8 - “Like two artificial gods”: Needlework and Female Bonding in A Midsummer Night's Dream

Summary

Lo, she is one of this confederacy.

Now I perceive they have conjoined all three

To fashion this false sport, in spite of me.—

Injurious Hermia, most ungrateful maid,

Have you conspired, have you with these contrived

To bait me with this foul derision?

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 schooldays' 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 grew 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 rend 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.

A Midsummer Night's Dream (3.2.193–220)

In her speech to Hermia in act 3, scene 2 of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Helena seeks to reclaim Hermia's friendship by recreating a scene of their childhood bonding and by evoking needlework objects associated with intimacy and femininity. An inquiry into Helena's rhetorical strategies in this speech is incomplete without recognition of its investment in material culture that, as Karen Harvey defines it, “encapsulates not just the physical attributes of an object, but the myriad and shifting contexts through which it acquires meaning.” The object, in turn, becomes a meaning-making conduit through which characters are able to process and express their thoughts and emotions.