First Individual Paper

 Titania

from A Midsummer Night's Dream

1. Introduction

The purpose of this paper is to draw the attention first to the relationships between Titania and the rest of the characters. Then, in order to take into account the meaning and connotations of the name ‘Titania’, we will continue with an overview of the mythology about the origins of this name. And finally, a deeper analysis of the character will be carried out focusing on the main issues related to the approach of female gender and role inside the text.

2. Character’s general description

Titania is the Queen of the Fairies and the wife of Oberon. She is always surrounded by her fairies that are at her disposal at any moment and at any time. These attendants or fairies are called: Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth (sometimes rendered as 'Mote'), and Mustardseed.

Titania, a very proud Queen, is at odds with her husband Oberon, since she denies her husband’s wish to possess the young Indian prince. In order to take revenge, Oberon sends Puck to seek the white-and-purple flower called love-in-idleness, a flower once touched by Cupid’s arrow. The juice of this flower would be rubbed on the eyes of Titania when she is asleep so that she could fall in love with the first creature she sees once she wakes up. The mix up begins when Puck transforms Bottom’s head into an ass while Titania is sleeping under the effect of the spell and therefore the first thing she sees is Bottom with his ass head and falls in love with him. Titania, completely under the effects of the enchantment, adores and worships Bottom. Once Titania gives her Indian prince to Oberon, he takes pity on her and finally undoes the enchantment of his wife and orders Puck to remove Bottom’s ass head. At the end of the play both the Queen and the King of the fairies reconcile and together bless Theseus and Hippolyta’s wedding and their descendants, and also the other two couples.

The marital conflict between Titania and Oberon is central to the plot as it would drive the mix ups and confusions of the other characters in the play. That means that without Titania, the source of Oberon’s anger which drives the entire action of the play, it would be impossible to carry out the plot.

Titania and Bottom forms the idea of contrast and imbalance: Titania is the beautiful Queen of the fairies and Bottom represents the foolish and grotesque mortal. It seems impossible to imagine two figures less compatible with each other, if the magical Titania can fall in love with a donkey, then anything could happen. This surreal atmosphere is a main characteristic of the play.

3. Titania’s mythology

Shakespeare took the name 'Titania' from Ovid's, Metamorphoses where it is an appellation given to the daughters of the Titans. Due to Shakespeare's influence, later fiction has often used the name "Titania" for fairy queen characters. In traditional folklore, the fairy queen has no name.[i]

Subsequently, Titania has appeared in many other paintings, poems, plays and even graphic novels; she has occasional cameo roles in Neil Gaiman's Sandman comic series, and is a major supporting character in The Books of Magic. In the mythology of those comic series, she is a mortal woman, who has lived and ruled in fairy land so long that no one remembers that she once looked (and still is, under her magical seeming) human.[ii]

Titania is also the largest of Uranus moons as it is Oberon, another of the major moons of the planet Uranus. [iii]

4. Analysis of Titania’s role as a woman

Titania, as the Queen of the fairies, is strong-willed, intelligent, daring and a powerful woman in the play. She is characterized by being a dominating figure and a strong woman. The queen of fairyland is in the habit of having all her attendants at her disposal, therefore she is used to keep an authoritative attitude.  As the wife of Oberon, she challenges and combats her counterpart arguing with him openly, without acting as the traditional submissive Elizabethan wife. Here we have an example of her rough response to Oberon:

OBERON

Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania.

TITANIA

What, jealous Oberon! Fairies, skip hence:
I have forsworn his bed and company. (MND II.i.61-63)[iv]

As Oberon describes her, Titania is a proud woman. Her authoritative role equals to Oberon’s role as a man and as the king of the fairies: she does not give in in this marital war; she acquires an passive attitude towards the persistent wishes of Oberon and does not succumb to his request for authority as her owner, her lord. On the contrary, she wittily changes the centre of the subject in order to favor herself accusing him to have been unfaithful:

OBERON

Tarry, rash wanton: am not I thy lord?

TITANIA

Then I must be thy lady: but I know
When thou hast stolen away from fairy land,
And in the shape of Corin sat all day,
Playing on pipes of corn and versing love
To amorous Phillida. Why art thou here,
Come from the farthest Steppe of India?
But that, forsooth, the bouncing Amazon,
Your buskin'd mistress and your warrior love,
To Theseus must be wedded, and you come
To give their bed joy and prosperity. (MND II.i.64-74)[v]

The relationship between Titania and her mortal friend, who gave birth to the Indian prince, is an important theme to this approach. Titania tells this story with her dearest friend in India:

TITANIA

Set your heart at rest:
The fairy land buys not the child of me.
His mother was a votaress of my order:
And, in the spiced Indian air, by night,
Full often hath she gossip'd by my side,
And sat with me on Neptune's yellow sands,
Marking the embarked traders on the flood,
When we have laugh'd to see the sails conceive
And grow big-bellied with the wanton wind;
Which she, with pretty and with swimming gait
Following,--her womb then rich with my young squire,--
Would imitate, and sail upon the land,
To fetch me trifles, and return again,
As from a voyage, rich with merchandise.
But she, being mortal, of that boy did die;
And for her sake do I rear up her boy,
And for her sake I will not part with him. (MND II.i.123-145)[vi]

In this case these two wise women are enjoying the carefree and unworried moments in India. This happiness and bliss could be interpreted as the result of the absence of male figures in this story disturbing the peace.

The role of Titania as a woman within the relationship between Bottom and her is unquestionable female dominance over male. Bottom just accepts the situation and thus let be carried away with Titania’s decisions and orders. The queen authoritative attitude can be seen when she falls in love with Bottom and orders him to stay in the forest:

Out of this wood do not desire to go:
Thou shalt remain here, whether thou wilt or no.
I am a spirit of no common rate;

The summer still doth tend upon my state;
And I do love thee: therefore, go with me;
(MND. III. i. 73-77)[vii]

Oberon has not control over Titania at the beginning of the play; however this situation changes from the moment that Puck applies the potion of love. During the enchantment, Titania as a proud and strong woman disappears to give way to a weak woman in love with an ass head Bottom. Her foolish and extravagant passion for a donkey and her display of her affection to this creature make a fool of herself. [viii]

At the end of the play, Titania succumbs to Oberon’s wishes and gives him the Indian Prince. At this point of the play, Titania is no longer an authoritative and strong woman, she finally gives in and reconciles with her husband, thus becoming a meek, submissive and humble woman.[ix]

Oberon wins and obtains the Indian prince who should “trace the forest wild” (II.i.131)[x] instead of being adorned with flowers by foolish women. The final resolution of this war between Titania and Oberon reflects the conventional male-dominated society at the time. It seems that Shakespeare creates a powerful female character but he does not dare to give the victory to a female character. Nevertheless, taking into account the social reality and the “culture for which Shakespeare wrote this play was incredibly threatened by the thought of dominant women”[xi], it is a rather brave duty to present and provide voice to such a powerful woman like Titania. As long as I am concerned, Titania is still one of the biggest feminist figures in Shakespeare’s plays.

5. Bibliography

e-Books

A Midsummer Night’s Dream - of the complete works. November 23 <ttp://www-tech.mit.edu/Shakespeare/midsumer/index.html

Internet Sources

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 19 November 2006. 25 November 2006 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titania_%28mythology%29>

Emily Squyer, The Feminist Subtext of Shakespeare’s Leading Ladies.

November 10, 2000. 26 November, 2006. <http://www.wsu.edu/~delahoyd/shakespeare/sample5.html>

 "William, Shakespeare: Romantic comedies" 2006 Encyclopedia Britannica. 22 November 2006 <http://www.britanicca.com/shakespeare/article>.

 “Feminized “Luna”: The Threatening Sex of A Midsummer Night’s Dream” Alison Walkley. 21November 2006 http://ayjw.org/articles.php?id=639575