The Absence of Hermia and Helena

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Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream contains values and laws of a time where fathers, and men in general, hold a lot of power over women. Hermia and Helena are used as tools to enhance the power of the role of the father and masculinity in the world Shakespeare has created. At the start of the play Helena and Hermia are both popular characters, speaking frequently and constantly at the center of attention. Once the events in the greenwood take place, Helena and Hermia’s role is diminished and their voices are hardly heard in the remaining two acts of the play. This shift of focus displays how Hermia and Helena are symbolizations of the impact of the role of men on a woman’s life, and it rejuvenates love as being more important than the law underneath the non-swaying idea of the patriarchal set-up that is displayed. Beyond this, their absence at the end of the play depicts the dream-like quality Shakespeare is depicting, swaying the notion of reality and magic through the events that take place in the greenwood.
The role of Hermia and her situation with Lysander and Demetrius displays the first major significance surrounding the role of men in Shakespeare’s play. Hermia is completely in love with Lysander, and her father is aware of this. However, Egeus doesn’t blame Hermia for her own behavior and disobedience towards him. He says, “This man hath bewitched the bosom of my child. Thou, thou, Lysander, thou hast given her rhymes, and interchanged love tokens with my child” (1.1.28-30). Egeus takes away Hermia’s responsibility for her own actions, and denotes her to an object which Lysander can control, and essentially blames Lysander for her actions. Shakespeare portrays love like this at the beginning enhancing th...

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...ena and Demetrius are all happy together and in love, and this reverts things back to before the play, when Demetrius was in love with Helena before Hermia. By doing this, Shakespeare makes it as if the events in the greenwood had almost never happened, along with the dispute in the beginning Acts of the play. By excluding Hermia and Helena, he enhances the importance of Puck and his role as a cupid in this story, because it obtains the clean ending that readers desire.

Works Cited
James, Calderwood L. "A Midsummer Night's Dream: Anamorphism and Theseus' Dream." Shakespeare Quarterly 42.4 (1991): 409-30. Web. 5 Apr. 2014.
Shakespeare, William, Barbara A. Mowat, and Paul Werstine. A Midsummer Night's Dream. New York: Washington Square, 1993. Print.
Taylor, Michael R. "Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream." The Explicator 54.1 (1995): 4-6. Web. 4 Apr. 2014.

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