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A Brief Introduction to Feminist Readings of “Hamlet”

Note: PLEASE do not use this or me as an academic source.  This is NOT peer-reviewed.  Also, for brevity’s sake, I have written this post with the understanding that the reader has read the work in question.

For my first saunter into literary analysis, I thought I’d turn to one of my all-time favorites, and one of the more popular standards of English lit: Hamlet.   A lot has been said about this play, but the fun thing about literature is that there’s always more to discuss.  So let’s focus on the characters in Hamlet that have historically gotten less attention: the ladies, Ophelia and Gertrude.  Before we get started, I’m going to give a few brief explainers on some fancy literary jargon just so that we’re all on the same page.

First off, this reading, since it specifically focuses on gender dynamics and prioritizes the perspectives of female characters, is a feminist analysis .  This doesn’t necessarily refer to the social movement of feminism, though it is informed by feminist theory . Essentially, this is an understanding of the role the patriarchy and politics of gender take in shaping both literary worlds and the depictions of female characters.  Think of theory as a magnifying glass that gives us a better grasp on the work as a whole by zooming in on one element of it. 

Now, I’ll go ahead and make it clear that this is by no means a definitive reading.  Reading is inherently subjective, and there’s really no such thing as an authoritative stance on Hamlet or any work.  We’ll never know what Shakespeare actually intended; even if we did, it wouldn’t really matter.  The only thing that matters is the text, and what we can mine from it.  It’s with all this in mind that I’ll get started.

Ophelia, Hamlet, and Gender and Class Privilege

It’s often been noted that Ophelia’s storyline bears quite a few similarities to Hamlet’s.  Both lose their father, either fake or succumb to insanity, and both die tragically.  The key difference between the two, however, is the agency they possess.  Though Hamlet’s options are limited, and external forces affect his actions, his fate is ultimately tied to the decisions he makes.  Meanwhile, the patriarchal world Ophelia lives in strips her of any control.  She cannot play an active role in her own tragedy, much less her life.

Consider the difference between how much they both speak.  At this point, Hamlet is pretty infamously long-winded, even in the soliloquy where he laments, “break my heart, for I must hold my tongue” (1.2.164) 2 .  Hamlet also uses his “words, words, words” to full effect. He’s witty, clever, and playful with his language, not to mention extremely effective.  Remember how quickly he convinces everyone that he’s gone insane?  It’s no coincidence that some of Shakespeare’s most famous lines belong to Hamlet, or that many of them are from his soliloquies.

That’s because soliloquies are absolutely crucial to the fabric of tragedies.  They clarify character’s actions and create sympathy for characters that, on the outside, seem pretty awful.  Tragedies only work by making us understand that these protagonists are, or were, good people: that’s what makes a tragedy tragic.

Ophelia, however, only gets one chance to speak to the audience, in a soliloquy that isn’t even really a soliloquy (both Claudius and Polonius spy on her during it).  The speech also has little to do with her internal life, and much more to do with her apparently insane ex-boyfriend who just assaulted and verbally berated her. 

Both internally and externally, Ophelia doesn’t have the luxury to say what she pleases.  For one, it’s hard to pontificate as you helplessly watch your world implode around you.  Also, as Laertes and Polonius make clear, Ophelia must be extremely careful of what she says and does.  Both her class and gender make her standing in society precarious.  Though language, a means of communicating one’s internality, can be carelessly wielded by Hamlet, it must be carefully guarded by Ophelia.  All that being said, Ophelia does finds ways to consider and critique through the observation her safety necessitates. 1

[Ophelia] cannot play an active role in her own tragedy, much less her life.

In her soliloquy, for instance, Ophelia presents her observations of Hamlet’s past and present self, and compares them to agonizing effect.  Ophelia shows she is not only a keen observer, but able to draw conclusions from her observations as well.  Both she and Gertrude realize that Hamlet’s “madness” stems from the loss of his father, while Polonius and Claudius incorrectly pin it on Ophelia’s spurning him.  Though male authority figures dismiss her, Ophelia shows herself to have a much keener understanding of the world and its players than they realize.  Using the straightforward language of observation, Ophelia reveals feelings and conclusions in a coded manner, thereby circumnavigating a world designed to silence her.

Ophelia’s Madness: Liberating or Tragic?

While we’re on the topic of Ophelia, I’d like to touch on her madness in Act IV.  Usually, feminist readings see it as liberatory. Ophelia finally gets the chance to speak her mind (albeit in a still coded manner) and societal pressures no longer chain her.  I don’t particularly like this reading, though. 

Ophelia’s madness is anything but joyful; it is brutally tragic.  While Hamlet’s witty and quirky in madness, Ophelia is elegiac and lost.  This isn’t a woman liberating herself; it’s a woman giving up.  After losing her father, a source of control and stagnation in her life, Ophelia is free, but without any anchor or support.  This is Ophelia’s ultimate tragedy: there is no possibility of freedom in her world that would not require freedom from her world.

While there’s “method” in Hamlet’s madness, no one understands what Ophelia has to say, even as she repeats “mark me” over and over, much like the Ghost. 1   Once again, Ophelia is heard, but not listened to.  Interestingly, however, it’s pretty easy for the audience to understand her.  It isn’t a stretch to say her song about losing an old man refers to Polonius, or that her ballad about a young man who betrays his lover alludes to Hamlet.  Though her world cannot hear her, the audience can.  This only emphasizes the deafness of her world specifically towards her , since Ophelia clearly has a great deal to say.

A lot has been written about the flowers Ophelia gives to away in her madness, and the coded meanings that each of these flowers have (just give it a quick Google), so I’ll just say what the action itself signifies.  Once again, it’s a subversion.  To get a little fancy, it’s a way of destabilizing a masculine script through a language of traditionally feminine objects.  Just like with her songs and observations, Ophelia uses a coded language to reveal what she really thinks. 

Though her world cannot hear her, the audience can.

Still, I don’t think this should be read as a victory.  To do so undermines the tragedy of Ophelia’s story, particularly given that it leads to her death. 

Unlike Hamlet, Ophelia gets no farewell speech.  She dies alone, after falling into a river and not moving to save herself.  Fittingly, Gertrude reports her death, and describes her “as one incapable of her own distress / Or like a creature native and endued / Unto that element” as she helplessly floats (4.7.203-205) 2 .  Just as in her life, Ophelia is incapable of advocating for or acting in her own self-interest.  She becomes what her world wanted her to be: passive.  And it kills her.  Unlike most tragedies, which come to fruition thanks to characters’ ill-fated choices, Ophelia’s tragedy occurs because she had no choices at all.

Gertrude, and Female Agency in a Patriarchy

Speaking of choices, lets talk about Gertrude, whose decision to marry her ex-brother-in-law is about the only thing anyone ever talks about in regards to her.  I’m a little salty about Gertrude-erasure, to say the least.  She’s a fascinating, multi-faceted, dynamic character who is eternally overshadowed by all the action and drama of Hamlet. 

Like Ophelia, Gertrude says very little, and male characters often ignore or overlook her.  But what’s really unique about Gertrude is that, unlike the young, non-royal Ophelia, she possesses a significant amount of agency.  The text makes it extremely clear that Gertrude chose to marry Claudius, something that later fills her with guilt. 3   I suppose it’s here that I should touch on Hamlet’s infamous feelings towards women.

Hamlet’s a pretty unabashed misogynist, and his stances stem from his mother’s remarriage.  I’ll say right off the bat that I don’t really agree with the popular Oedipal reading of this.  To me, Hamlet seems way more bothered by the fact that Gertrude chose at all , and he believes, chose wrong. 

This is about agency, and the still prevalent and absurd belief that more rights for a marginalized group means a decrease in safety for the group in power.

It’s here that I find a feminist reading particularly enlightening.  When you get down to it, Hamlet is afraid of women’s sexual agency.  This helps explain his “get thee to a nunnery” speech to Ophelia (where better to police a woman’s sexuality?) as well as his beratement of his mother in Act III.  Hamlet, and Hamlet , are very concerned with power and control, and in my opinion looking at gendered politics, which were rapidly shifting in the Elizabethan era, is more helpful—and more interesting—than overanalyzing Hamlet’s Id.  This is about agency, and the still prevalent and absurd belief that an increase in the rights of a marginalized group means a decrease in safety for the group in power.

But let’s also take a closer look at this agency afforded to Gertrude: the agency to do…what?  Remain a widow for the rest of her days, or remarry, and reassert her power as queen?  There’s not much of a choice.  In both situations, a patriarchal order controls Gertrude—one option just gives her considerably more sway.  What we have here is a good old-fashioned tragedy: the stars contain just as much fault as her. 

Analyzing Gertrude’s Death

This reading gives Gertrude her own sub-tragedy, just like Ophelia, that results in a similar “un-liberating liberation.”  Gertrude’s death, in this case, symbolizes her acting against her previous choice to marry Claudius, and openly choosing the life of her son, and her own agency instead.  Whether Gertrude was aware that the wine was poisoned is ambiguous, but either way she decides to support her son rather than obey her husband 3 (for the record, I think, as a keen observer, she totally knew what she was doing).  If we read Gertrude’s story as a tragedy of choice, compounded by unequal gender dynamics, we get a very compelling portrait of a woman subtly wielding the power that she has, thereby giving her a complex and tragic subplot. 

Why Feminist Readings Matter

At this point, I hope I’ve presented an inexhaustive reading of Hamlet that sheds some light on the gender dynamics present in the play.  These are complicated things, and while it would be almost impossible to argue that gender doesn’t impact the story, you might have a totally different—and valid—idea of how it does that.

Analyzing elements like these in isolation enriches our understanding of the essential tragedy of Hamlet, and for that matter, any tragedy.  Tragedies are all about a lack of control coupled with one’s own choices; they’re all about power and powerlessness.  With this in mind, Hamlet is not the only tragic hero present.  I hope you continue to examine this and other works with marginalized perspectives in mind, and consider all that a story has to offer if we read it from a different point of view.

Works Cited

• Fischer, Sandra K. “Hearing Ophelia: Gender and Tragic Discourse in ‘Hamlet.’” Renaissance and Reformation , vol. 14, no. 1, Winter 1990, pp. 1–10.
• Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark . Edited by Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine, Updated Edition, Simon & Shuster Paperbacks, 2012.
• Montgomery, Abigail L. “Enter QUEEN GERTRUDE Stage Center: Re-Viewing Gertrude as Full Participant and Active Interpreter in Hamlet.” South Atlantic Review , vol. 74, no. 3, Summer 2009, pp. 99–117.

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August 18, 2021

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Shakespeare created an interesting problem for himself with the character of Gertrude. As a dramatist, he needed to nourish the conflict between his characters in order to keep the heat and pressure up to the point where the action was ready to explode at any moment. At the same time, he created a character that sits in the middle of the conflict, and seems intent in defusing it at every turn. That character is Gertrude. She is both mother and peacemaker in a blended family that has just come into an unstable existence. When we first see her, she takes on the unofficial task of reconciling her new husband’s enthusiasm for his recent alliance with her son’s apparent mourning for his recently deceased father. One assumes that Claudius’ announcement in that scene that Hamlet is next in line for succession to the throne comes about as one of the terms of the agreement that created the alliance. It is certainly an expression of Claudius’ willingness to honor his new wife’s affection for her son.

Gertrude is thoughtful and sensitive in her attempts to intervene. She is not simply an unwitting victim of her circumstance, as some critics would have it.

... He begs her not to sleep with Claudius again, but although she promises not to tell anyone what he has said, she avoids giving a direct answer. It may be that Gertrude is attempting a practical compromise: she wants to calm Hamlet but cannot bring herself to swear to something she will not be able to do. No clue as to her subsequent sexual relationship with Caludius is given.   - Angela Pitt, Shakespeare's Women , David and Charles, London, l981. p. 58f.

What sabotages Gertrude’s attempts to contain the conflict between Claudius and Hamlet is the fact that she is not entirely in the know. Claudius is not entirely forthcoming to Gertrude as a result of his deceit, whereas Hamlet is taciturn. The dramatic irony that increases the poignancy of her position has to do with the fact that we are continuously aware of covert actions against Hamlet that Claudius has kept from Gertrude: the intention to have the English execute Hamlet upon his arrival there, the baiting of Laertes’ foil with poison, etc. It is, in fact, one of these covert actions (as usual kept from Gertrude) that causes her undoing. In effect, Gertrude does not know what she has married, and the gradual realization provides one way to chart her trajectory through the action of the play. To begin with, there is the fact of Claudius’ role in her former husband’s demise. While it appears clear that Gertrude was not involved in the murder of the former king, the issue still seems to generate discussion. In particular, some argue that this was not Shakespeare’s original intention and that he waffles on the question.

Early feminist critics such as Linda Bamber argue that Gertrude's involvement in the death of the former King Hamlet is not really at issue at all. She focuses on Hamlet's fascination with what he imagines to be his mother's sex life.

For interpreters such as Professor Bamber what is not included in the text does not exist. Directors, however, do not have that preoperative. Questions of the unseen have to be resolved for a performer to express the full humanity of their character. We can see this, for example, from the opening moments of Franco Zeffirelli's 1990 film version of Hamlet. In the burial scene, which he interposes at the beginning of the film, Franco Zeffirelli seeds suspicions of a preexisting affair between Gertrude and Claudius through an interplay of furtive glances between Gertrude, Claudius and Hamlet -- an interplay which continues throughout the first half of the production. Hamlet's statements regarding the haste with which the marriage follows the funeral are here dramatized by the fact that Zeffirelli cuts directly from the funeral scene to the announcement of the wedding.

Franco Zeffirelli stages the shots which contain both Gertrude and Caludius (Glenn Close and Alan Bates) in such a way that Gertrude always appears to be looking over Claudius' shoulder. The viewer's surmise is that she is looking for Hamlet; trying to assess where she and Claudius stand in relationship to her son. This stresses Gertrude's role throughout as a mother who is trying to reconfigure her family around her new husband. She tries to pull Hamlet in and to smooth over any rupture that might exist. It also becomes Gertrude's role to paint the verbal portrait of Ophelia's death and to deliver an elegy for her.

It is cynical to doubt the sincerity of her feelings for Ophelia. The two of them seem assigned to the role of safeguarding the feminine heritage of the play, and with the loss of her potential daughter-in-law, that heritage is sadly terminated. Zeffirelli's Gertrude is clearly a peacemaker. In an early sequence, Franco Zeffirelli has Gertrude abruptly leave off kissing Claudius to go look for Hamlet (to Claudius' evident dismay) and then leave off kissing Hamlet to go join Claudius (also to Hamlet's dismay).

This interplay continues in the film until the closet scene (Act III, scene iv). The change that takes place after that scene can be interpreted as suggesting that Gertrude takes Hamlet's stern message to heart.

A lot rests on the director's view of Gertrude's sexuality. For Linda Bamber, the focus is on Hamlet's assumed fascination with Gertrude's sexual behavior (which she refers to as "sex nausea"). In order to hilite his pornographic imagination, it is essential that his view be incorrect. Director Tony Richardson, however, presents a Gertrude who justifies Hamlet's portrayal of the relationship. He even goes so far as to have Claudius and Gertrude (Judy Parfitt and Anthony Hopkins) conducting matters of state from their bed. Richardson seems to give credence to Hamlet's accusations:

Hamlet does not survive on the back of the relationsip between Gertrude and Claudius, but the nature of that relationship is a functional contributor to the marvelous complexity of the play. In the closet scene, Hamlet implores Gertrude to discontinue sexual relations with Claudius. Her response to his urgings would then color her (and Claudius') behavior for the rest of the play. In some productions (Laurence Olivier's, for example), it is clearly the case that Gertrude has headed Hamlet's plea and has rejected Claudius' affections. The strain that this puts on their marriage is visible in the subsequent scenes and contributes to the growing dramatic pressure of the play.

Gertrude's demise offers directors a final chance to bring her internal drama to full resolution. Both Laurence Oliver and Michael Almereydra (1999) seize this opportunity by having Gertrude recognize that the drink that kills her is poisoned prior to her consuming it. In a startling act of defiance, she challenges Claudius by giving him a chance to admit to his duplicity, and when he fails to do so, she commits an act which is sure to expose his covert actions against Hamlet. Her willful suicide also dramatizes the fact that she has failed in her role as peacemaker - not through her own doing, but because Claudius has sabotaged the entire process. In effect, the duplicity of which she has become aware, has also undermined her purpose in the drama, and made her very existence problematic.

A century after Sigmund Freud, the psychoanalytic critic, Jacques Lacan talks about another form of repression which affects Gertrude as well as Hamlet. This is the repression of the process of mourning.

The Freudian assumption (for Oedipus Rex as well as for Hamlet) is that the repression of mourning has a psychological effect which will eventually find expression.

Throughout the drama, Gertrude is constantly there, attempting to maintain the home base. From even before the drama starts, her sorrows come, "not single spies but in battalions," and one by one, she is forced to repress her grief in favor of maintaining an appropriate front. Contrary to diminishing the likelihood of a collapse of the established order, this sequence of events increases it. It becomes certain that this edifice will crumble at some time to reveal the emptiness behind it. Each grief is denied its appropriate response in favor of political necessity. The human cost is considerable.

Needless to say, most of the character analysis of Hamlet focuses on the character of Hamlet himself. As we see in the section on religious interpretations of Hamlet (On Good and Evil), Claudius and Polonius also are taken as having an independent existence. Most often, this is not the case with Ophelia. She is most frequently analyzed in relationship to Hamlet, and her motivation seems dominated by the characters with whom she interacts until she is spins free in her madness. Otherwise, she seems to be a sympathetic and engaging pawn of the drama. The Freudian critic, Jacques Lacan provides us with an excellent example.

This attitude has caused no small amount of consternation amongst feminist critics such as Professor Elaine Showalter of Princeton University.

A central obstacle to affirming Ophelia's existence as an independent character is that she appears to have no past. With Hamlet, we know through exposition of his father, his childhood and his education, and we see him in relationship to old friends. However, we have none of these cues to give us a sense of Ophelia's past.

Recent feminist critics saw Ophelia's lack of an independent will as representative of a repressive double standard inherited in our traditions.

In an effort to conceive of Ophelia as a character with her own richness and integrity, interpreters of the role have often felt obliged to ascribe a past to her which is not evident from the text of Shakespeare's Hamlet itself. This was particularly true of Victorian interpretations which represented a period of great fascination with Ophelia. Like many critics, the Victorians went to the extant sources of the Hamlet story which were the probable progenitors of the Shakespeare version -- to Saxo Grammaticus' Historia Danica (printed 1514) and to François de Bellforest's The Hystorie of Hamblet (1576). Employing a mixture of these texts and imagination, they came up with their own portraits of Ophelia - including a past.

Starting with the Romantics, it was popular to mix the childhood of Shakespeare's characters with your own childhood. We can see this tendency, for example with the portrait of Ophelia created by Helena Faucit Martin.

Helena Faucit Martin, who played Ophelia against William Charles Macready's Hamlet in Paris, goes further in imagining a childhood for Ophelia. This imagined experience serves as a background for actually creating the part herself. "I had lived again and again through the whole childhood and lives of many of Shakespeare's heroines, long before it was my happy privilege to impersonate and make them, in my fashion, my own." (p.6) Here's the account of Ophelia's childhood that emerges from this process.

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11.3: Showalter, Elaine. "Ophelia, Gender, and Madness" (2016)

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The character of Ophelia has fascinated directors, actresses, writers, and painters since she first appeared on stage. Here Elaine Showalter discusses Ophelia's madness as a particularly female malady, showing how from Shakespeare's day to our own, Ophelia has been used both to reflect and to challenge evolving ideas about female psychology and sexuality.

"Ophelia" by John Everett Millais (1851-2) is in the public domain , but is located at Tate London

Ophelia, gender, and madness

Shakespeare gives us very little information from which to imagine a past for Ophelia. She appears in only five of the play's 20 scenes, and her tragedy is subordinated to that of Hamlet. It is impossible to reconstruct Ophelia's biography from the text. According to the critic Lee Edwards, "we can imagine Hamlet’s story without Ophelia, but Ophelia literally has no story without Hamlet" (36). Yet Ophelia is the most represented of Shakespeare's heroines in painting, literature, and popular culture. Over the past 400 years, she has moved from the margins to the centre of post-Shakespearean discourse, increasingly becoming a female counterpart to Hamlet as a portrait of conflict and stress. In recent years, she has become a strong feminist heroine, even surviving Hamlet in some fictional versions of the story, to lead a life of her own.

On the stage, theatrical representations of Ophelia have shifted according to the dominant theories and images of female insanity, while historically the images of Ophelia have played a major role in the construction of medical theories of insanity in young women. Always, these theories contrast masculine and feminine experience. For the Elizabethans, Hamlet was the prototype of melancholy male madness, associated with intellectual and imaginative genius; but Ophelia's affliction was erotomania, or love-madness. Biological and emotional in origins, it was caused by her unrequited love and repressed sexual desire – an idea that is explored in both Edward Jorden's treatise on hysteria, The Suffocation of the Mother (1603), and Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy (1621). On the stage, Ophelia was costumed in virginal white to contrast with Hamlet's scholarly black, and in her mad scene she entered with dishevelled hair, singing bawdy songs, and giving away her flowers, symbolically deflowering herself. Drowning, too, was a symbolically feminine death.

On the 18th-century stage, however, the violent possibilities of the mad scene were nearly eliminated, and any images of female sexuality were subdued. Mrs. Siddons in 1785 played the mad scene with stately and classical dignity. For much of the period, in fact, Augustan objections to the levity and indecency of Ophelia's language and behaviour led to censorship of the part. Her role was sentimentalized, and often assigned to a singer rather than an actress.

But the 19th-century Romantics, especially in France, embraced the madness and sexuality of Ophelia that the Augustans denied. When Charles Kemble made his Paris debut as Hamlet with an English troupe in 1827, his Ophelia was a young Irish ingénue named Harriet Smithson. In the mad scene, she entered in a long black veil, suggesting the standard imagery of female sexual mystery in the Gothic novel, with scattered bedlamish wisps of straw in her hair. Spreading the veil on the ground as she sang, she arranged flowers upon it in the shape of a cross, as if to make her father's grave, and mimed a burial, a piece of stage business which remained in vogue for the rest of the century. Her performance was captured in a series of pictures by Delacroix, which shows a strong romantic interest in the relation of female sexuality and insanity. The most innovative and influential of Delacroix's lithographs is La Mort d'Ophélie (1843), showing Ophelia half-suspended in the stream as her dress slips from her body. Ophelia's drowning, which is only described in the play, was also obsessively painted by the English Pre-Raphaelites, including John Everett Millais and Arthur Hughes. The Romantic Ophelia feels too much, as Hamlet thinks too much; she drowns in a surfeit of feeling.

19th-century psychiatrists used Ophelia as a case study in hysteria and mental breakdown in sexually turbulent adolescence. As Dr. John Charles Bucknill, president of the Medico-Psychological Association wrote in 1859, "Every mental physician of moderately extensive experience must have seen many Ophelias." Images and staged photographs of Ophelia-like mad women, taken in asylums and hospitals, anticipated the fascination with the erotic trance of the hysteric which would be studied by the Parisian neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot and his student Sigmund Freud. The Victorian Ophelia–a young girl passionately and visibly driven to picturesque madness–became the dominant international acting style for the next 150 years, from Helena Modjeska in Poland in 1871, to the 18-year-old Jean Simmons in the Laurence Olivier film of 1948.

But a few Victorian actresses and women writers were revising Ophelia in feminist terms. Ellen Terry played her as a victim of sexual intimidation. 20th-century Freudian interpretations emphasized Ophelia's own neurotic sexual desires, and hinted at her unconscious incestuous attractions to Polonius or Laertes. Around the 1970s, Ophelia on stage became a graphic dramatic study of mental pathology, even schizophrenia, sucking her thumb, headbanging, even drooling.

But at the same time, feminism offered a new perspective on Ophelia's madness as protest and rebellion. For many feminist theorists, the madwoman was a heroine who rebels against gender stereotypes and the social order, at enormous cost. The most radical application of these ideas on stage may have been Melissa Murray's agitprop play Ophelia (1979). In this blank verse retelling of the Hamlet story, Ophelia runs off with a woman servant to join a feminist guerrilla commune. In the 21st century, there have been even more extreme political versions and adaptations of the play – for example, The Al-Hamlet Summit (2002), by Sulayman Al-Bassain, which imagines Shakespeare's characters from a modern Islamic perspective and resets the play in an unnamed Arab kingdom. Hamlet becomes an Islamist militant, while Ophelia becomes a suicide bomber. In popular psychology books such as Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Souls of Adolescent Girls (1994) by Mary Pipher, Ophelia has also become a negative model of the self-destructive teenager in contemporary society. Pipher encourages girls to become independent, assertive, and confident. In young-adult romance novels, such as Dating Hamlet (2002), Ophelia: A Novel (2006), and Falling for Hamlet (2011), Ophelia has become a heroine. Plot devices of pretended madness, feigned death, and amazing rescue have allowed her to survive the trauma of dating Hamlet, and to choose her own path. Ophelia may have no usable past, but she has an infinite future.

Works Cited

Lee Edwards, "The Labors of Psyche," Critical Inquiry , 6 (1979), 36.

Contributors and Attributions

• Elaine Showalter is Professor Emerita of English and Avalon Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University. She has published extensively on Victorian and American literature, 20th and 21st century fiction, women's writing, and Anglo-American culture. Her most recent book is A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx. This article originally appeared on the British Library website under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

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• Title : Hamlet: Critical Approaches
• Author : David Bevington
• General textual editors : James D. Mardock, Eric Rasmussen
• Coordinating editor : Michael Best
• Associate coordinating editor : Janelle Jenstad

ISBN: 978-1-55058-434-9

• Edition: Hamlet
• Critical Approaches
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• Hamlet (Editor's Choice)
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• Works Rowe, Vol.5
• Works Theobald, Vol.7

1 Hamlet was a very real success in its own day. An unauthorized quarto, Q1, was published in 1603, so corrupt and abbrieviated that it prompted the publication in 1604 of a quarto (Q2) that was, according to its title page, "Newly imprinted and enlarged to almost as much again as it was, according to the true and perfect copy." Other quartos followed in 1611 and some time before 1623, suggesting a strong demand by the reading public. The classical scholar Gabriel Harvey lauded the play as having the capacity "to please the wisest sort." Anthony Scoloker, in 1604, described true literary excellence as something that "should please all, like Prince Hamlet." Ben Jonson, though he faulted Shakespeare for having "small Latin, and less Greek," and for too often ignoring the classical unities, generously allowed, in his commendatory tribute in the Shakespeare Folio edition of 1623, that Shakespeare was worthy of comparison as a tragic writer with Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, and without a rival as a comic dramatist even in "insolent Greece or haughty Rome." During the Restoration in 1660 and afterwards, Hamlet was accorded the unusual respect of being performed without extensive adaptation, though it was substantially shortened. Samuel Pepys, in his Diary, greatly admired the play, as performed repeatedly by Thomas Betterton from 1661 until 1709; in 1688 he praised the role of Hamlet as "the best part, I believe, that ever man acted."

2 The Earl of Shaftesbury appears to have spoken on behalf of other eighteenth-century observers when, in his Characteristic Advice to an Author (1710), he praised Hamlet as "almost one continued moral, a series of deep reflections, drawn from the mouth upon the subject of one single accident and calamity, naturally fitted to move horror and compassion." Hamlet "appears to have most affected English hearts, and has perhaps been oftenest acted of any which have come upon the stage." Thomas Hanmer, in Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (1736) similarly found an instructive universality in the play that demonstrated brilliantly how it conforms with the demands of poetic justice. Samuel Johnson commended Shakespeare for his "just representation of general nature." These comments are notably consistent in their view of the play as morally instructive and universal.

3 Romantic criticism of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries turned in quite a new direction, toward a study of character and emotion. Goethe was perhaps the first to focus on Hamlet's hesitation to act. "Amazement and sorrow overwhelm the solitary young man," wrote Goethe in his Wilhelm Meister, 1778 and 1795. Many critics have wondered if Goethe was not talking at least partly about the brooding melancholic protagonist of his own autobiographical meditation, The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774). The same suspicion lingers in an appraisal of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Notes and Lectures upon Shakespeare , 1808, where the author frankly admitted that to understand Hamlet fully "it is essential that we should reflect on the constitution of our own minds." "I have a smack of Hamlet in myself," Coleridge wrote. The writer who was addicted to laudanum and who, according to legend at least, composed his "Kubla Kahn" following an opium-induced dream and then left it unfinished, might be expected to see Hamlet as one who "vacillates from sensibility, and procrastinates from thought, and loses the power of action in the energy of resolve." The critical sentiment is all the more powerful in that it reflects Romantic sensibility in many other writers. Charles Lamb wrote ( On the Tragedies of Shakespeare , 1811) of his desire "to know the internal workings and movements of a great mind, of an Othello or a Hamlet for instance, the when and the why and the how far they should be moved." William Hazlitt declared, in 1817, that "It is we who are Hamlet," most of all in the way in which his "powers have been eaten up by thought." For August W. von Schlegel, in 1809, the burden that Hamlet faces "cripples the power of thought."

4 This fascination with character as the central concern of drama spilled over into other characters in Hamlet as well, most of all with Ophelia. "Poor Ophelia!" wrote Anna Jameson. "Oh, far too soft, too good, too fair to be cast among the briers of this working-day world, and fall and bleed upon the thorns of life!" ( Characteristics of Women , 1832). Critics like Thomas Campbell lambasted Hamlet for his insensitivity in his dealings with Ophelia. A new interest in women was to be seen everywhere. Her drowning, as described by Gertrude, became the subject for many paintings by John Everett Millais (1852), Henry Tresham, Richard Westell, and others. Mary Cowden Clarke imagined what the girlhood of Ophelia might have been like in her The Girlhood of Shakespeare's Heroines (1851-2). Helen Faucit similarly wondered about the afterlife of Ophelia in On Some of Shakespeare's Female Characters , 1885. George Eliot, in Mill on the Floss , 1860, proposed that "we can conceive of Hamlet's having married Ophelia" and then managing to get through life "with a reputation for sanity." The characters of Hamlet, as with Falstaff and Cleopatra and other legendary figures, took on lives of their own. Critics delighted in wondering what it would have been like to know these characters and to pursue their destinies outside the bounds of the plays as Shakespeare had written them. The interweaving of author, character, reader, and viewer was seen as a fundamental quality of dramatic creation through which Shakespeare had become so intensely personal. Shakespeare had become England's great national poet through whom the nation could celebrate its cultural and political greatness in the nineteenth century. Hamlet stood as his quintessential play at the center of this cultural triumph.

5 A landmark of literary criticism of Hamlet in the early twentieth century is A. C. Bradley's Shakespearean Tragedy , 1904. Hamlet is, for Bradley, one of the four "great" Shakespearean tragedies, along with Othello , King Lear , and Macbeth . Hamlet is, like the others, "great" in its embrace of universal issues: good and evil, temptation and sin, self-knowledge and betrayal. Hamlet stands revealed in this broad moral context as an idealist, deeply sensitive, vulnerable to the shocks of a father's murder and a mother's hasty remarriage. He generalizes philosophically in ways that resonate with our longing to understand ourselves and the universe in which we find ourselves. Bradley deftly incorporates the resources of "character" criticism that the nineteenth century had found so compatible and enlightening. Character criticism continued to pursue its aims, especially in Ernest Jones's Hamlet and Oedipus (1910 and 1959), where this disciple of Sigmund Freud enlarged upon the psychoanalytical thesis that Freud had himself propounded in The Interpretation of Dreams (1899), namely, that Hamlet is driven subconsciously by an incestuous desire for his mother which complicates his task of avenging the murder of his father; how can he kill the hated uncle for having taken sexual possession of the mother whom Hamlet himself yearns for? Gilbert Murray, in Hamlet and Orestes (1914), pursued a parallel method of psychological and anthropological analysis by studying Hamlet as a kind of ritual drama that is profoundly related to ancient tribal customs and ceremonies. This approach owed much to the work of Carl Jung. Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism (1957) and other studies proposed that drama can be seen as a response to mythic patterns that include the seasonal changes of the year: Hamlet , in these terms, is autumnal, wintry, melancholic. Maynard Mack's "The World of Hamlet " ( Yale Review , 1952), sees the play as dominated by the interrogative mood, by questions, riddles, enigmas, and mysteries.

6 At the same time, critical responses to "character" criticism were emerging. One of the most insistent was that of historical criticism. Practiced in good part by academic scholars motivated by a new professionalism in their ranks, the method insisted, as did Sir Walter Raleigh (a Professor of English Literature at Oxford, not related to the courtier named Raleigh or Ralegh who served Queen Elizabeth and James I), that "A play is not a collection of the biographies of those who appear in it," nor is it a moral play ( Shakespeare , 1907). Instead, a play is a kind artifice arising out of a particular historical milieu. E. E. Stoll's Art and Artifice in Shakespeare (1933) adroitly captures this critical point of view. Hamlet , for Stoll, is not a study of psychological types; it is a revenge play, the resources for which are provided by the conventions of a dramatic type. Hamlet's delay is, in these terms, necessary in order that Hamlet may test whether Claudius is indeed the murderer that the Ghost has declared him to Be. Lily Bess Campbell's Shakespeare's Tragic Heroes: Slaves of Passion (1952) declares by its title its commitment to historical circumstances, and especially to Elizabethan understanding of melancholy. John Dover Wilson, in What Happens in Hamlet (1935) locates the play in the Elizabethan playhouse as a way of asking, among other matters, whether Hamlet perceives that he is being overheard by the King and Polonius during his painful interview with Ophelia. Theodore Spencer, a Professor at Harvard, looks closely at Shakespeare's indebtedness to innovative and heterodox thinkers in the Renaissance like Copernicus, Montaigne, Mirandola, and Machiavelli ( Shakespeare and the Nature of Man , 1942). Historical criticism continues to this day.

7 The 1930s saw another critical revolution, this time vested as a critique of historical criticism. The so-called "New" critics, such as G. Wilson Knight, Derek Traversi, and L. C. Knights, insisted that historical criticism was too often dry and philological in its quest for factual information about writers' biographies an other historical concerns. Surely, criticism should turn its attention instead to close reading of texts, to image patterns, to the sounds of poetry. Caroline Spurgeon's Shakespeare's Imagery and What It Tells Us (1935) catalogued Shakespeare's images in related clusters: diseases, poison, ulcers, blisters, and the like. Maurice Charney's Style in "Hamlet" (1971) turned the new interest in imagery to the theater, where stage picture, gesture, props, and all that is scenic could be seen as creating a language of theatrical gesture. Historical critics quickly realized that they could contribute to such theatrical insights rather than simply allowing themselves to be pilloried as academic pedants. Andrew Gurr ( Playgoing in Shakespeare's London , 1987) and Ann Jennalie Cook ( The Privileged Playgoers of Shakespeare's London, 1576-1642 (1981) provided a wealth of new information and insight about those who came to see the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries.

8 In the cultural upheaval brought about by protests against the Vietnam War, racial conflict, social unrest, the assassinations of John and Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., and so much more in the 1960s and afterwards, literary criticism of Hamlet found several new forms of expression. One was the so-called "New Historicism," championed by Stephen Greenblatt, Louis Montrose, Jonathan Goldberg, and others like Stephen Orgel and Richard Helgerson who were more or less loosely allied to the movement. The new historicists owed much in theoretical terms to Clifford Geertz's Negara , 1980, and to Lawrence Stone's The Crisis of the Aristocracy, 1558-1641 (1965), where critics could find eloquent models of how public ceremonials of statecraft offered themselves as myths about the creation and manipulation of political power. Prompted by their resistance to the governorship of California and then the U.S. presidency of Ronald Reagan, the new New Historicists formed a close relationship with the Cultural Materialism of English and continental critics that included Raymond Williams, Jonathan Dollimore, Alan Sinfield, Terry Eagleton, and others. Together, they devoted their energies to politically radical interpretations of texts as expressive of rapid political and social change. They took sustenance from the galvanizing new insights offered by Jan Kott, a Polish political activist who viewed Hamlet and other Shakespearean plays against the apocalyptic background of a Europe divided by the Iron Curtain after World War II. Hamlet was for Kott "a drama of political crime." Its protagonist was one who was "deeply involved in politics, sarcastic, passionate and brutal"; like James Dean he was a young rebel intent on "action, not reflection" ( Shakespeare Our Contemporary , 1964). Kott was visibly indebted to the absurdist drama and existential philosophy of Antonin Artaud, Jerzy Grotowski, Eugène Ionesco, Jean Paul Sartre, and Albert Camus. Hamlet was thus a bleak comedy of the absurd through which "we ought to get at our modern experience, anxiety and sensibility."

9 Feminist criticism took on new energy in these late twentieth-century years of experiment and rebellion. Juliet Dusinberre's Shakespeare and the Nature of Women , 1975, was an inspirational study that brought the feminist concerns of the nineteenth century into a new political context. Lisa Jardine's Still Harping on Daughters , 1983, with its title derived from Polonius's response to Hamlet's "mad" discourse about daughters who should not be permitted to "walk I' th' sun," turned the focus of feminist criticism in Hamlet to animadversions against patriarchal interference in the lives of young women. Claude Lévi-Strauss, in his The Elementary Structures of Criticism , 1949, offered a bracing model of new ways of thinking about family relationships, in which men are so often the controlling force, making use of daughters as resources to be pawned and traded in commercial and political negotiations among men. Arnold Van Gennep ( The Rites of Passage , 1960) and Victor Turner ( The Ritual Process , 1969) offered further anthropological models for exploring the transitional moments in human life—birth, puberty, marriage, death—that made for such compelling and threatening conflicts in the lives especially of women. Both Ophelia and Gertrude provided splendid materials for analyses by Coppélia Kahn, Lynda Boose, Marjorie Garber, Madelon Sprengnether, Jean Howard, Gail Paster, Phyllis Rackin, Dympna Callaghan, Jyotsna Singa, Marianne Novy, Carol Neely, Valerie Traub, and many others. Some feminist critics like Ania Loomba brought to this lively discourse the perspective of third world experience. Still others, like Kim Hall and Margo Hendricks, looked at gender in terms of race relations. Same-sex relationships became the concern of Bruce Smith, Laurie Shannon, Jonathan Goldberg, Mario DiGangi, and still others. Hamlet was a central text in all these explorations.

10 Post-structural criticism, or deconstruction, arrived on the scene at more or less the same time in the late twentieth century. It owed its philosophical and critical origins especially to the linguistic and semiotic work on the Continent, notably in France, of Ferdinand de Saussure, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida. For such thinkers, "meaning" and "authorial intent" were protean and indeterminate concepts, best understood as arbitrary signifiers in a complex system of difference. Patricia Parker and Geoffrey Hartman, in Shakespeare and the Question of Theory (1985), showed how infinitely supple Shakespeare's poetic language could be, with its incessant play of words and its delight in punning. Hamlet, viewed in this light, could be seen as superb practitioner in the art of verbal play. Deconstruction has led to new and challenging insights in editing, as well, by insisting, in Foucaultian fashion, that texts are multiple and evolving, especially in the theater. Hamlet , with its extensive differences between the second quarto and the 1623 Folio, and then even more remarkably by the variations embodied in the unauthorized quarto of 1601, continues to be a battleground for rival textual theories as to how this great work came into being and then evolved.

11 In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, literary appraisals of Hamlet have had the advantage of being able to make use of new historicist, feminist, and deconstructive methodologies, along with theatrical analysis and still other perspectives, often in combination. Examples include Leah Marcus's Puzzling Shakespeare (1988), Annabel Patterson's Shakespeare and the Popular Voice (1989), Janet Adelman's "Man and Wife is One Flesh: Hamlet and the Confrontation with the Maternal Body" ( Suffering Mothers , 1992), Stephen Greenblatt's Hamlet in Purgatory (2001), William Hamlin's Tragedy and Scepticism in Shakespeare's England (2005), Linda Charnes's Hamlet's Heirs: Shakespeare and the Politics of a New Millenium (2006), Lars Engle's "Moral Agency in Hamlet" ( Shakespeare Studies , 2012), Richard McCoy's Faith in Shakespeare (2013), and Andrew Cutrofello's All for Nothing: Hamlet's Negativity (2014).

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Hamlet As Seen Through The Feminist Critical Lens

Every piece of literature can be analyzed and studied in a multitude of ways. The varying components create complex characters, plots, and dynamics. The play Hamlet, written by William Shakespeare, can be examined through many lenses. A feminist lens depicts Shakespeare’s view of women and their roles in the text. Hamlet, the troubled protagonist who tries to avenge his deceased father, has great influence on the women in the play. In Hamlet, the females are merely side characters whose main purpose is to be love interests for the men. The women portray no real control regarding their decisions about their lives. Overall, the play can be analyzed through a feminist lens by focusing on how the men treat the women, their women’s importance as side characters, and their effect on the men.

Throughout the text, the women have been given little control over their life. The men often instruct and force them to do as they please. Ophelia is the woman Hamlet has a romantic interest in. Polonius, her father, commands Ophelia to act a certain way. He frequently gives her tasks that she doesn’t have a choice in completing. Polonius notices Hamlet’s affection towards Ophelia and orders her to stop any communication with him. Polonius lectures his daughter as he says, “This is for all: I would not, in plain terms, from this time forth, have you slander any moment’s leisure, as to give words or talk with the Lord Hamlet. Look to ’t, I charge you; come your ways” (Shakespeare 22). In this quote, he directly prohibits Ophelia from spending any more time with Hamlet. Whether Ophelia wanted to or not, she wasn’t given the option to pursue her relationship with Hamlet. This situation conveys the lack of control the female characters had. The men managed the women’s lives. This implies how Shakespeare viewed women. He didn’t allow them to have strong voices and much power over their lives, which implies his lack of respect for them.

In addition, the females are simply side characters. They do have importance pertaining to the plot, but they’re not nearly as significant as the men. The women are, figuratively, pawns for the men to use for their benefit. The men often use the women to discover information about the other people. After the scene Hamlet had the actors perform, Claudius, the king, becomes unsettled. Claudius’s wife and the queen, Gertrude, asks to speak to Hamlet to scold him for disturbing the king and to ask what has been bothering him. However, the men, Claudius and Polonius, create an alternate plan. Since Gertrude is Hamlet’s mother, they use her and take advantage of their relationship to try to have Hamlet confess why he’s going insane. Polonius instructs Gertrude what to do as he says, “Look you lay home to him; tell him his pranks have been too broad to bear with, And that your grace hath screen’d and stood between much heat and him” (Shakespeare 74). The men take advantage of Gertrude and use her for their benefit. This is Gertrude’s main role in Hamlet. It portrays the women’s lack of importance compared to the males. Only men are the primary characters in the play. The women play a side role, often used only as accessories for the men. 

Even though the women were controlled and not as significant as their opposing sex, they still had an effect on the male characters. The females had a more emotional impact rather than physical. Ophelia was a girl who was loved by many. Her brother, Laertes, and Hamlet mourned deeply over her death. Her passing caused both of them to act irrationally. The men wrestle in her grave out of despair and anger. Ophelia’s death impacts them both so greatly that they argue and Laertes screams, “The devil take thy soul!” (Shakespeare 110). Ophelia had a strong effect on the gentlemen. Without her death, they wouldn’t have been as aggressive and emotional. Although Shakespeare made the women side characters without much control over their lives, perhaps he respected a woman's role by granting her an opportunity to change the men’s lives. Shakespeare gave Ophelia the power to make the men emotional and behave in an irrational way. 

Furthermore, the men’s treatment towards women, the females simple side character positions, and their overall impact they had on the men can all be used to portray Shakespeare’s view of women. Gertrude and Ophelia both convey what life was like for women. They were controlled and used by the males. Although Hamlet can be analyzed through many different lenses, a feminist lens depicts the difference in gender roles. This play emphasizes how men behaved toward the females. Overall, Shakespeare brought attention to a woman’s role and treatment through his writing.

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Hamlet Feminist Analysis Essay

Thesis: Throughout William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, women are viewed negatively and play a limited role within the society of Elsinore. Through the use of critical and dismissive dialogue, women are displayed as powerless, play a muted role and are dependant on a male figure. The negative judgements of women are represented throughout the whole play through the use critical and dismissive dialogue towards the female characters. Hamlet believes that women are powerless humans. He first demonstrates his opinion on women when he is speaking with Ophelia.

With a stern and angry tone Hamlet says “If thou dost marry. I’ll give thee this plague for thy/ Dowry: be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou/ Shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a, Nunnery/ Farewell. Or, if thou wilt needs, Marry, marry a fool; for/Wise men know well enough what monster you make/ Of them. To a nunnery, go— and quickly too. Farewell. ” Hamlet is expressing to Ophelia that women are unnecessary in society and men are fools to marry them. He believes that women turn their men into monsters, and that women belong no where but nunneries.

By saying this Hamlet is saying that women have nothing good to bring to society, and if they were locked up in a nunnery life would be much simpler for men. Hamlet’s attitude continues when he is comparing women to ‘make up’. Hamlet says, “I have heard of your paintings too, well enough. God has given you one face, and you make yourselves another. You jig and amble, and you lisp; and nickname God’s creatures and make your wantonness your ignorance. ” (3. 1. 154). Hamlet is specifically comparing Ophelia and her actions to makeup.

He believes that the act of playing dumb, walking and talking is like makeup that covers a women and makes them appear to be something that they are not, they are powerless. Furthermore, Laertes is talking to his sister Ophelia forbidding her love and marriage with Hamlet. Laertes says to Ophelia, “His greatness weighed, his will is not his own,/For he himself is subject to his birth. /He may not, as unvalued persons do,/Carve for himself; for on his choice depends/The safety and health of this whole state. And therefore must his choice be circumscribed/Unto the voice and yielding of that body/Whereof he is the head. ” (1. 3. 19-27). He believes that Hamlet should not have the power to marry who he wants, and Ophelia does not have the right mind to make a decision like that for herself. Hamlet’s views on women being powerless in society are much like a pet rat. Rats are very intelligent, although are viewed as gross and pointless to the animal kingdom. They are also at the bottom of the food chain as their size and their environment puts them at a disadvantage.

This can be compared to Hamlet’s feelings towards female characters, although they are just as intelligent as men, they are seen as powerless and at the bottom of the power chain in society. The female characters in Hamlet are portrayed as dependant, they seem to be unable to make their own life choices. They are under the power of men, as they are obligated to make decisions based on the decisions men make for them. Ophelia is in love with Hamlet, although she allows for other people to get involved in her decision making.

Firstly, we see that Ophelia is seeking help from her brother Laertes about her relationship and feelings towards Hamlet. It is clear that Lateres acts selfishly when saying “If with too credent ear you list his songs/ Or lose your heart, or your chaste treasure open/ To his unmaster’d importunity/ Fear it, Ophelia, fear it my dear sister” (1. 3. 30-34). This demonstrates that Laertes is using his power over h to trick her into thinking what he wants, not what is best for her. Laertes believes that her virginity should not be given up to someone like Hamlet and would not give up their family reputation for a fool like Hamlet.

Another example of the dependance would be how Gertrude cannot live for more than a month after her husband dies without a powerful male figure to guide her in her decisions. Hamlet says “Must i remember? Why, she would hang on him/ As if increase of appetite had grown/ By what it fed on; and yet, within a month/Let me not think on’t— Frailty, thy name is woman” (1. 2. 143-147). He is talking about his mother, and saying that she is so desperate that she has to marry her own family member. Hamlet is appalled that she can’t live without a man to guide her through her decisions, this displays her weakness.

Lastly, Ophelia allows her father to forbid her love for Hamlet. Ophelia obeys her father’s wishes when saying “No, my god lord, but as you did commany/ i did repel his letters and denied/ His access to me” (2. 2. 108-110). This demonstrates Polonius’s power over his daughter and how she obeys what her father says, putting her own feelings aside. Ophelia is pushed around a lot in the play, because the other characters know that she will do as they command demonstrating she lacks independence and bases her decisions on what the other characters tell her to do. All women in this play, use the male figure as if they are the flashlight.

They are portrayed as being dependant, as if they are unable to do or go anywhere without guidance for men, just like a flashlight (the men) provides a clear path when you are in the dark or in this case when you are scared or unsure of something. Throughout the play it is also clear that there are limited roles played by women. The lack of advice and intelligence suggested or given by a female character supports their lack of presence. Firstly, when Ophelia is seeking relationship advice in which you would predict for her to go to another female, the play was written with no motherly figure for her.

She has to discuss “Or lose your heart, or your chaste treasure open” (1. 3. 30-34) or her virginity and love with her brother Laertes. Furthermore, Gertrude is a very muted character, even with her own son Hamlet. She has no presence or influence on Hamlet, even during the scenes in which they are both present. Gertrude tends to leave all the discussion to Claudius and is more of a background character or a shadow to the king. For example during the play within a play, Hamlet is more concerned for the reaction of the King although, the play is more offensive and aggressively attacking his mother.

Although, after the duration of the play Gertrude concludes by saying “The lady doth protest too much, methinks” (3. 2. 222). Her reaction is left to minimal, as the reaction of the King was seen as more important. Additionally, the first motherly interaction we see between Hamlet and his Mother is during the duel towards the end of the play between Hamlet and Laertes. The Queen see that’s Hamlet is “fat and scant of breath” (5. 2. 79) so she offers him a handkerchief to fix himself. The role a female characters can be closely related to an eraser.

It is almost as if women don’t really belong, as if they were erased from society. Shakespeare has written the limited roles of women to not have a purpose in society, they are written as shadowy characters like the smudge that an eraser leaves on your page. The negative outlook of women is exhibited throughout the duration of the play. Women are constantly viewed as powerless, mute and dependant on men. Gertrude and Ophelia are seen being pushed around and weak. Overall, the women of Elsinore are seen as less worthy than men, and have very little contribution and control over their actions.

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Feminist Criticism In Hamlet

Show More Exploring Feminist Criticism in Hamlet For thousands of years the role of women in society has changed vastly throughout our world. Since the beginning of time, women have been on an uphill climb to achieve the same equality as her male counterpart. Women have been taught to limit themselves, and those who have been courageous enough to surpass these limitations have faced great adversity. During the time of Shakespeare, the patriarchal society that ruled had consequential effects for the freedoms of women. Women were dominated by men, seen as second tier, inferior, and were to obey their husband and father undoubtedly. In the play Hamlet , written by William Shakespeare, the closer we look at the female character of Ophelia, the further we see the detrimental effects of the restraints that were placed on her. "Controlled by her father Polonius, underestimated in her intellect by her brother Laertes, manipulated by the more powerful Claudius and Gertrude to meet their own purposes, caught in the crossfire between Hamlet and his parents...Ophelia is arguably the most isolated character in the play and the one whose welfare is most routinely disregarded" …show more content… The dominance of men was not only over the female's mind , but their body as well. The sexual objectification of Ophelia can clearly be seen throughout Hamlet, by the treatment of men around her. Hamlet, Ophelia’s boyfriend, asks Ophelia, "Lady shall I lie in your lap? When she replies, "No, my lord," he then states, "Thats a fair thought to lie between a maids' legs" (3.2.119-125). Hamlets comments bring about and remind us the view men took of women, and show us the worth they perceived was only found in what the female body provided for them. Men did not look at women as an insightful being, but instead as a sexual one. A women's body was considered another piece of the male’s property, in which he

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His disapproval then grows into hatred and is not let out until Hamlet approaches his mother boldly by taunting her after the play about Gonzago?s murder. A behaviour never shown by Hamlet before. The queen is of course very upset by this behaviour but somehow she sees beyond it and starts treating Hamlet kind of normal after that. Hamlet having finally vented his disapproval and grief, feels some kind of peace. Finally accepting the fact that the ghost made so clear in the beginning, that his mother was not involved in his fathers death and therefore he forgives her.…

Misogyny In King Lear And Hamlet

In the words of the newly elected President of the United States of America, “grab them by the pussy” (Mathis-Lilley). Those in positions of power utilize misogyny as a means of control and as a tool to reinforce a personally beneficial power structure. Like Trump, King Lear and Hamlet are men in position of authority who relegate women to subordinate roles. Both King Lear and Hamlet express deeply misogynistic attitudes towards women; however, while Lear’s misogyny manifests in his belief in the inferiority and weakness of women, Hamlet expresses his misogyny through his Freudian confusion of sexuality and womanhood. Ultimately, although the two men’s misogyny manifests differently, both arise from a desire to monopolize and exercise power…

Essay On Feminism In Fifth Business And Hamlet

Feminism in Fifth Business and Hamlet The current society has various perspectives of women both negative and positive. Moreover, literature exemplifies the different role of women comparing the roles of ancient and modern women. These comparisons have one thing in common, and that is the multifaceted roles of women in the ancient and modern society. This comparison is evident in two works of literature centuries apart; Fifth Business by Robert Davies and Hamlet by William Shakespeare.…

Gender Inequality In Hamlet Essay

It was believed that women always needed someone to look after them” (Elizabethi, 2). Ophelia is an interesting character as “she has limited options as a woman in a patriarchal society” (Maki, 2) which forces her to fall into requirements of women within the era she belongs to. From the very beginning, Ophelia’s life is pre-determined by the men in her life such as her father, brother, the king and in some cases—Hamlet. This begins through Ophelia’s submissiveness to the men in her life. For example, within the beginning of the play Laertes converses with Ophelia and instructs her to weigh what loss your honour may sustain /…

Hamlet Revenge Essay

Her submissive attitude towards men suppressed her to express one’s thought, that resorted in losing her sanity. Compared to the twenty first century, women in Shakespeare’s era needed to abide men’s rule. Even in her madness, Ophelia was bound by the rules in the society, Maki further explained. Maki also depicted Ophelia’s words as nonsensical and also explained that “her lack of alternative” was enough for her to accept her own…

Gender And Gender Roles In Shakespeare's Hamlet

Gender roles have evolved in contemporary society to include women as equals to men, however, gender roles were very one sided at the time in which Shakespeare 's play Hamlet was written. Hamlet was written in the early 1600’s which was a time when women were seen as the lesser of the two sexes. Women were seen as dependent on men are were uneducated. The misogynistic beliefs of Shakespeare 's time are prevalent throughout Hamlet. Throughout the play, the two female characters are portrayed as overly emotional and dependent on men to make their decisions.…

The Role Of Women In Shakespeare's Hamlet

She is a state of idealism, pureness and beauty, in an atmosphere of conflict and intrigue. She has four roles in her life: as a daughter of Polonius, a sister of Laertes, a lover of Hamlet, Ophelia herself. As a female in the Shakespearean period she is expected to be under the control of the men all of her life as a daughter, a sister, a wife or a mother. The patriarchal society controlled her emotions, actions and words. Polonius, who is her father, is the one who raised Ophelia because her mother is died.…

The Importance Of Relationships In Shakespeare's Hamlet

Also, Hamlet’s relationship with Ophelia is also a subtle background influencer. This relationship becomes problematic due to “Hamlet’s low opinion of women (as a result of his mother’s actions)” (Johnson, 2005). This relationship induces stress for Hamlet and tacks onto his already crazy thoughts. These relationships and others within the play are all important when looking at the play from a broad perspective.…

The Treatment Of Women In William Shakespeare's Hamlet

His views of women parallels with that of Eve and her role in the Fall of Man. Throughout the play Hamlet and the other male characters in the play treat Ophelia and Gertrude with scorn and contempt based on their actions. Although Ophelia appears to have done nothing wrong she is still punished by her father, her brother, and her lover. Gertrude on the other hand, marries her late husband’s husband not long after her husband dies. Her unfaithfulness and disloyalty to Hamlet’s father causes him to scold her and to look at treat her with cruelty.…

Feminist Criticism In William Shakespeare's Hamlet

He states that after the death of his father, Hamlet reduces the female characters to mere archetypes that are incapable of thinking for themselves. (Dorrey, 2013) Women are merely treated as objects of desire. (Lacan, 1977), in his essay states that this play shows the tragedy of human desire. He calls Ophelia a mere bait for Hamlet and is just as object of desire for him. She is considered as a being with no feelings and just use.…

Ophelia Obedient

In Hamlet, Ophelia is portrayed as a beautiful young woman. She is the young daughter of Polonius, the sister of Laertes, and Hamlet's love interest. In the play, Ophelia is trapped amongst her obedience to her father and her love for Hamlet, which comes with several tragic consequences. Ophelia tries to be “obedient”. Ophelia is the ideal obedient daughter, a role that is required entirely of all young women in the late 16th and early 17th centuries.…

Queen Gertrude And Ophelia In William Shakespeare's Hamlet

In many aspects of life, including literary works, women are often overlooked and not given the same importance as men. In William Shakespeare’s tragic play “Hamlet”, the female characters, Queen Gertrude and Ophelia, are given very few lines and are either portrayed negatively, or just seen as sex objects that men can do whatever they want with. The lack of significance they are given allows for them to be merely background characters, instead of playing major roles. Throughout the play, Queen Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother is portrayed negatively.…

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• Characters in Hamlet

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