Women's Subordination in A Midsummer Night's Dream
This paper argues that beneath its comic surface, Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream is fundamentally concerned with the subordination of women. Through close reading of three key motifs — the conquest-based marriage of Theseus and Hippolyta, the patriarchal authority of Egeus over his daughter Hermia, and the undermined friendship between Hermia and Helena — the essay demonstrates that the play consistently frames women as inferior and powerless. The supernatural subplot involving Oberon and Titania further reinforces this theme, extending the dynamic of male domination into the fairy realm itself.
- Introduction: Marriage and Female Subjection: Thesis introduced via conquest and patriarchal marriage
- Fathers, Daughters, and the Power of Law: Egeus claims legal right to kill Hermia
- Female Friendship Undermined: Helena and Hermia's bond eroded by male desire
- Oberon, Titania, and the Supernatural Order: Fairy realm mirrors human female subjection
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What makes this paper effective
- The argument is anchored immediately in the play's opening scenes, showing strong awareness of dramatic structure and how placement signals thematic priority.
- The paper integrates extended quotations from the primary text and follows each with close, specific analysis rather than letting the quotes speak for themselves.
- The essay moves logically from political subjection (Hippolyta) to legal subjection (Hermia) to social subjection (Helena) and finally to supernatural subjection (Titania), building a cumulative case across multiple registers of the play.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates effective close reading: it selects dramatically charged passages, quotes them at sufficient length, and unpacks specific images — the "wax doll" metaphor, the "spaniel" simile, the "double cherry" twinship — to extract ideological meaning. This technique shows how literary language encodes social values, a core skill in literary analysis.
Structure breakdown
The essay opens with a thesis framing three key motifs, then devotes one body section each to the Theseus/Hippolyta marriage and Egeus/Hermia legal drama, another to Helena's self-degrading speech and the problematic image of female friendship, and closes by connecting the Oberon/Titania subplot back to the overarching theme of female inferiority. The conclusion is brief but synthesizing.
Introduction: Marriage and Female Subjection
William Shakespeare's comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream is ostensibly concerned with heterosexual marriage, but it is seldom noted just how disturbing the play's picture of marriage actually is. The subject is rarely raised without reference to death or conquest: even the farcical drama enacted in the final act by the rude mechanicals is a story of two lovers who die violently — played, of course, for laughs. Through an examination of several key motifs — the relations between fathers and daughters, the friendships between women, and the status of men and women in the play's erotic couplings — this essay argues that Shakespeare's real subject is the status of women. A Midsummer Night's Dream stands out for its portrayal of a culture in which women are labeled as inferior and rendered powerless.
The subjection of women is undeniably central to A Midsummer Night's Dream, as evidenced by its prominent placement in the drama's opening. Here the audience encounters, one right after the other, two variations on the theme of women being "ruled" by men. The overarching structure of the play is framed by the marriage of its political ruler, Theseus, the Duke of Athens, to his wife-to-be Hippolyta. It is worth noting that Hippolyta is, mythologically, the Queen of the Amazons — an all-female tribe of warrior women. It is therefore jarring to learn that this marriage is based on literal conquest at the point of a sword, as Theseus announces:
Hippolyta, I woo'd thee with my sword,
And won thy love, doing thee injuries;
But I will wed thee in another key,
With pomp, with triumph and with revelling. (I.i)
It might be possible to read this as fanciful "war between the sexes" rhetoric, were it not immediately followed by another narrative of female obedience to male authority — this one concerning fathers and daughters.
Fathers, Daughters, and the Power of Law
Egeus, a citizen of Athens, appeals to the city's ruler because his daughter Hermia is marrying against her father's wishes: Egeus has promised her to Demetrius, but Hermia desires of her own volition to marry Lysander. The redress he seeks is extraordinary:
EGEUS: Be it so she will not here before your grace
Consent to marry with Demetrius,
I beg the ancient privilege of Athens,
As she is mine, I may dispose of her:
Which shall be either to this gentleman
Or to her death, according to our law
Immediately provided in that case.
THESEUS: What say you, Hermia? Be advised, fair maid:
To you your father should be as a god;
One that composed your beauties, yea, and one
To whom you are but as a form in wax
By him imprinted and within his power
To leave the figure or disfigure it.
The premise of the ensuing middle acts of the play, which follow Hermia and her two suitors, is that Hermia's father holds the legal power to have his daughter put to death if she refuses to marry the man he has chosen. Theseus captures the status of women in a striking poetic metaphor: Hermia's relation to her father should be that of a created being to the god who created it. Hermia is not fully human but like a wax doll — her father sculpted her, and he may liquidate her too, if he so chooses.
Works Cited
Shakespeare, William. A Midsummer Night's Dream. MIT Shakespeare. Web. Accessed 17 April 2014. http://shakespeare.mit.edu/midsummer/full.html
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