In A Midsummer Night's Dream and Shakespeare's As You Like It, female homoeroticism emerges as a game of passive opposition and aggressive. Women take the sphere of romantic love – a sphere they have access to in the midst of an oppressive patriarchal order and reformulate it to exclude men. Paradoxically, when they act out their homosexual relationships, women assume particular roles that create a pseudo-patriarchy not unlike the order they seek to escape Rather than divorce themselves from the patriarchal order, women tend to seek the security of a familial power structure, which they find as they create it for themselves. Say No to Plagiarism. Get a Custom Essay on “Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned”? Get an Original Essay In A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hermia particularly objects to the patriarchal order in which her father and others Male authority figures dictate the terms of her marriage. She protests to Duke Theseus, saying, "I know not by what power I have been made bold, nor how it may concern my modesty in such a presence here to defend my thoughts, but I pray your Grace that I may know the worst that might happen". I in this case if I refuse to marry Demetrius. (MND , 1.1.59-64) By asserting his right to "pleading [his] thoughts" before an assembly of men, he imposes with his rhetorical argument a male-dominated sphere; she transgresses the boundaries that society imposes on her as a woman. As she compromises her modesty and femininity, stands in the presence of the Duke and negotiates her marriage before the patriarchal authorities, she reflects the very rebellious nature that would allow her to subvert the heterosexual order through the enactment of female homoeroticism. Erotic imagery of Hermia and Helena's relationship occurs in Helena's memories of their past interactions. He addresses Hermia, saying: We, Hermia, like two artificial gods, have created with our needles a flower, both on a sampler, sitting on a cushion, both warbling a song, both in one key, as if our hands, our hips, our voices. , and the minds had been incorporated. So we grew together, like a double cherry: seemingly separate, but yet a divided union, two delicious berries shaped on one stem. (MND, 3.2.204-212) The references to the flower and the berry introduce the ideas of life and regeneration that emerge from their close interaction. Everything from their physical bodies, to their voices and their minds, blend together, as if to compensate for the unique sexual fusion that cannot occur between two females. Since homosexual intercourse will never produce the reproductive power of intercourse between a man and a woman, prolific images compensate for the sterility resulting from homoerotic intercourse. The “double cherry: seemingly divided, but nevertheless a divided union” and the “two berries shaped on one stem” create different erotic possibilities. The divided but united nature of the fruits, as well as the color, could refer to their lips or, more erotically, their genitals, reinforcing the sexually charged nature of the relationship between Hermia and Helena. Jessica Tvordi cites this passage to acknowledge the homoerotic allusions in the work, stating that their relationships "are described in language charged with emotion and eroticism". Tvordi also refers to the use of the words "head" and "nest" as slang for female genitalia. Given this knowledge, Hermia and Helena's association with birds ("warbling a song") sexualizes their interactions by centering them around the female genitalia. The eroticized descriptions of the relationship between Hermia and Helena refer to the past, beforethe women entered the forest. . Upon entering the forest, however, the absence of patriarchal authority pushes their homoerotic relationship to transform into a pseudo-patriarchy. The homosexual relationship that depended on mutual oppression by men collapses in the worldabsence of social order. The equality between Hermia and Helena shifts into a hierarchy in which Hermia takes on the role of the pseudo-male and Helena that of the offended female. Hermia's attempted subversion results in a new structure of relationships that resembles the heterosexual order. Her boldness that empowered her rebellion translates into her assumption of the male role in the pseudo-patriarchy that she and Elena form. While the affections of Demetrius and Lysander turn suspiciously towards Helena, she accuses Hermia of conspiring with the two men. He says: And do you want to tear our ancient love to pieces, to join men in despising your poor friend? It's not friendly, it's not virginal. Our sex, so how can I blame you for this, even if I only feel the injury. (MND, 3.2.116-220) Helena's accusations confirm the role Hermia plays in their relationship; in Helena's eyes (and thus in their pseudo-patriarchy), Hermia joins a "confederation" of men who intend to objectify and degrade women. She alienates Hermia from the entire female race, saying that their "sex... may reproach her" for her union with men. Along with his statement that Hermia's contempt for Helena is "not virginal," he also asks, "Have you no modesty, no virginal shame...?" (MND, 3.2.286). These questions appeal to the trait that Hermia voluntarily gave up to negotiate her marriage in the Duke's presence, implying that Hermia ultimately divested herself of her femininity. Hermia cannot claim to have "modesty" or "shyness" because she admitted her boldness in the first act (1.1.59) and declared that she would resist and argue against her marriage to Demetrius, no matter "how it may concern [her ] modesty" (1.1.60). With the patriarchal tendencies fraught with Hermia and Helena's supposedly homoerotic relationships, women have nowhere to turn but to return to the patriarchal order and their respective heterosexual couplings. The text of the work guarantees the restoration with an almost disturbing finality and the silence of the women. Hermia's last words in the entire play are in response to Demetrius' question as to whether the Duke had just ordered them to follow him. Hermia responds by saying, “Yes, and my father” (4.1.192). In this verse, she gives a respectful, affirmative response to a man, reestablishes herself as her father's daughter, and submits to the authority of the Duke and her father, the same two men whose authority she challenged in the beginning. opera scene. His silence must be more extreme than Helena's because he posed a greater threat to the patriarchal order. The homoeroticism depicted between Titania and her vote shows a similar movement towards pseudo-patriarchy, with Titania as the dominant male and her vote as the female. The depiction of their relationship does not involve male degradation and oppression, as in the case of Hermia and Helena, but rather patriarchal issues of progeny. To launch into the discussion of progeny in relation to female homoeroticism, we must look back to Theseus' threats to Hermia at the beginning of the play. When Hermia resists the order to marry Demetrius, Theseus warns her of the prospects of a life as a nun, painting a picture of women in confined environments, sexually frustrated and bored with their religious duties. He describes her as living "in a shady mewing cloister...a barren sister all [her] life" (1.1.71-2). Its representation of a sterile and chaste convent ironically invites us to question ourselvesabout what kinds of homoerotic activities might take place in an early modern English convent. (This is certainly not an implausible concept; the topic of lesbianism among nuns actually deserves an entire book, written by Judith C. Brown, entitled Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy (Erickson).) Theseus's threat to "wither a virgin thorn" loses its merit if the homoerotic activity were to take place within the confines of a convent. Hermia could technically remain a virgin while she devoted herself to creative erotic activity with other women; she could live "a sterile sister" and yet have her sexual appetite fully satisfied, as the notion of homoeroticism among nuns makes Theseus' reference to sterility irrelevant, as it displaces the sexual activity outside the scope of human reproduction. Women who have chosen to consume exclusively with people of the same sex have already accepted the reality of sterility. This choice exercised by women challenges what Valerie Traub proposes as the issue at stake in female homoeroticism: that of "sustaining the marital alliance, with social and biological reproduction at its centre". (Traub, Ren, 258) Returning to Titania, examining the conflict between her and Oberon regarding the shape-shifting boy exemplifies a tension rooted in the instability of normative “social and biological reproduction.” Titania's claim to have a child, coupled with the sexually charged description of her relationship with the Voter, throws the men into a precarious position. She describes our time together saying: And in the spicy air of India at night Very often she gossiped at night And she sat with me on the yellow sands of Neptune, Watching the traders embarked on the river When we laughed to see the sails conceive And grow pot-bellied with the unbridled wind, That she with graceful and swimming gait Following, her then rich belly of my young squire, Would imitate... (2.1.124-132) The image of them sitting together chatting resonates with Hermia's description of her time with Helena, when "On faint beds of primroses they used to live / Emptying [their] breasts of their sweet counsel " (1.1.215-16). Immediately following the description of their time spent together the image of his devotee's swollen womb implies (albeit quite fantastically) that his relations with Titania have somehow impregnated the devotee. Especially since Titania makes no mention of her sexual relations with men but extensively describes their relationships, one cannot help but identify Titania as the boy's other parent. The idea of ​​two women sharing the parents of a child threatens the social institution. of family, which in turn throws the concepts of inheritance and lineage out the window. Titania erases the biological basis of men's role in reproduction by describing her devotee's womb as "rich with [her] young squire" (2.1.131). When she calls the child in the womb of the vowed one "my young squire," she leaves no room for the male's biological contribution to the child's creation. His claim on the child "render[s] [Oberon] temporarily superfluous" (Traub, Lesbian Desire, 159). Oberon must challenge Titania's maneuver, which distances the male from social and biological reproduction, gaining access to the boy, assuming a paternal role for himself and grafting the boy into the patriarchal social order. Through his "adoption" of the shape-shifting boy, Oberon would restore the patriarchal family structure that Titania had disrupted through her homoerotic relationships with her vowe and her attempt to parent the boy alone. Oberon asserts his restored control over reproduction, not.