Gender and Patriarchy
Theme Profile – At a Glance
- Focus: What the play shows about the power of fathers and husbands over daughters and wives: a girl who is her father’s property, an Amazon won with a sword, a fairy queen drugged into obedience, and two women who fall silent once they are married.
- Key Characters: Hermia, Helena, Hippolyta, Titania, Theseus, Oberon.
- The Core Tension: Every woman in the play begins by wanting something a man has forbidden, and every one of them ends the play married and quiet. Whether that is a happy ending or a defeat is the question the play leaves open.
- Key Manifestations: Theseus’s conquest of Hippolyta and the law that makes Hermia her father’s wax (A1S1); Helena’s complaint that women cannot woo (A2S1); Oberon’s "am not I thy lord?" and Titania’s memory of the votaress (A2S1); the fair vestal who escapes Cupid (A2S1); Titania’s enchantment and surrender (A3S1, A4S1); the women’s silence in Act 5 (A5S1).
- Famous Quote:
"We should be wood and were not made to woo."
(Act 2, Scene 1) - The Outcome: Three weddings and a blessing. Hermia and Helena do not speak in the final act; Hippolyta does, and gets the better of her husband; Titania dances with the man who drugged her and is never told.
As She Is Mine
The play’s first scene is a property dispute. Egeus has promised his daughter to Demetrius, she has given herself to Lysander, and Egeus tells the duke, in the language of a deed of transfer, what a daughter is.
Original
Scornful Lysander! True, he hath my love,
And what is mine my love shall render him.
And she is mine, and all my right of her
I do estate unto Demetrius.
(Egeus, Act 1, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
How rude, Lysander! Yes, it’s true I love him,
And through my love I’ll give him what is mine.
And she is mine, and all my rights to her
I’m giving over to Demetrius.
"I do estate unto Demetrius": Hermia is real estate, and her father is conveying her. Theseus agrees. His speech to Hermia about the form in wax, printed by her father and his to keep or destroy, is the same idea in a poet’s image, and the law behind it gives Egeus power of life and death. Hermia’s answer is that her soul does not consent, which changes nothing.
Shakespeare invented the law. There was nothing like it in England, and the invention tells us what the play wants to examine: not a real statute but the principle underneath all the real ones, that a woman belongs to the man who made her until she belongs to the man he gives her to. The theme of control and rebellion in Athens is this principle with a duke to enforce it.
The Cold Fruitless Moon
Theseus offers Hermia a third choice the law did not mention: the convent. He describes it so that no one will take it.
Original
Thrice-blessed they that master so their blood,
To undergo such maiden pilgrimage;
But earthlier happy is the rose distilled,
Than that which withering on the virgin thorn
Grows, lives and dies in single blessedness.
(Theseus, Act 1, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
The nuns that tame their passions are thrice-blessed
For living out their lives as faithful virgins;
But roses turned to perfume breed contentment,
Like women’s children do; but virgins suffer
To live and die alone without a child.
A nun is a rose withering on the thorn; a wife is a rose distilled into perfume, "earthlier happy". The speech is meant as kindness, and it is also the play’s clearest statement of what a woman is for. She is to be married and to bear children, and the alternative is a cold cloister and a fruitless moon. Hermia chooses the thorn, to the duke’s face, and then runs away to be married anyway.
The image returns. Oberon’s "imperial votaress", almost certainly Elizabeth, passes on "in maiden meditation, fancy-free", the one woman in the play whom Cupid cannot touch and the only one who is not, in the end, married. The play compliments the virgin queen and sends every other woman to the altar. The theme of love and folly is what it calls the journey.
Not Made to Woo
Helena follows Demetrius into the wood and is told, with a threat, what a woman risks by doing so.
Original
You do impeach your modesty too much,
To leave the city and commit yourself
Into the hands of one that loves you not;
To trust the opportunity of night
And the ill counsel of a desert place
With the rich worth of your virginity.
(Demetrius, Act 2, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
It’s far too risky to your reputation
To leave the city, offering yourself
For free to someone you know doesn’t love you;
And trusting that temptations of a night
And sordid thoughts in somewhere quite deserted
Are worth the risk to your virginity.
Her modesty, her reputation, her virginity: Demetrius lists the things a woman alone at night with a man might lose, and the list is meant as a warning, but it is also a threat, and a few lines later he makes the threat plain. Helena’s reply is the famous complaint: his wrongs are a scandal on her sex, because women cannot fight for love as men do; they are to be wooed, not to woo.
She is breaking the rule as she states it, and the play does not punish her. It laughs at her, has two men mock her with worship, and then gives her the husband she chased, by a spell she never learns of. Helena’s rebellion against the rules of courtship is the only one in the play that succeeds, and it succeeds by a fairy’s whim. The theme of magic and illusion does for her what the rules would not.
I Wooed Thee with My Sword
The play begins and ends with a wedding, and the bride is a prisoner of war. Theseus says so in his fourth speech, lightly, as a thing settled.
Original
Hippolyta, I wooed 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.
(Theseus, Act 1, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Hippolyta, I wooed you in a battle
And won your heart whilst I was hurting you;
But I will marry you a different way,
With fanfare and triumphant revelry.
Hippolyta says nothing in reply. Her one speech in the scene is about the moon, and she then watches in silence as a girl is sentenced for refusing a husband. Whether the Amazon is a willing bride or a captive is a question the text never answers, and productions have made both choices.
The fairy court repeats the pattern at full volume. Oberon asks Titania whether he is not her lord; she refuses him the changeling; he drugs her, humiliates her and takes the boy while she is helpless; and then he dances with her and does not tell her what he did. The play’s two marriages, the human and the fairy, are both made by a husband’s force, and the play’s three new ones are blessed by him. The theme of order and chaos at the end of the play is a house full of men who have won.
"The festive conclusion of A Midsummer Night’s Dream depends upon the success of a process by which the female pride and power manifested in misanthropic warriors, possessive mothers, unruly wives, and willful daughters are brought under the control of lords and husbands."
— Louis Adrian Montrose, ‘Shaping Fantasies’: Figurations of Gender and Power in Elizabethan Culture, 1983
Key Quotes on Gender and Patriarchy
Quote 1
OBERON: Tarry, rash wanton: am not I thy lord?
TITANIA: Then I must be thy lady: but I know...
(Act 2, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
OBERON: You are impetuous: aren’t I your husband?
TITANIA: If so, then I’m your wife, but I’m aware...
Quote Analysis: The fairy king and queen, on meeting. He claims lordship; she claims the title that goes with it and then reminds him of every time he has abused it. "Lady" is not "obedient", and Titania’s speech goes on to list his affairs with mortal women. It is a quarrel between equals who are not, in law, equal, which is a fair description of an Elizabethan marriage, and Oberon settles it as such a husband might, if he had a magic flower.
And the imperial votaress passed on,
In maiden meditation, fancy-free.
(Oberon, Act 2, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
To leave the royal virgin unaffected,
To ponder her virginity unswayed.
Quote Analysis: Oberon’s description of the queen Cupid could not hit. The "fair vestal throned by the west" is almost certainly Elizabeth I, unmarried by choice and celebrated as Diana, and the compliment is that she alone is beyond the play’s magic. The arrow that missed her fell on the flower that subjects everyone else. Shakespeare wrote, for a queen who answered to no man, a play in which every other woman ends up answering to one, and the passage is where the two facts meet.
His mother was a votaress of my order:
And, in the spiced Indian air, by night,
Full often hath she gossiped by my side,
And sat with me on Neptune's yellow sands...
(Titania, Act 2, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
His mother was supportive of my clan:
And in those fragrant nights in India,
She often chatted with me by my side,
And sat with me upon the yellow beaches...
Quote Analysis: Titania explaining why she keeps the changeling boy. His mother was her friend, a mortal woman who sat with her on the Indian shore, and the boy is the memorial of that friendship. It is the play’s one glimpse of a world of women in which men do not appear at all, and it is the first thing the play sacrifices. Oberon does not answer the story. He waits until she is asleep.
Your wrongs do set a scandal on my sex:
We cannot fight for love, as men may do...
(Helena, Act 2, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Your wrongdoing is shameful to all women:
We cannot fight for love, as men can do...
Quote Analysis: Helena, abandoned in the wood by Demetrius. The line is a complaint about the rules and a confession that she is breaking them: she is in the wood, she is doing the wooing, and she knows it is a scandal. The couplet that follows, that women should be wooed and were not made to woo, has become the play’s motto on the subject, and the play’s answer is to reward her. Helena’s persistence gets her what the rules said she could not have.
Key Takeaways
- A Daughter Is Property: Egeus conveys Hermia to Demetrius like an estate, and the duke's law backs him with death.
- The Rose or the Thorn: Theseus's choice for Hermia, marriage or a cold cloister, is the play's statement of what a woman is for.
- Women Cannot Woo: Helena names the rule and breaks it, and the play rewards her by a spell she never learns of.
- Won With the Sword: Theseus conquered his bride and Oberon drugs his; the play's marriages are made by husbands' force and blessed by a king.
Study Questions and Analysis
What does the play show about fathers and daughters?
That a daughter is her father’s to give. Egeus brings Hermia before the duke as a piece of disputed property, and his first act is to present the man he has chosen:
Stand forth, Demetrius. My noble lord,
This man hath my consent to marry her.
(Egeus, Act 1, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Step up, Demetrius. My noble lord,
This man has my consent to marry her.
He never says why he prefers Demetrius. Theseus admits that Lysander is worthy in himself and worse only for lacking the father’s voice; the preference needs no justifying, and the daughter’s does. The law behind Egeus gives him power to kill her for disagreeing.
Louis Adrian Montrose, in "Shaping Fantasies" (1983), read the scene as the play’s statement of the order it will spend four acts restoring: "willful daughters" are among the forms of female power that must be "brought under the control of lords and husbands" before the festive ending is possible. What complicates his reading is what the play does with the law. It is never enforced. Theseus overrules Egeus in Act 4 without a word of argument, once Demetrius has changed his mind, and the father is not answered. The play states paternal power in its most absolute form and then shows it evaporating the moment the men agree among themselves. Whether that is a criticism of the power or simply a description of how it works is the question Montrose leaves open, and the play does too. The theme of control and rebellion begins with Egeus and ends with him silent.
Is Theseus’s marriage to Hippolyta a conquest?
By his own account. "I wooed thee with my sword," he tells her in the first scene, "and won thy love, doing thee injuries"; the wedding is to be in "another key". Hippolyta does not reply, and the play never returns to the subject except in the fairies’ mouths. Titania, quarrelling with Oberon, uses the Amazon as a weapon:
But that, forsooth, the bouncing Amazon,
Your buskined mistress and your warrior love,
To Theseus must be wedded, and you come
To give their bed joy and prosperity.
(Titania, Act 2, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Because that Amazonian, Hippolyta –
Your booted mistress, warrior love interest –
Is to be wed to Theseus, and you’ve come
To wish them both joy and prosperity.
Shakespeare found the story in Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale and Plutarch’s life of Theseus, in which the hero defeats the Amazons and marries their queen, and he kept the outline while cutting the war to a single line.
Montrose (1983) put Hippolyta first on his list of the play’s subdued women, the "misanthropic warriors" whose pride is brought under a husband’s control, and read the four days of the play as the interval between the surrender and the ceremony. The text neither confirms nor denies it. Hippolyta’s first speech is warm, her fourth-act speech is companionable, and her fifth-act speeches are witty and independent; she expresses neither reluctance nor love. Since Peter Brook’s 1970 production doubled her with Titania, audiences have watched the same actress drugged and mastered in the wood and then married in Athens, which tends to settle the question one way; productions that play her as a contented bride settle it the other. Shakespeare, who could have given her a line of consent or of grief, gave her neither. The theme of dreams and reality is where she finally speaks at length, and it is to disagree with her husband.
Why do Hermia and Helena fall silent in Act 5?
Nobody knows, and readers have noticed. In Act 1 Hermia was the boldest speaker in Athens and Helena had the play’s longest soliloquy; in Act 5, married, neither says a word while Theseus, Lysander and Demetrius joke their way through Pyramus and Thisbe. The only woman who speaks is Hippolyta, and she is the only one who argues with her husband:
It must be your imagination then, and not theirs.
(Hippolyta, Act 5, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Then your imagination is the strength, not their acting skills.
Theseus has just said that bad actors are no worse if the audience’s imagination helps them; Hippolyta answers that in that case the imagination is his and not theirs, and he changes the subject.
Montrose (1983) read the silence as the play’s purpose: the wilful daughter and the woman who would not stop talking have been brought, by way of the wood, into the quiet of brides. Shirley Nelson Garner, in a 1981 essay for Women’s Studies, read the same ending as the cost of the comedy, the bonds between women broken so that each can be given to a man, with nothing left for the women to say to each other. C. L. Barber, in Shakespeare’s Festive Comedy (1959), saw only the natural close of a holiday, with the lovers restored to a society that now has room for them. The text supports all three because it gives the women nothing at all; and Hippolyta’s two exchanges, in which she gets the better of the duke both times, suggest that the play knows exactly what it is doing with the silence of the other two. It has given the last female voice to the woman who was conquered first.
What does Titania’s story of the votaress tell us?
That there was a world of women before the play began, and that the play’s happy ending requires it to be given up. Asked for the changeling, Titania tells Oberon about the boy’s mother, a mortal in her service, and the two of them on the Indian shore:
When we have laughed to see the sails conceive
And grow big-bellied with the wanton wind;
Which she, with pretty and with swimming gait
Following, – her womb then rich with my young squire, –
Would imitate, and sail upon the land,
To fetch me trifles, and return again,
As from a voyage, rich with merchandise.
(Titania, Act 2, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
And we would laugh, pretending sails were pregnant,
Expanding out their bellies in the wind,
Which she, so pretty, with a gliding walk,
Would follow – she was pregnant with my young boy –
And mimic, sailing up and down the beach
To fetch me gifts, then coming back again
As if she were a laden merchant ship.
The pregnant woman sails up and down the sand in imitation of the ships, her belly the wind-filled sail and the trifles she fetches a merchant’s cargo; then she dies in childbirth, and Titania keeps her son "for her sake". Nothing in the plot requires the passage. Shakespeare could have had her refuse the boy in a line.
Shirley Nelson Garner (1981) made the speech the centre of her reading: the play’s movement towards its three weddings is also a movement away from the bonds between women, and the votaress is the first casualty, remembered in ten lines and then overruled by a spell. Montrose (1983) listed "possessive mothers" among the play’s subdued women and noticed that the boy, the object over which the fairy marriage is fought, never speaks. What the passage does for the audience is set the terms of the loss. Titania is not being stubborn; she is keeping faith with a dead friend, and the play, which lets Oberon win, lets us hear exactly what he took. The theme of control and rebellion in the fairy plot is argued over a woman’s memory of another woman, and the woman loses.
How does the play treat friendship between women?
As the warmest thing in it, and the first thing broken. Helena’s speech about her childhood with Hermia, the two of them sewing one flower on one sampler and singing one song in one key, is the play’s fullest picture of any relationship, and it is spoken as an accusation:
So, with two seeming bodies, but one heart;
Two of the first, like coats in heraldry,
Due but to one and crowned with one crest.
(Helena, Act 3, Scene 2)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
So, that was us, two bodies but one heart;
We were two figures on one coat of arms,
A crest belonging to a single person.
The heraldic image, two coats of arms under one crest, makes the friendship sound like a marriage. Within twenty lines it is a fight about height, and the two women do not exchange another friendly word in the play.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in his notes on the play, was troubled by the friendship from the other side, calling Helena’s decision in Act 1 to betray Hermia’s elopement a "broad determination of ungrateful treachery in Helena, so undisguisedly avowed to herself". Garner (1981) argued that the breaking of the friendship is the play’s design, not its accident: the comedy needs each woman paired with a man and cannot afford the double cherry. Between them the two critics mark the problem. Both women betray the friendship, Helena for a man and Hermia in a rage, and the morning mends the lovers without mending the friends. The men, who tried to kill each other in the dark, wake as brothers. The women wake beside their husbands and say nothing to each other again. The theme of love and folly is what the play rewards; friendship between women is what it spends.
Does the play criticise patriarchy or endorse it?
It shows it working, in detail, and lets the audience decide. The case for endorsement is the shape of the play: every rebellious woman ends up married, the fairy king blesses the beds, and the last word is a request for applause. The case for criticism is the detail: the law that would kill Hermia is invented and then ignored; Titania’s surrender is a drugged woman being mocked; Hippolyta wins both her arguments with the duke; and the men’s love is shown to be switchable by a flower.
Montrose (1983) argued that the play is "in a double sense, a creation of Elizabethan culture", both shaped by a world ruled by a woman and shaping the fantasies that world had about her; it neither attacks Elizabeth nor simply flatters her, but imagines, in the safe space of fairyland, a powerful woman mastered. Catherine Belsey, in her 1993 essay for the Folger edition, noted that the play "does not ignore the trace of violence that exists within love when the other person fails to conform to the lover’s idealized image", and the violence in this play is almost all done by men to women. Barber (1959) read the whole thing as a festive pattern in which such questions do not arise.
The most defensible answer is that the play endorses the ending and criticises the means, and is honest enough to show both. Nobody in Athens knows how the marriages were made; the audience does. A comedy that lets its audience see the flower on Demetrius’s eyes and the taunting of Titania, and then asks them to clap, is not hiding anything. It is asking whether they will clap anyway, and four hundred years of audiences have. The theme of dreams and reality is the play’s way of letting them.
How has feminist criticism changed the way the play is read?
It has moved the fairy quarrel and the Athenian law from the background to the centre. For most of the play’s history the lovers’ muddle was the plot and the fairies were the charm; Hazlitt and Coleridge barely mention Hippolyta, and the Victorian theatre made Titania a spectacle in gauze. The question the duke asks his bride in the first scene was not thought to need an answer:
Come, my Hippolyta: what cheer, my love?
(Theseus, Act 1, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Come, dear Hippolyta: do you have good news?
Since the 1980s it has been the question the play turns on. Louis Adrian Montrose’s "Shaping Fantasies" (1983) set the play against Elizabeth’s rule and read its festive ending as the subduing of female power; Shirley Nelson Garner (1981) read it as the breaking of bonds between women; Catherine Belsey (1993) drew attention to the violence inside its idea of love and to the fact that Demetrius is never released from the spell.
The theatre had got there first. Peter Brook’s 1970 production, doubling Theseus with Oberon and Hippolyta with Titania, made the fairy plot the human one seen at night, and the drugging of the queen a version of the conquest of the Amazon; the doubling is now standard, and it makes the play’s gender politics visible on any stage. None of this has made the play less funny or less loved. It has made its audiences notice what they are laughing at, which is what the best criticism does. The theme of order and chaos looks different once the question is who was silenced to achieve it.
