Traditional criticism on Shakespeare"s romantic comedies has focused on love and marriage of intelligent and independent heroines, with the emphasis generally falling on the last phase of the play, which restores masculine authority by making light the preceding female sexual confusions and overturn...
Traditional criticism on Shakespeare"s romantic comedies has focused on love and marriage of intelligent and independent heroines, with the emphasis generally falling on the last phase of the play, which restores masculine authority by making light the preceding female sexual confusions and overturns. In this paper, I argue that such confusions and turns in A Midsummer Night"s Dream are representative of gender mobility in the early modem England, which witnessed the appearance of the women who overstepped gender boundaries. I also argue that the ending is not merely a restoration of the masculine community but the beginning of a newly integrated social order. It is not a mere matter of feminine subversion and masculine containment. I suggest we need to look into the destabilization of gender ideologies and into the violence that patriarchal order brings to women. The play begins with Theseus"s wooing of Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons, shortly after his conquest by "sword" of her realm, a nation-state of the most unruly women in western myth. His wedding is a reward for men"s violence on women and an expression of male anxiety about the power of threatening women. Theseus"s concupiscent desire for Hippolyta, however, weakens his manly virtues and renders him effeminate and antithetical to his martial heroism. Thus, early in the play, he overturns the patriarchal ideal. On the other hand, Hermia and Titania represent resistance to their male masters, father and husband, and their female bodies are a locus of contestation of masculine authority and feminine power. They are Elizabethan willful subjects who refuse to be subjugated to men"s control. The "little changeling boy" is a medium of exchange between Oberon and Titania, and he is representative of cultural transition from mother"s world to father"s man-centered world as the early modern culture confirmed. Counterpointing the notion of Oberon"s paternity, however, Titania tries to imprison the boy to her womb. Oberon"s love-potion initially symbolizes masculine regulation of women"s claim for their own sovereignty, but in the Athenian wood Hermia and Helena do not come under its influence. It works only on the male lovers, Lysander and Demetrius, making them beings of "changeability," other effeminized male figures. In the end, Hermia and Helena marry the men of their choice despite the father"s law, as Theseus" new form of order incorporates female lovers" decisions at the closing moment of the play. While A Midsummer Night"s Dream seems to produce monolithic masculine order on the surface, it also produces heterodox gender discourses and call the legitimacy of patriarchy into question. Bottom"s words after he awakes, "I have had a most rare vision," indicate a subversive process of challenging normal practices and inversing usual meanings. He articulates a discourse which helps to foreground the idea of gender disruption.
Traditional criticism on Shakespeare"s romantic comedies has focused on love and marriage of intelligent and independent heroines, with the emphasis generally falling on the last phase of the play, which restores masculine authority by making light the preceding female sexual confusions and overturns. In this paper, I argue that such confusions and turns in A Midsummer Night"s Dream are representative of gender mobility in the early modem England, which witnessed the appearance of the women who overstepped gender boundaries. I also argue that the ending is not merely a restoration of the masculine community but the beginning of a newly integrated social order. It is not a mere matter of feminine subversion and masculine containment. I suggest we need to look into the destabilization of gender ideologies and into the violence that patriarchal order brings to women. The play begins with Theseus"s wooing of Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons, shortly after his conquest by "sword" of her realm, a nation-state of the most unruly women in western myth. His wedding is a reward for men"s violence on women and an expression of male anxiety about the power of threatening women. Theseus"s concupiscent desire for Hippolyta, however, weakens his manly virtues and renders him effeminate and antithetical to his martial heroism. Thus, early in the play, he overturns the patriarchal ideal. On the other hand, Hermia and Titania represent resistance to their male masters, father and husband, and their female bodies are a locus of contestation of masculine authority and feminine power. They are Elizabethan willful subjects who refuse to be subjugated to men"s control. The "little changeling boy" is a medium of exchange between Oberon and Titania, and he is representative of cultural transition from mother"s world to father"s man-centered world as the early modern culture confirmed. Counterpointing the notion of Oberon"s paternity, however, Titania tries to imprison the boy to her womb. Oberon"s love-potion initially symbolizes masculine regulation of women"s claim for their own sovereignty, but in the Athenian wood Hermia and Helena do not come under its influence. It works only on the male lovers, Lysander and Demetrius, making them beings of "changeability," other effeminized male figures. In the end, Hermia and Helena marry the men of their choice despite the father"s law, as Theseus" new form of order incorporates female lovers" decisions at the closing moment of the play. While A Midsummer Night"s Dream seems to produce monolithic masculine order on the surface, it also produces heterodox gender discourses and call the legitimacy of patriarchy into question. Bottom"s words after he awakes, "I have had a most rare vision," indicate a subversive process of challenging normal practices and inversing usual meanings. He articulates a discourse which helps to foreground the idea of gender disruption.
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