The works of playwright William Shakespeare have dominated our cultural imagination over the past four centuries, lending themselves as influences on the English language, popular media, as well as many academic analyses. One such play of Shakespeare’s, Hamlet, has lent itself to a multitude of literary perspectives over the past few centuries. As an example, feminist perspectives have brought into focus the few women characterized in the play, Ophelia and Gertrude, and analyzed the many sociocultural and historical forces that surround these characters and their roles in Hamlet. The sexism Ophelia experiences from her family and from Hamlet in her role as a daughter of a lord of the royal Danish court keeps her character from blossoming into …show more content…
Hamlet is the Danish prince who wishes to kill Claudius for killing Hamlet’s father and then marrying his mother. Hamlet and Ophelia are in love with one another. Ophelia’s brother Laertes and Polonius are both against Ophelia’s feelings for Hamlet. Laertes tells Ophelia that Hamlet may not truly love her so she should be careful. Polonius tells Ophelia that she shouldn’t believe that Hamlet loves her at all and that she should not spend time around Hamlet any longer. Then, Ophelia says that she will do as Polonius says. Later, in the play, Ophelia tells her father that she worried that Hamlet has gone mad because Hamlet came into her room looking disheveled, grabbed her wrist and held her hard, then let go and walked out of the room staring at her. Because of this, Ophelia gives back the letters that Hamlet sent to her and doesn’t let him visit her. Polonius shows Claudius and Gertrude a letter from Hamlet to Ophelia to show them that Hamlet has gone mad, and he tells the two of them that he thinks Hamlet went mad over Ophelia rejecting him. Then, Polonius plans to bring Hamlet and Ophelia together to see if Hamlet truly is in love with her. When Hamlet and Ophelia meet, Claudius and Polonius are watching them. Ophelia tries to give Hamlet back some gifts and letters that he gave to her. Hamlet reacts by saying that he never loved Ophelia and tells her to go …show more content…
Out of the twenty scenes there are in Hamlet, Ophelia only appears in six of them, and in only five of those does she have any lines. Additionally, according to Burton Raffel and Harold Bloom, Ophelia only appears in Hamlet 17 percent of the time, Hamlet appears during the play throughout 66 percent of the full text—over three times as many times as Ophelia (Raffel and Bloom xxiv). So, Ophelia would not have had much of a chance within her scenes to completely develop as a character or to accomplish as much as Hamlet, or even Claudius or Polonius, was able to accomplish because of how little space she occupies in the grand scheme of this play. Also, since she is not the main character of the play, there may not even have been enough room within the twenty scenes for Ophelia to have become independent. Additionally, Ophelia as a character does not have the opportunity to truly travel anywhere as she always must stay either at the royal palace or with her family in general and she is never alone, while Hamlet can go and grow on his own by travelling at sea for some time in the
It is truly a shame that Hamlet had not treated the women in his life with the respect that they deserve. Ophelia, a devoted and true love that died over the fact that the man she loved so much had also killed her father and didn’t love her. Gertrude, a loving mother that died at the hands of her husband through a poisoned cup intended for her son. Both of these cases show that the downfall of the women was due only to Hamlet's actions and behavior and that if he hadn't acted the way he did, these women would still be alive and so would he.
Troubled by royal treason, ruthless scheming, and a ghost, Denmark is on the verge of destruction. Directly following King Hamlet's death, the widowed Queen Gertrude remarried Claudius, the King's brother. Prince Hamlet sees the union of his mother and uncle as a "hasty and incestuous" act (Charles Boyce, 232). He then finds out that Claudius is responsible for his father's treacherous murder. His father's ghost asks Hamlet to avenge his death and Hamlet agrees. He plans very carefully, making sure that he doesn't kill Claudius when in he has already been forgiven for his sins. Hamlet accidentally kills Polonius, the King's advisor, thinking that it was Claudius hiding behind a curtain spying on Hamlet and his mother. This drives Ophelia, Polonius' daughter and Hamlet's love interest, insane. She then drowns in a suspected suicide when she falls from a tree into a river. Laertes, Ophelia's brother, teams up with Claudius and plot revenge on the strained prince.
Culturally, women have been expected to be soft spoken, gentle, delicate flowers. They should not question a man's opinion or go against their will. Ophelia, in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, is an example of a young naive girl who faces the dangers that come from only following what others want, and not thinking for herself. The men in this play use her for their own benefit and she suffers the repercussions, which leads her to madness and “accidental” death.
Of all the pivotal characters in Hamlet, Ophelia is the most static and one-dimensional. She has the potential to become a tragic heroine; to overcome the adversities inflicted upon her, but she instead crumbles into insanity, becoming merely tragic. This is because Ophelia herself is not as important as her representation of the duel nature of women in the play. Ophelia serves a distinct purpose: to show at once Hamlet's warped view of women as callous sexual predators, and the innocence and virtue of women.
Ouditt, Sharon. "Explaining Woman's Frailty: Feminist Readings of Gertrude." Hamlet. Ed. Peter J. Smith and Nigel Wood. Theory in Practice. Buckingham: Open UP, 1996. 83-107.
Hamlet is one of the most controversial characters from all of the Shakespeare’s play. His character is strong and complicated, but his jealousy is what conduces him to hate women. He sees them as weak, frail, and untrustworthy. He treats Ophelia, the women he loves, unfair and with cruelty. Similarly, he blames his mother for marrying her dead husband’s brother, who is now the King of Denmark. Hamlet’s treatment for women stems from his mother’s impulsive marriage to his uncle who he hates and Ophelia choosing her father’s advice over him.
In William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, women are oversexualized, and are given no role other than to be the item of a man’s desire. The promiscuity of the only two women in the play, Gertrude and Ophelia, detracts from their power and integrity, and allows Hamlet a certain amount of control over them. Gertrude’s sexual lifestyle is often mentioned by her son, Hamlet, and Hamlet uses his knowledge of Gertrude’s sexuality as a means to criticize her. Ophelia’s sexuality initially appears to be controlled by Laertes and Polonius, and Hamlet takes advantage of the naive image that she is required to keep. However, in her later madness, Ophelia taints this image by revealing that her innocence is feigned. By exposing the sexual natures of both Gertrude and Ophelia, Hamlet strips these women of any influence they may have had, and damages their once-honourable names.
Ophelia, in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, represents a self-confident and aware female character. She analyzes the world around her and recognizes the multitude of male figures attempting to control her life. Her actions display not only this awareness, but also maturity in her non-confrontational discussions. Though she is demeaned by Laertes, Polonius, and Hamlet, Ophelia exhibits intelligence and independence and ultimately resorts to suicide in order to free herself from the power of the men around her.
Hamlet’s relationship with his mother reflects how he will treat other women in his life. Therefore, Hamlet’s anger and contempt towards his mother fuels his harshness towards all women, including Ophelia. Hamlet treats the women in his life with bitterness, whether justified or not because Gertrude and Ophelia are regarded as submissive and the epitome of the weak women during this time in the seventeenth century. Shakespeare conveys that the only way a woman can be trustworthy is if she is chaste and pious because otherwise, women are the source of evil and bestial lust.
Michael Almereyda’s movie adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet brings about a new perspective through its performance. The movie adaptation, Hamlet (2000), retells the original play in a modernized setting, bringing out various different elements of characters, which highlights a new reading of these characters as individuals, and a newfangled reading of the play as well. Throughout the movie, Ophelia and Gertrude, the woman-leads, are advanced in a progressive manner compared to the original play. In particular, Gertrude from Hamlet (2000) is noticeably altered from Hamlet, the play. This new interpretation of Gertrude and the play created by the movie adaptation advances the position of Gertrude as a woman, as well as motifs of incest, misogyny,
In Hamlet, gender plays a huge role in the assumed capability of people. Queen Gertrude had to remarry instead of rule the kingdom by herself. If she wouldn’t have gotten remarried, it would have been likely that her kingdom would have been usurped by a chauvinist male ruler; who felt that women couldn’t rule a kingdom.
In Shakespeare’s dramatic works there is no room for the heroic or the strong woman, and therefore many of his plays can be perceived as being antifeminist. Often he portrays women as weak, mad, sexual, and as even witches. Hamlet is no exception. The only women in the play, Ophelia and Queen Gertrude, are given confined and limited roles. These roles are from a male-dominated viewpoint and only add focus to the male characters instead of incorporating the insight and the impact of the women as well.
Ophelia’s betrayal ends up putting Hamlet over the edge, motivating him in his quest for revenge. Ophelia is one of the two women in the play. As the daughter of Polonius, she only speaks in the company of several men, or directly to her brother or father. Since we never see her interactions with women, she suppresses her own thoughts in order to please her superiors. Yet, however weak and dependent her character is on the surface, Ophelia is a cornerstone to the play’s progression.
For many years in the past women played a small role socially, economically, and politically. As a result of this many works in literature were reflective of this diminutive role of women. In Elizabethan theatres small boys dressed and played the roles of women. In contrast to this trend, in Shakespeare's Hamlet the women in the play are driving factors for the actions of many other characters. Both Gertrude, Hamlet's mother, and Ophelia, Hamlet's love, affected many of the decisions and actions done by Hamlet.
Ophelia is used by not only Hamlet, but also by Polonius and Claudius. Hamlet uses Ophelia after he goes mad. Ophelia is manipulated by Hamlet to display to the King and the rest of the court that he is in fact mad. When Hamlet enters her room wearing disheveled clothing and acting quite strange towards her, he knows that Ophelia will tell her father and the King. Ophelia then reports this strange occurrence to her father, telling him about his strange composure of taking her “by the wrist and” holding her hard and then “shaking” when he was about to let go. (Act 2, Scene 1 Lines 86-91) The team of Polonius and the King also exploits Ophelia in order to dig deeper into Hamlet’s madness. David Bevington agrees claiming that Ophelia is passive and thus “becomes an instrument through which Claudius attempts to spy on Hamlet.” They use Oph...