Your Children are not Your Children!!

A Midsummer-Night's Dream is a comedy, fantasy fiction play by Shakespeare  written around in 1595 or 1596, the year as wikipedia mentions.

midsummer-nights-dream

I was just going through the initial act, wherein the character Egeus appears before the duke of Athens- Theseus, asking him to enforce the law against his daughter of either marrying to the person of his choice or hang her to death.

No wonder, women since ages, been degraded down as the property of patriarchy set up. 

Patriarchy simply derives a lot of  pride in deciding the past, present and future of the daughters. Simply, by exercising control, what is she supposed to do, where she would marry, when and with whom, she is to procreate, whom she is going to spend her entire life with, and so on. 

Well! unfortunately, women have just been degraded down to as a bodily element. I sometimes, pity those fathers and all the men,  who are just simply being dragged down by their authoritative and animalistic instincts. They don't even know, what beauty they are missing in their life simply by being strict authoritarian and leading their lives based on exploitative principles of patriarchy.

Anyways, I am not going to dig deeper into this, right now, we all know the facts happening around us.

The thing is- while reading, Egeus plea to duke, there comes a dialogue that took me to Khalil Gibran's verses on Children from his book "The Prophet", wherein he mentions- "Your Children are not Your Children."

Let's just have a glimpse of the dialogue of Egeus with the duke Theseus-

The extract of Egeus and Theseus dialogue with each other-

EGEUS to Theseus:-

Full of vexation come I, with complaint

Against my child, my daughter Hermia.

Stand forth, Demetrius. My noble lord,

This man hath my consent to marry her.

Stand forth, Lysander : and, my gracious duke,

This man hath bewitch'd the bosom of my child :

Thou, thou, Lysander, thou hast given her rhymes

And interchanged love-tokens with my child :

Thou hast by moonlight at her window sung

With feigning voice verses of feigning love,

And stolen the impression of her fantasy

With bracelets of thy hair, rings, gawds, conceits,

Knacks, trifles, nosegays, sweetmeats, messengers

Of strong prevailment in unharden'd youth :

With cunning hast thou filch'd my daughter's heart,

Turn'd her obedience, which is due to me,

To stubborn harshness : and, my gracious duke,

Be it so she will not here before your grace

Consent to marry with Demetrius,

I beg the ancient privilege of Athens,

As she is mine, I may dispose of her :

Which shall be either to this gentleman

Or to her death, according to our law

Immediately provided in that case. 

Well- the line that reminded me of Khalil Gibran is-

"As she is mine, I may dispose of her " :- and reading this, my mind says- Your Children are not Your Children.

This verse from the book- The Prophet, has its own depth.

Though, been discussed upon on other social media platforms, somehow, I want to jot it down again here.

And here it goes-

“AND a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, Speak to us of Children.

And he said: Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts, For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the Archer’s hand be for gladness; For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.”

To the patriarchy out there-

"Give Your Daughters Wings to Fly High & High In the Sky :)"

give-your-girl-wings-to-fly