A Midsummer Night's Dream

A Midsummer Night's Dream is a play that revolves around love, sex and marriage. The plot revolves around two sets of lovers (Hermia and Lysander and Helena and Demetrius), whose complicated romantic relations are made more complex by their arrival in the fairyland woods. Here the King and Queen of the Fairies (Oberon and Titania) rule and are involved in a battle themselves, over the custody of a young changeling boy in Titania's care. A majority of critics contend that the play reflects certain characteristics of Elizabethan male-dominated society. Some critics like Howard Bloom argue the play shows how women's existence, especially their emotional and sexual life, is controlled by powerful males. While we see such elements in the play like Egeus' domination and control of his daughter Hermia and Oberon's trickery against Titania, it is the women in the play like Titania who actually dominate the men and control their own destinies. We see this in Titania's refusal to allow Oberon to take the changeling boy as well as in Helena's castigation of Lysander for being fickle in his love for Hermia. In actuality, the play's main message is that to find real love human beings must reach out to one another, come together, and mutually work on the challenges relationships often present.

The relationships between the two sets of couples in A Midsummer Night's Dream are further complicated by their arrival in the fairyland woods, pre

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o Egeus'. Further, we see that Titania is actually infatuated with Bottom, though Bottom is more intrigued by the elves than he is interested in Titania. Such sexual liberation for a woman on Titania's part is evidence she is more independent than many critics view the women in the play being. Further, she flatly refuses Oberon's demands that she provide him with custody of the changeling boy. In fact, she does so not only because refuses to obey him but also because she intends to maintain loyalty to the boy's deceased mother. In this we see that women often band together in order to empower themselves against male desire. As Titania informs Oberon when he demands the boy, "Set your heart at rest: The fairy land buys not the child of me. His mother was a votress of my order�But she, being mortal, of that boy did die; And for her sake do I rear up her boy; And for her sake I will not part with him" (Shakespeare II.i. 121-122; 135-137). This is not to say that relations between men and women are smooth or that there are not complex and often volatile conflicts between men and women in love. While genuine love and loving couples should be in tune with each other and with nature, such is often not the case. Titania informs O

Category: Literature - A