Hermia as a Feminist Essay Example

a courageous act of fighting to control one’s own destiny, something that women back in those days did not dare to do.

Even when Hermia seems to have lost Lysander’s love as an effect of the love potion, she did not continuously plead and cry as another character, Helena, had done when her love was unrequited by Demetrius. “And have you grown so high in his esteem because I am so dwarfish and so low?... Speak: how low am I? I am not yet so low, but that my nails can reach unto thine eyes. ” (III, ii, 293-297). ” She said to Helena, when the lovers made snide comments on her height. Instead of trying to ingratiate herself to Lysander or win the sympathy of her rival Helena, Hermia protects her pride by becoming defensive and aggressive.

On the other hand, Helena was an example of the typical woman, subjected to men. She discards every ounce of her pride and puts herself entirely at the mercy of Demetrius, as an attempt to love him. The nearly masochistic attitude she assumes as she chases after Demetrius like a spaniel contrasted with Hermia’s apparent self-respect. It is this contrast that further secures Hermia’s position as a character that was deliberately made feminist. Shakespeare used Helena to provide a comparison between the dignity of feminists and inferiority of a woman who subjects to the sexist views of society.

Many of Shakespeare’s female characters are courageous feminists, similar to Hermia. They are generally portrayed so that their will to resist their own fate was something to respect and look up to. Another portion of his female characters, such as Helena, are

irritating in their submissiveness. He uses these submissive characters to mock the values of the majority of women in the society of his time, who had conformed to the sexism views of men. Hermia’s actions were not only proof of her own feminist identity, but also a reflection of Shakespeare’s own feminism philosophy.