Some of the most interesting female characters in Shakespeare's writing are Hermia in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Viola and Olivia in Twelfth Night, and Gertrude, the Queen of Denmark and Hamlet's mother, in Hamlet. ... In A Midsummer Night's Dream, the reader recognizes right away that Hermia is not ordinary woman. ... In Twelfth Night, the reader meets two female characters who are different from Hermia in many ways, but who are affected similarly by the constrictions of the dominant social norms that determined how women should act and what they could reasonably expect fr...

• Word Count: 2208
• Approx Pages: 9
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Graduate