It is clear that Shakespeare is making a statement against this system of marriage in A Midsummer Night's Dream. In doing so, he creates female characters who defy the roles assigned to women during his time. Hermia, for example, refuses to act as a bargaining chip in her Father's marriage dealings by refusing to marry Demetrius, believing marriage should be based upon love.
Shakespeare shines light on the issue of marriage in money at the beginning of the play, but he seems to lose interest in the topic by Act IV. He mainly leaves it up to “magic” to solve the quarrels of the four lovers, and as luck would have it, Theseus has a change of heart and decides to over rule Egeus's decision and let Hermia marry Lysander, the man of her desires. Egeus does not argue with him and exits from the scene immediately after Theseus states his new decision.
It is not completely clear why Theseus has a change of heart, perhaps because Demetrius has fallen in love with Helena, or because he wishes to please his bride Hippolyta by not condemning Hermia to a life of celibacy or “disposing” of her. It is also not clear why Egeus is insistent on Hermia marrying Demetrius as opposed to Lysander for all four of the lovers seem to come from a similar social background. Shakespeare never introduces us to Helena's father, “Nedar” to get his opinion on her “unnatural” longing for Demetrius.
I wonder if Shakespeare realized he was making a statement against the traditions of Elizabethan marriages or if he intentionally wanted to make Hermia an empowering female character. From what we learned in class the beginning of this semester, Shakespeare was a playwright whose primary focus was to provide the public with entertainment and to make money off of them. I doubt he was concerned with making social statements against the institutions of Elizabethan society or was an advocate for women's rights. Nonetheless, it is still interesting to see these issues addressed in A Midsummer Night's Dream.
4 comments:
I completely agree with your statement that Shakespeare does not go into great detail about the issue of marriage in money or seems to "lose interest" in it, as you say. And while it may be slightly disappointing that he leaves it up to "magic" to solve the lovers' quarrels, I feel that the fact that he even acknowledges the issue at all is something to be greatly admired. It is especially refreshing to be coming from a male writer of his time. It just goes to show how progressive and forward-thinking Shakespeare was.
While it is unknown as to why Theseus has a change of heart in the final act, I think that your suggestion or guess is very interesting. Because if he does change his mind to please Hippolyta, it would just illustrate the issue of women's defiance and power even more so.
I also find it interesting that you brought up Helena's father and what his opinion might be about her "unnatural" relationship with Demetrius because I never thought to look at it that way. When I do, it is almost certain that most fathers, or mothers for that matter, would not approve of it. Every parent wants the very best for their child and her father would probably feel that she deserves better than him. I never thought to look at it from the father's point of view, and being a new parent myself, feel very strongly on that matter.
I understand your questions regading whether or not Shakespeare knew the changes that he was proposing during the end of this play. Personally, I find it hard to believe that he would ever consider any of those "taboo" topics whithout considering the consequences that could come from that. Due to this I have come to the conclusion that he knew very well what he was writing about.
I also agree with your statement about Shakespeare losing interest in the ideals of marriage by act IV, he seems to have lost attention span and randomly decided to have Theseus be okay with these marriages, which we never actually read about in detail, in Act V he primarly focuses on the play itself. As a reader you would think there would be some kind of epic seen where theseus had some sort of an ephiphany to realize people who love each other should be together. Also in regards to women defying societies norms for the time period I don't think he had a real purpose there either, except to entertain, also interestingly enough the female roles would have been played by male actors during a performance for the time period, not by an actual women, making the idea of women having such opinated ideas almost more of a joke than anything else.
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