Compare and Contrast of Hermia and Helena in a Midsummer Night's Dream

Throughout the history of books, plays, and stories as a whole, competition over a boy or a girl is a very common element that even occurs in real life. The aspect of this competition provides parallels between two characters, entailing drama, humor, and interesting themes to the story. A perfect example of this element is within William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The two main women of the story, Hermia and Helena, compete over boys in the story, and that, as well as their different personalities makes the story quite interesting. The relationships between the two women changes constantly, as they are competing over boys they love yet remain best friends. The characters differ from each other in a number of ways to make the play more interesting, and each of these characters provide roles that make them foil each other and are extremely important to the storyline of the play. While Hermia and Helena seem like two similar, friendly women looking for love, these two characters create a competitive factor in the play that not only highlights their foil relationship, but also shows the implications of when magic or trickery intervenes with lovers’ relationships. Hermia and Helena’s relationship is full of jealousy, competition, and on and off friendship, as they are competing over the ones that they love. In the story, a love triangle occurs, in which Hermia is in love with a boy named Lysander, who is in love with her as well; however, a boy named Demetrius is also in love with Hermia, but is loved by his old flame Helena. Helena is initially jealous of Hermia because Demetrius loves her instead of Helena, and Hermia later gets mad at Helena for stealing Lysander, even though Helena is confused and thinks the whole thing is a joke. Helena, although the same social status as Hermia, feels inferior because Demetrius does not love her. This provides an example of jealousy that Helena has of Hermia because Demetrius has fallen for her. Later,