Hermia: The Woman Who Defies Her Father and the Law

Hermia enters Act 1, Scene 1 facing a genuine legal threat: marry Demetrius or face death or lifelong confinement in a convent. Her father has the law of Athens behind him. Her choice to elope with Lysander is not impulsive. She has weighed the options and chosen freedom.

She is physically small and aware of it. When Helena and she quarrel in Act 3, Scene 2, Helena calls her a 'puppet' and Hermia responds with hot-blooded fury. Her size is the play's most-used comic detail, but she refuses to find it funny when others use it as a weapon against her.

Her loyalty to Lysander makes his sudden rejection in Act 3 the play's most genuinely painful moment. He is enchanted, which she does not know, and the cruelty he directs at her is entirely convincing. She wakes alone in the forest, abandoned, without any explanation. Her distress at that moment is the play's one spot of real hurt.