Essay on the Disruption of Class, Status and Gender

This essay was attempted under timed conditions and received 28/30 marks, the equivalent to an A*. To have earned full marks I would have needed to have included more quotes as evidence to support my points regarding the contrasts between Titania and Bottom, as well as comparing Helena to the Griselda character, which I have now added. I loved this essay because it gives you plenty of room to dance around the text.

By exploring the dramatic effects of A Midsummer Night’s Dream evaluate the view that “the play disrupts the ideas of class, status and gender”.

                A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a romantic comedy by English playwright William Shakespeare, consisting of four interwoven plot lines that explore the relationships between different classes, conflicts over status and the dynamics between men and women in respective couplings. While the central conflict and potential for tragedy within the play is introduced by the nobility in Athens, the “City World” of social order, such rules and order are deconstructed and disrupted in the world of the fairies, which has been linked to literary critic Northrop Frye’s concept of the “Green World”; a world of disorder where social laws concerning “class, status and gender” are subverted. This subversion of contemporary institutions and systems is what brings about the comparatively conservative resolution of the play: three marriages and Titania and Oberon’s own reconciliation. But on the journey towards this resolution, conduct regarding class, status and gender must be disrupted, before venturing into a New World of reform.

                The central transcendence of class systems in the play is between Bottom and Titania, the Fairy Queen. The contrasts between the two are concretised by their language. Bottom, a member of the working class, speaks in prose:

                “What do you see? You see an asshead of your own, do you?”

This confines him to this class system, as opposed to Titania, who speaks in blank verse:

                “Thou art as wise as thou art beautiful.”

This indicates the formalities of her nobility, while she also alternates to verse on occasion to symbolise her supernatural distinction from the mortals as an ethereal entity. And yet, the power of the love potion is able to overcome such societal barriers. Through stagecraft such as the props of the donkey ears and stage make-up, Bottom is typically depicted as grotesquely as possible to accentuate his own contrasts to Titania, who is an otherworldly beauty, thus, when she states:

                “Mine ear is much enamoured of thy note;

                So is mine eye enthralled to thy shape,”

The audience is already shocked and discomforted by her blind attraction to Bottom, as stresses through iambic pentameter link her sensory organs, “ear” and “eye”, to Bottom’s supposed attractive features of his “note” and “shape”, which in reality wouldn’t be conventionally attractive. This highlights how unmatched they are based solely on appearances, also linking to how incompatible they are because of their respective class. Shakespeare emphasises this in Titania’s closing heroic couplet:

                “And then fair virtue’s force perforce doth move me

                On the first view to say, to swear, I love thee.”

                The form of the rhyming couplet indicates her conviction in this statement, as does the irregular rhythm stressing “I love thee”, thereby emphasising the power of the deceptive nature of love. Even Bottom acknowledges how absurd this statement is when he makes the perceptive comment:

                “And yet, to say the truth, reason and love keep little company together nowadays.”

To Shakespeare’s contemporary audience, Bottom lying with Titania would have been shocking because of adherence to class systems. And yet, it would have aroused an element of hope to see a man of lower class transcend social barriers. Critic C.L Barber notes that the comedic genre of the play serves to “react against social conformity” and this must be accepted when considering the fact that Bottom’s relationship with Titania is what brings about her reconciliation with Oberon, and thus puts an end to the disorder created by their brawl. However, despite perhaps satisfying the role of the hero because of this, his transformation is only temporary. While transformed in the Green World, he still speaks in prose:

                “Do not fret yourself too much in the action, monsieur; and, good monsieur, have a care the honey-bag break not…”

Despite the addition of more formality in his repetition of “monsieur”, the temporary nature of his transformation is further emphasised by the fact that his disguise is easily removed by Robin after Oberon instructs him to take the “transforméd scalp” from the head of the “Athenian swain”; the adjective “transformed” suggesting that it was only the disruptive intervention of the fairies that brought about Bottom’s transcendence. But despite class in this instance only being disrupted temporarily, it cannot be refuted that the restoration of normality would not have come about without Bottom’s disruption of the Elizabethan cosmological order, which, while typically resulting in disorder, rids the Green World of disorder. Bottom transformed, like the men and Gods of Ovid’s “Metamorphoses”, is able to control the forces of nature, therefore the play puts the disruption of class system at its focal point.

                The prominent Scottish Protestant leader John Knox stated that “Woman in her greatest perfection was made to serve and obey men”, which was a generally accepted convention in the Elizabethan era. But within the different couplings of the play, this contemporary belief is disrupted by the defiance of women against male authority. The conflict of the play arises out of Egeus’ desire to control his daughter Hermia’s emotions by forcing her to marry her chosen suitor, and thus he becomes the symbol of parental and patriarchal authority. He describes Hermia in possessive language, his dialogue also written in blank verse to highlight his nobility as he states:

                “As she is mine, and all my right of her

                I do estate unto Demetrius.”

Stressed female pronouns are linked to his stressed possessive language like “mine” and “right” to create a sense of transaction, as marriage was contemporarily viewed as an economic term in which the women had no choice. But gender relations are disrupted as Hermia, despite admitting:

                “I know not by what power I am made bold.”

Exudes defiance against her father’s wishes by replying after he praises Demetrius:

                “So is Lysander.”

                Before proceeding to flee what her and Lysander believe to be the reach of the Athenian law, under which she is cursed to die, or:

                “To live a barren sister all your life

                Chanting faint hymns to the cold fruitless moon.”

The “moon” is a reoccurring metaphor used throughout the play as a symbol for fertility, but by being described as “cold” and “fruitless”, it is suggested that Hermia will never fulfil the expectation of bearing children. But even after fleeing the Old World and its social conventions to the Green World, Hermia holds onto social conduct as she instructs “Lysander” to “life further off yet”, “near” and “dear” being linked in heroic couplet to concretise her conviction in not engaging in sexual impropriety. Shakespeare creates a paradoxical state of gender disruption by reinforcing a female commitment to chastity, yet it is the woman, and not the typical male figure, who enforces this. Therefore, Hermia is a central figure in the play to emphasise disruption regarding gender, but still carries contemporary societal rules with her, but of her own accord as opposed to them being forced upon her, although the forests are still Theseus’ and his laws carry there.

                Critics argue that “the lovers are interchangeable” in their “fickleness in love” under the influence of the love potion. But one distinction between them is that while Hermia is defiant in the face of male authority, Helena is the opposite; she feels inclined to play the subservient female role in exchange for Demetrius’ affection. While it may be alternatively argued that Helena disrupts gender roles by being the pursuer rather than the pursued, Shakespeare uses derogative language as she describes herself:

                “For I am your spaniel; spurn me, strike me.”

The sibilance of “spaniel”, “spurn” and “strike” creates a hissing sound that modern adaptations of the play, including the RSC’s “Play for the Nation” have drawn on to be the violent eros of the play, leading them to present a masochistic dynamic to Helena to demonstrate how far she is willing to go for love, and fulfil her role as the conventional passive female, which was popularised in literature by Griselda from Chaucer’s “The Clerk’s Tale”, with the hope that Demetrius reciprocates her feelings.