Property & Desire

I was immediately intrigued by the male/female relationships in the opening scenes of A Midsummer Night’s Dream because they illustrate the hierarchy of the power relations in Athens while serving as example with which to contrast the homosocial bonds. The play begins with Theseus expressing his impatience for his wedding day. His fiance, Hippolyta, expresses the exact opposite feelings, and understandably so, since she has in effect been coerced into the marriage: she is basically one of the spoils of Theseus’s victory over the Amazons, which reminds me of King Henry V and his courtship of Catherine. He has “wooed” her through violence, and she is an extension of his military political conquest. I noticed that Quince refers to the wedding as “his,” and not “theirs,” which emphasizes that it is a fulfillment of his desires, not hers. The other male/female relationships mirror this one; this may be because Theseus is the Duke, the ultimate authority, and so in a process of hegemony, or “the revels of power,” the morals/beliefs of his subjects echo his own. Egeus considers his daughter to be his property, as evidenced when he says “She is mine.” His language is rampant with evidence of his almost capitalistic (?) relationship to Hermia, who he only understands in terms of worth: her obedience is “due” to him, Lysander has “stol’n” her love and “filched” her heart. He dehumanizes Hermia by saying that he wishes to “dispose” of her, which distances him from the ontological implications of his request. He reminds me of Shylock, who trades in flesh as a capitalistic venture, as do Bassanio and Portia’s father in The Merhcnat of Venice. It is ironic that he says Lysander “filched” Hermia’s heart because the OED defines the word as “to steal something, especially of small value.” It’s no surprise that he would think Hermia’s heart is of small value, (Hermia as a person is so inconsequential in his eyes that he considers Lysander to have filched her heart from him, not from her) but it is what is causing problems for him. Her heart - her desire - is what is allowing her to be able to exert some agency and challenge his authority, which is something that Hippolyta does so hesitatingly that Theseus doesn’t even respond to it, and she remains mute for the rest of the 2 acts. Perhaps if Hippolyta’s desires were positive, in that they were more than not wanting to marry Theseus, if they could be realized in the form of another person, she would be more able to test her situation. Theseus, meanwhile, upholds this system of dehumanization through determining worth by telling Hermia that Demetrius is the “worthier” suitor because Egeus approves of him. So the men in the play are subject to the same rules of valuation: however, the system is made more complex beacause it is the richer men who make the rules (the Duke) and the less rich who must abide by them (Demetrius.)

Of course, all this is disrupted by the fairies, but I thought it was interesting that Titania attributes her taking the Indian boy (also a trade in human flesh) to the homosocial bond she had with his mother while Oberon maintains he had been “stol’n” (again) by her.These observations aside, I don’t think Shakespeare is depicting a thoroughly patriarchal world. After all, the word most said is “moon” and they all escape into the woods, both of which are always associated with women.