"Shakespeare's Strong Women"
...r one of the most well known women in history. Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a tale of love and magic. Demetrius loves Hermia, Hermia loves Lysander, and Helena loves Demetrius. With the help of a few comical fairies, Demetrius now loves Helena and Lysander loves Hermia – a happy ending to a confusing love quartet. Helena is portrayed as the desperately in love young woman intent to sway Demetrius’ heart. She is perhaps the most fully drawn character in the play as Puck and Bottom stand out as the most personable characters, although not being involved in the main dramatic events. Among the Athenian lovers, Helena is the one who thinks most about the nature of love – which makes sense, given that at the beginning of the play she is left out of the love triangle involving Lyander, Hermia, and Demetrius. Helena believes that Demetrius has built up a fantastic notion of Hermia’s beauty that prevents him from recognizing her own beauty. Utterly faithful to Demetrius despite her recognition of his shortcomings, Helena sets out to win his love by telling him about the plan of Lysander and Hermia to elope into the forest. Once Helena enters the forest, many of her traits are drawn out by the confusion that the love potion creates. Compared to the other lovers, she is extremely unsure of herself, worrying about her appearance and believing that Lysander is mocking her when she declares his love for her. Shakespeare established an extremely self-conscious character in Helena. Despite her desperation to capture Demetrius, Helena’s character displays innocence and charisma. Shakespeare captured determination in Helena without making her disposition over bearing. Throughout the play of Macbeth, Macbeth struggles between his sense of right and wrong while also playing partner in crime to his more ruthless wife, Lady Macbeth. Pushing Macbeth to murder Duncan, Lady Macbeth appears to be stronger and more ambitious than her other half. Apparent that she manipulates Macbeth effectively, Lady Macbeth takes a downward spiral into guilt and weakness towards the closing of the play. Her sanity immediately collapses once she realizes the seriousness of the issue. Finally, Lady Macbeth ends her mental confusion by killing herself, which causes Macbeth to sink into a deep and pessimistic despair. Lady Macbeth is one of Shakespeare’s more confusing – almost frightening – female characters. As she is introduced, she is already plotting Duncan’s murder, being stronger, more relentless, and more aggressive than her husband. She seems fully aware of this and knows that she will have to push Macbeth into committing murder. At one point, she even wishes that she were not a woman so that she could do it herself. This theme of the relationship between gender and power is key to Lady Macbeth’s character. Shakespeare seems to use Lady Macbeth and the witches as the female methods of achieving power and manipulation. In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Hamlet feels compelled to avenge his father’s murder by his uncle Claudius when the ghost of King Hamlet approaches him. Gertrude, the deeply shallow mother of Hamlet, along with Ophelia, Hamlet’s innocent semi-love interest, act as the two most influential female characters in the play. Few Shakespearean characters have caused as much uncertainty as Gertrude, giving the audience the appearance that her status is more important than her morals or even her son, Hamlet. She seeks affection from men, in particular, while proving to be selfish and almost oblivious of other things going on around her. Even the fact that Gertrude marries her deceased husband’s brother proves to the audience that she would marry anyone that would take care of her. She carries a tendency to use men to fulfill her instinct for self-preservation. She never exhibits the ability to think critically about her situation, but seems merely to move instinctively toward seemingly safe choices, as when she immediately runs to Claudius after her confrontation with Hamlet. She is at her best in social situations, when her natural grace and charm seem to indicate a rich, rounded personality. At times it seems that her grace and charm are her only characteristics, and her...