Illustration of a donkey-headed musician in between two white trees

A Midsummer Night's Dream

by William Shakespeare

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Student Question

How does A Midsummer Night's Dream show gender inequality in Titania's relationship with her husband?

Quick answer:

In A Midsummer Night's Dream, Titania and her husband, Oberon, are queen and king of the forest, but gender role inequality is show when Titania won't give Oberon the Indian boy she has adopted. That refusal is intolerable to Oberon. He shows his sense of gendered superiority in his assumption that he is entitled to have his demands met and in his access to superior resources for achieving his goals.

Expert Answers

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Oberon and Titania are the queen and king of the fairies, but they do not have equal power, replicating human patriarchal gender norms during the Renaissance. Oberon expects Titania to obey him and give into his whims.

This gender role inequality throws Oberon into a fit of rage and causes a quarrel between the couple when Titania refuses to give him an Indian boy she has adopted. Titania has a particularly compelling reason for refusing Oberon's demand. As she describes in poignant terms, she and the boy's mortal mother were the closest of friends, and they shared good times together on the planet Neptune. Titania had promised the woman that should she die, she, Titania, would care for the child. The mother does die, and Titania feels a special obligation to stand on her promise, even at the expense of infuriating her husband.

Putting female friendship on the same level as the husband-wife relationship, and worse, insisting on giving it prerogative over her husband's demands, is a transgressive act that Oberon finds intolerable. He is determined to win this battle with his wife because he feels he is entitled to have her capitulate to him.

As king of forest, Oberon has resources at his command that Titania does not, such as the sprite Puck and love potions. He has Puck put a love potion in Titania's eyes that preoccupies her—she falls in love with Bottom, who Puck has given a donkey's head—so that he, Oberon, can use her distraction to win the boy.

Oberon wins the battle for the Indian boy, which goes against the wishes of both the mother and of Titania because he assumes, as a male, that he is entitled to get what he wants and because he has the resources to assert his will.

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