While critics such as Rene Girard understand Hermia/Helena and Lysander/Demetrius as interchangeable parts, Shakespeare does indeed differentiate between the two women, who happen to be friends.
Shakespeare uses contrast with Hermia as a stylistic technique to portray Helena. Though Helena says that "Through Athens I am thought as fair as she," and this may be true, she has a less assertive personality than her friend. She makes statements that the more dominant Hermia doesn't, such as calling herself Demetrius' "spaniel" and saying to him, "spurn me, strike me, neglect me ..." as he is trying to get away from her to pursue Hermia.
When Lysander, having the love potion put in his eyes, falls in love with Helena and turns on Hermia, Hermia does not become abject like Helena. First, she says to Lysander: "Why are you grown so rude?," then she turns on Helena fiercely, calling her a "cankerblossom!" and a "thief of love" and threatening to claw her eyes out.
We also learn that Helena is taller than Hermia through comparison, as Hermia surmises that Helena's height won Lysander's heart: "she hath urged her height ... her tall personage." Hermia calls herself a dwarf in comparison.
Shakespeare also lets us learn about Helena through her soliloquies. After Hermia and Lysander exit the stage in Act 1, scene 1, Helena reveals her wisdom about love, saying love is unstable and more a figment of the imagination than anything else: Love looks not with the eye, but with the mind ... Love [is] said to be a child/Because in choice he is so oft beguiled." This explains her reasoning in thinking she can follow Demetrius into the forest and change his mind about loving Hermia.
Later, weary from what she thinks are her three friends ganging up to make fun of her, Helena speaks of her sadness and desire to sleep in a short soliloquy, wishing the night would end, for "sleep sometimes shuts up sorrow's eye." From this, we an gain insight into how hurt she is by her friends' behavior.
Shakespeare uses techiques that let his characters, including Helena, emerge though soliloquy and comparison.
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