2)
Although this may seem prudish, Hermia is wise -- she has just eloped with Lysander, and she needs to make sure that he marries her, to preserve her position in society. And when she mistakenly believes that her beloved, for whom she has risked everything, including her father's affection and her good name, is taken away by her best friend, she is even willing to defend herself physically:
Puppet? why so? ay, that way goes the game.
Now I perceive that she hath made compare
Between our statures; she hath urged her height;
And with her personage, her tall personage,
Her height, forsooth, she hath prevail'd with him.
And are you grown so high in his esteem;
Because I am so dwarfish and so low?
How low am I, thou painted maypole? speak;
How low am I? I am not yet so low
But that my nails can reach unto...
But she learns, when her father tries to force her into a loveless marriage, and when she thinks that she has been betrayed by Lysander and Helena, that she must 'stand up' for herself. Unlike Helena, who begs Demetrius to love her and tells him that Lysander and Hermia have fled Athens (betraying her word to Hermia), Hermia does not abase herself before men. She is determined to get what she wants, whether that means speaking aloud, fleeing her home, or even physically fighting for what is rightly hers.
Works Cited
Shakespeare, William. A Midsummer Night's Dream. The Shakespeare Home Page.
May 4, 2009. http://shakespeare.mit.edu/midsummer/index.html
