Women in the Woods. The Athenian Forest as a Place of Female Empowerment in Shakespeare’s "A Midsummer Night’s Dream"?


Excerpt, 2018

8 Pages, Grade: 1,0


Abstract or Introduction

This research paper outline presents an abstract, a table of contents, a bibliogrpahy as well as a problem-oriented sample analysis around the topic "Women in the Woods: The Athenian Forest as a Place of Female Empowerment in Shakespeare's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'."

Feminist scholars have frequently presented Shakespeare’s "A Midsummer Night’s Dream" as a play sympathetic to women. By pointing to Hermia’s recollections of the forest as a place where women can refuge to and are able to speak freely, the Athenian woods, in particular, have been viewed as a kind of female sanctuary free from patriarchal norms. Buccola argues that in the woods women enter the matriarchal domain of the powerful fairy queen and “Fairyland is a space free from sociocultural strictures”. Here, the female is “aligned with the fairies” and she is “linked with them in liminality”. Therefore, in the woods women can “engage in socially aberrant behaviour” without being “subject to the harsh reprisals that might otherwise result from their conduct.”

On the other hand, Roberts objects to this reasoning, contending that the “threat to patriarchy […] is quelled even in the more permissive world of the forest.” For Roberts the forest is a battleground where male-female power relations are fought out, always resulting in the subjugation of the female. Although the “forest trope allows the idea of matriarchy to surface [it] ends by denying it.”

As shown above, casting the woods in "A Midsummer Night’s Dream" as a place of female empowerment, an Anti-Athens, is problematic and in my term paper at hand I am going to demonstrate why that might be the case. I argue that in the forest women are not free to act as they wish, for patriarchal norms do still apply to them there. To support my claim, I will analyse two sections of the play set in the woods, featuring two male-female power struggles: Helena and Demetrius and Hermia and Lysander. Although the women in those chosen passages might, at first sight, give the impression of being self-assertive and independent of thought, a closer reading of the chosen passages will reveal that, in the woods, females are still operating within the confines of a patriarchal system that forces them to adhere to a specific moral code appropriate for women.

Details

Title
Women in the Woods. The Athenian Forest as a Place of Female Empowerment in Shakespeare’s "A Midsummer Night’s Dream"?
College
Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg
Course
Introduction to Literary and Cultural Studies
Grade
1,0
Author
Year
2018
Pages
8
Catalog Number
V455012
ISBN (eBook)
9783668879331
ISBN (Book)
9783668879348
Language
English
Notes
This paper is NOT a term paper, but a so-called "Research Paper Outline plus" consisting of an abstract, an exemplary table of contents, a bibliography and a problem-oriented sample analysis of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" 2.1.214-46.
Keywords
Research Paper Outline
Quote paper
Melanie Buettner (Author), 2018, Women in the Woods. The Athenian Forest as a Place of Female Empowerment in Shakespeare’s "A Midsummer Night’s Dream"?, Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/455012

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