Teen Themes: Female Friendship

This post is the second of two posts on themes in A Midsummer Night's Dream that appeal to teenagers, part of my ongoing project about YA lit adaptations of Shakespeare. You can see the first post here.

The second theme that I found in A Midsummer Night's Dream that I thought a YA author could take advantage of is the friendship between Hermia and Helena. Most YA lit readers are female (male teenagers read less in general, and those who do read gravitate towards non-fiction) and friendship is hugely important to teenage girls.



I was surprised that Hermia and Helena are close friends. It's not unheard of that the two girls in a love triangle are friends, but it's not the usual trope. In III.ii, when Helena thinks that Lysander and Demetrius are making fun of her and that Hermia is in on the joke, Helena reminds Hermia of their history:

Is all the counsel that we two have shared,
The sisters' vows, the hours that we have spent,
When we have chid the hasty-footed time
For parting us,--O, is it all forgot?
All school-days' friendship, childhood innocence?
We, Hermia, like two artificial gods,
Have with our needles created both one flower,
Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion,
Both warbling of one song, both in one key,
As if our hands, our sides, voices and minds,
Had been incorporate. So we grow together,
Like to a double cherry, seeming parted,
But yet an union in partition;
Two lovely berries moulded on one stem;
So, with two seeming bodies, but one heart;
Two of the first, like coats in heraldry,
Due but to one and crowned with one crest.
And will you rent our ancient love asunder,
To join with men in scorning your poor friend?
It is not friendly, 'tis not maidenly:
Our sex, as well as I, may chide you for it,
Though I alone do feel the injury.

Their friendship adds a level of despair to the love triangle/dodecahedron because the love problems aren't just messing with the characters' opposite-sex relations, they're ruining same-sex friendships as well. It makes their little catfight in III.ii extra sad because these are two girls who like one another and support one another who have come to the breaking point of their friendship. (That scene is still funny, though. I would love to watch a staged version of MND just to see Hermia freak out at all the short jokes.)

Helena and Hermia's friendship makes me think of Elphaba and Galinda. I believe the main reason that Wicked was successful was not the great songs or sets but the portrayal of a strong, complicated female friendship. Like Helena and Hermia, Elphaba and Galinda are friends in a love triangle, but their friendship is more important than Fiyero. Helena points out that turning on friends for the sake of men "is not friendly, 'tis not maidenly: Our sex, as well as I, may chide you for it." Female readers will agree with Helena because, as important as it is to have a relationship with a man, nothing is quite as powerful as female friendship.