Destabilizing the Social Norms Between Men and Women in A Midsummer Night’s Dream

The social order and love within A Midsummer’s Night Dream is skewed without the influence of the fairies, yet Oberon, Titania, and their troupe of troublemakers forcibly insert themselves into the plot with their own personal squabbles that exert power over the characters and events of the play. The crazed and maniacal actions of the characters go against the traditional forms of accepted behavior in Elizabethan society, and just like in dreams, they turn the plot topsy-turvy and breed a chaos that runs unchecked until the young Athenians emerge from the woods at dawn. There are many points where sexual roles and norms are challenged during the play, but the most heated is Oberon and Titania’s fight in Act 2 Scene 1. Titania’s refusal to bow to her husband’s instant desire makes a bold statement about the power of women over men in the play and destabilizes the social structure within the plot.
In Act 2, the reader is introduced to the fairies, whose purpose in the play at surface level is to bless the marriage bed of Theseus and Hippolyta so that they may have many children and be sexually satisfied for the rest of their married lives. However, it is discovered that an underlying motive for both the fairy king and queen for coming to the Athenian wedding are two flames of desire; one kept for ‘the bouncing Amazon/Your buskined mistress and your warrior love’ (2.1.70-71) that is Hippolyta to Oberon, and Titania’s infatuation of Theseus, as she ‘lead him through the glimmering night/From Perigenia, whom he ravished’ (2.1.77-78). These dual infidelities make the fairy king and queen equally jealous, and yet equally to blame: neither one of them can gain the upper hand in the argument because they are both at fault. Oberon has be...

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...f the best examples for the rights of women by Shakespeare in the Elizabethan Age. Destabilizing the natural order of men and women is one of the main themes in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and as the reader can tell no one does this better than Titania and Oberon. The message here is clear: it is acceptable to let women have their fill of power and control, but at the end of the day it is critical that men regain the upper hand in order to restore the natural order of life. Though Shakespeare writes in favor of the feminist protagonists, feminism is not the goal of the writer as he allows the antagonist men to win in the end. Such will be the attitude towards women for the next four hundred and fifty years. But until then, Titania will be immortalized in Shakespeare’s lines as the one woman brave enough to try to defy the accepted norms, if only for a little while.