniest characters in the play, Puck and Nick Bottom.

During the Elizabethan era, misogynistic tendencies were common and women were considered as weaklings in a patriarchal society. Against all the negative stereotypes of fragile women, playwrights such as Shakespeare and Middleton have provided the female characters of their respective plays with intelligent minds. Inspired by the Roman dramatist and philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca as well as feeling concerned towards the common negative portrayal of females during the Elizabethan period, Shakespeare and Middleton have constructed powerful masterpieces by interweaving these two issues. Their presentations of females as victims of revenge in ‘Hamlet’, ‘Othello’ and ‘The Revenger’s Tragedy’ share similarities in the use of theatrical devices

“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.

Shakespeare believes that women are more prone to crying and that they are the weaker gender. When Rosalind is talking to Aliena, she says “I could find in my heart to disgrace my man's apparel and to cry like a woman, but I must comfort the weaker vessel, as doublet and hose ought to show itself courageous to petticoat”. (2.4.4-8) In the past, it was believed that because of the fact that women give birth, they are the fairer sex. Most people believed that women could not protect themselves, and that they needed courageous men to protect them. Shakespeare also portrays women in a stereotypical manner, in the sense that it was believed that women normally rave over males, making them seem foolish. In Scene 3 Act 2, Rosalind is giddy over Orlando, perpetuating the stereotype that woman go crazy over guys. (3.2.198-208) Tie to the topic sentence. Another stereotype that Shakespeare brings up is the stereotype that women don’t think before they speak, and that they talk all the time. Rosalind says in Act 3 Scene 2 “Do you not know I am a woman? When I think, I must speak”. This was a common view, resulting in woman always being told that they were nagging.

The basis of the father-familial relationship as plot tension or subject is often similar through literature: the patriarch wants something and the family doesn’t. However, the contrast of this paradigm within the two genres of tragedy and comedy is readily apparent within William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer’s Night Dream and King Lear. The relationships of the characters, most notably women, to their father and lord show the contrasts in the differences of the seriousness and depiction of tragedy and comedy. The most acute examples of this are the relationships between noble, rebellious daughters Hermia and Cordelia and their respective, fathers Egeus and King Lear.

All throughout Illyria, there is romance, passion, royalty, and an immense amount of gender stereotypes. William Shakespeare imagines the kingdom of Illyria to have very traditional norms for both women and men in his play Twelfth Night. In Scene 2 of Act 1, Viola, recently rescued from a shipwreck, hears about a duke named Orsino and instantly comes up with a plan to get closer to him. Her plan is to disguise herself as a boy who she will name Cesario and become one of Orsino's’ attendants. Right off the bat, we begin to see gender stereotypes. Why must Viola become a man in order to work for the duke? Elizabethan society “molded women into the form of the dutiful wife and mother” (Elizabethan Women). Viola could not have served duke Orsino as a woman because as a woman she was expected to work at home and be either a “dutiful wife [or a] mother”. Scene two prepares the audience for the idea of gender throughout the rest of the play. Shakespeare's Twelfth Night is very traditional play due to its ideas of gender stereotypes in Elizabethan society.

In William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night’s Dream, there are many characters portrayed in many ways. Even though Demetrius and Lysander are foolish while under a spell, the men are seen as wise. Of course, this does not include who would be considered groundlings, but the majority of men are sensible. On the other hand, the women are seen as foolish even though they were never under a spell. Although Helena and Hermia are foolish, many women or female figures are not foolish. Hippolyta and Titania show this throughout the play.

When someone gives you options for your future, and the best option you are given is to die, then there is definitely something wrong with the political system. In the play A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare, a young woman, Hermia, wishes to marry the man she loves, Lysander. But her salty father Egeus wants her to marry a different man, Demetrius. And the Athenian law allows a female’s life to be dictated by her father (or practically any other male), and she is treated like an object. After allegedly “defying” her father’s wishes, Hermia is given three choices: Die; become a nun, living as “a barren sister all your life, chanting hymns to the cold, fruitless moon” (1.1.72-73): or marry Demetrius, a man she does not love,

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.

Shakespeare is famously known for his misogynistic like tendencies when it comes to the portrayal of women in his plays. From the villainous unsteady Lady Macbeth to the violent greedy Regan, women are rarely viewed in a favorable light in his plays. However, in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, this is not the case. Instead of having the women exhibit unfavorable characteristics Shakespeare flips the script and has the men shoulder the burden. In the play, the men, specifically Lysander, Demetrius, and Theseus, are given unbecoming qualities.

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.

In several Shakespeare works including Macbeth, Twelfth Night or What You Will, and Othello, the female characters in his plays are expected to be prim, perfect housewives who let their husbands run their lives, letting their husbands strip them of all of their social class. In their plotlines, the women are given two choices that define who they are and how they add to the story: to be “strong” and fight the social norm or to be “weak” and follow along with them. Shakespeare has constantly utilized the existence of sexism, stereotypes, and Elizabethan women’s standards in order to further the plot in his works, which was common in the majority of literature written in his patriarchal society.

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.

One potential Essay #1 topic is gender conflict, as it is associated with patriarchal pride. It is a good potential topic because it is prevalent between Egeus and his daughter, and Oberon and Titania. According to McDonald, Egeus attempts to control Hermia, by stating that he owns her as property (McDonald 44). It demonstrates how patriarchy allows the head of the house to choose for his family without consent. As a result, she escapes to the woods with Lysander. Despite Theseus’s remarks about her choice, she wants to be with her lover than the man her father arranged for marriage (I.1.83-90). She wants to break free from the patriarchal society in order to make her life decisions. In addition, Oberon takes revenge at Titania for not allowing him to be with the Indian boy. Titania goes through an embarrassing trick that causes her to fall in love with a donkey. McDonald suggests that “she surrenders the Indian boy without apparent protest and finally seems not to resent Oberon’s prank” (McDonald 45). This demonstrates how females do not have any say, while the males have the last word. It is unfair that Oberon controls her into giving permission to be with the Indian boy. It demonstrates his abusive power usage against females.

    When one considers Shakespeare’s female characters, one has to remember that the plays were written in a time when women were considered weak-minded creatures who were apt to make bad choices if given the freedom.  Shakespeare, for the most