Hamlet is Shakespeare’s longest play and it is considered by many to be his ultimate masterpiece. Written around 1601 it is the longest play Shakespeare wrote and has been the subject of many studies continuing to this day. Many analysts focus on Hamlet himself, he is after all the most prominent character in the play, but he is not the only fascinating character found in this tragedy. Gertrude and Ophelia have of late experienced a kind of rebirth for literary critics and fans alike.
Many feminist critics are beginning to examine Gertrude and Ophelia and bringing their struggles they faced in 17th century to the 21st century light. These women are victims of their society, just as Hamlet is. Hamlet can only view these women in the context of his time, which explains his harsh treatment to both of them throughout the play. Ophelia and Gertrude display the traits of the “subordinate woman” which was expected of them in the seventeenth century, while also modern day attributes of women by displaying their sexuality and independence.
Ophelia has been known as “the good daughter.” She does whatever is asked of her by any male figure in her life. In the list of characters found in the lay she is simply listed the “daughter of Polonius.” This implies that she is a minor character who still “belongs” to her father. Amanda Mabillard believes that it is out of love that Ophelia obeys her father’s and brother’s every desire (Mabillard, “Ophelia”). However, many believe that it is not out of “love” that prompts her obedience, but fear. When Laertes tells Ophelia to distrust Hamlet, she willingly obeys him and gives him the authority over her heart. In many of the exchanges between herself and her father, she simply responds with, “I will obey.” For instance, in act 2 scene 1, Polonius asks Ophelia if he had denied contact with Hamlet and Ophelia tells him, “…but as you command , I did repel his letters.”
In Act 3 scene 1 Ophelia is spying on Hamlet at her father’s insistence. We are lead to believe that she truly does love Hamlet but cannot refuse her father, so she betrays her love to spy on him. When Hamlet discovers that Ophelia’s father is listening he calls Polonius a “fishmonger,” which means a pimp. With the same token, Hamlet is calling Ophelia a prostitute that is being used by her father. Hamlet is not very far off on this assertion. However, you must also remember that because of the actions of his mother, he believes all women to be harlots and has lost faith in the female. Again, in act 3 scene 1 Hamlet states:
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, go, farewell. Or if thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool; for wise men know well enough what monsters you make of them. To a nunnery, go; and quickly too. Farewell.
To someone who is unfamiliar with seventeenth century slang, one may think that by Hamlet telling Ophelia to go to a nunnery he is ordering his chaste bride-to-be to join a convent and forever be pure. But “nunnery” was slang for a whorehouse. He believes her (and all women) to be monstrous whores. Yet, even after he had berated and belittled her, “Ophelia describes him, in her lament for his madness, as having been courtier, soldier, and scholar, the exemplar of form and fashion for all Denmark” (Bloom 418). Does she feel this way about him because she is that much in love with him, or because she has been trained to think even a mad man is her master?
To today’s women, it is easy to see her as being pathetic with no will of her own. But when we look more closely at the character that is Ophelia she exhumes more depth than many of the other characters that have a more prominent role in the play. Was this character more than a puppet, a “prostitute” to her “fishmonger” father? Or does she posses more qualities of the modern woman that previously thought? It is in her madness that I believe the real Ophelia finally comes to light. The source of her madness is a source of debate all in itself. Some believe it was the immense grief she felt. Amanda Mabillard believes that it was Hamlet’s hate that was responsible for Polonius’s death that drove Ophelia to madness (Mabillard, “Ophelia”). Gabrielle Dane believes that the absence of men telling her what to do is what drove her to madness. (Dane, “Reading Ophelia’s Madness”) Through the guise of mental illness she can finally act out and speak her mind with no consequences. Carol Thomas Neely states that through her father’s death, “Ophelia is freed for madness” (Neely, “Feminism Criticism and Teaching Shakespeare”). Even the way she speaks to the King and Queen in complete defiance is the beginning of her liberation. She is able in her insanity to speak her mind, defy authority, and remove the shackles that had placed upon her since birth all because of the accidental sex she was born with.
It is also in these mad ramblings that one begins to see Ophelia as she truly should be seen. Why did the rejection of Hamlet affect her so? Why did Hamlet suggest she go to a whorehouse when she is supposed to be the model of goodness and chastity? Perhaps Hamlet knows something about her that we as the audience have not yet figured out. In Ophelia’s insane ramblings in act 4 scene 4 she begins singing very vulgar rhymes about sex. A particular quote that she says is:
By Gis and by Saint Charity, Alack, and fie for shame! Young men will dot, if they come to’t; By Cock they are to blame. Quothe she ‘Before you tumbled me. You promis’d me to wed’. He answers: ‘So would I ‘a done, by yonder sun, An thou hadst not come to my bed’.
This has led many to believe that Ophelia was not as chaste as she appeared to be. Perhaps she exercised some freedom of her own body and allowed Hamlet to seduce her centuries before the sexual revolution. Alex Epstein goes even further in this assertion, he points out that while Ophelia is picking flowers the only flower she keeps for herself is rue. Rue is symbolic for regret, but it is also an herb that is an abortifacient. He also believes that her madness and suicide was due to her delicate disposition and impending disgrace (Epstein, “By the Way, Ophelia is Pregnant”). Again in her madness she states, “I would give you violets, but they withered all when my father died.” Living Arts Originals.com states that violets are symbolic to faithfulness (Online). Perhaps because of the death of her father she is finally free and has to be faithful to no one.
Queen Gertrude, however, does not need madness to convey her own independence. She is by nature a very sexual woman who is not afraid to go beyond the barriers of 17th century gender lines. She concerns herself in matters of state and refuses to be seen as a mere trophy wife, but as a separate woman of power. Hamlet is beyond livid when he hears of his mother’s quick remarriage to his deceased father’s brother. I will admit that the fact that she married her son’s uncle is odd, but by no means the disastrous, incestuous, relationship that Hamlet thinks of it. The only proof that Hamlet even has that Claudius murdered his father is the ghost that comes to see him. I believe that the ghost could have not been real to begin with. Just a manifestation, a hallucination if you will, of the hatred Hamlet feels for his mother’s quick remarriage. Perhaps Hamlet thought that his mother should have spent the rest of her life in mourning. According to Akiko Kusunoki, during the Elizabethan era people felt that widows should indeed not marry again. But many women of the upper crust often did. Their refusal to adhere to the norms “presented a contradiction to patriarchal ideology” and “posed a radical threat to the existing social structure” (176). It could be this act of independence by his mother that has made Hamlet lose his mind.
In a time when women were supposed to be merely wall decorations and submit thoroughly to the patriarchal society that ruled the land, she bravely defied such rules. She married a man only briefly after the death of her first husband, casting caution to the traditions that ruled women since the beginning of the agrarian age. Perhaps she did this, as Amanda Mabillard suggested, out of neediness for male attention (Mabillard, “Gertrude”). I believe that it goes beyond that. If she had not re-married and Hamlet had become king, she would then be reduced to the station of queen consort. She would be forced to yield all of her power to her male son and no longer have influence on state matters. Perhaps she felt that the only way to keep some power in her hands would be to marry another man of royal lineage to keep as much influence on state matters as she possibly could. One might think that this is a characteristic of a power hungry woman, but you must also take into consideration that at this time in history, any power a woman could obtain was indeed a miracle. This is centuries before the women’s liberation movement, and many believe Queen Gertrude was a strong woman who truly felt that she was doing what was best for herself and her country. And considering the mental break-down Hamlet experiences, she could in fact have been very insightful to that assertion.
However, in the closet scene, act 3 scene 4, between Gertrude and Hamlet I believe she can no longer live the façade that she can in fact live as an equal to her male counterparts. Out of fear, desperation, concern, or pure defeat, she decides to succumb to her son’s wishes. He commands her to:
O, throw away the worser part of it, And live the purer with the other half. Good night: but go not to mine uncle’s bed; Assume a virtue, if you have it not. That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat, Of habits devil, is angel yet in this, That to the use of actions fair and good He likewise gives a frock or livery, That aptly is put on. Refrain to-night, And that shall lend a kind of easiness To the next abstinence.
Her reply to her son’s attempt to rule over her own body is, “Be thou assured, if words be made of breath, And breath of life, I have no life to breathe What thou hast said to me”. Perhaps her decision came from a mother’s love, or perhaps she finally came to the conclusion that she can no longer attempt to live as the equal of men. She submits to Hamlet fully.
One must also wonder if she felt belittled due to this submission of her body to her son. Perhaps that is why she acted in defiance with Claudius. After her encounter with Hamlet I believe she tries to rebel against the male dominations once more. When Claudius warns her not to drink from the cup that, unbeknownst to her had poison in it, she stubbornly and defiantly claims, “I will”. Her last act of treachery against a “dominant” man led to her demise. Harold Bloom believes that Hamlet still could not love or forgive his mother, even with her death (409). His last words to his mother is the cold-blooded, “Wretched Queen, adieu.
Many people have argued that the characters of Gertrude and Ophelia are the epitome of the weak women found during this time. It is true that both of them do in fact have to rely on men, but what else was a woman to do in 1601? Gertrude is objectified by the men around her. Hamlet succeeds in controlling her sexual behavior, and even King Claudius lists her third after his crown and his ambition. Gertrude tried to refuse her position as a submissive woman and tried to be free, but failed. But she still manages to exercise influence on very powerful men around her. She uses her charm, wit, and body to get things women of her day could not even dream of. Ophelia is not objectified, but controlled by the men who surround her. They think for her and make her do their bidding. Many have even suggested that she is a weak character that was underwritten and very one dimensional. But when taking a closer look at her transformation from a quiet obedient girl, to the mad outspoken woman, the theory of her being a flat character is easily dissolved. In her madness she actually grows from being a simple childlike pawn to an outspoken woman of modern qualities. Ophelia lost all reason to be submissive and went mad but found her freedom. In fact, according to Gabrielle Dane even her suicide was a source of freedom for her. “Ophelia’s choice might be seen as the only courageous-indeed rational- death in Shakespeare’s bloody drama” (423).
The struggles these women face is not ancient history. There is still a battle of power between men and women 408 years after this play was written. Many women today are still regarded as property of either their father, or their husband. Even in our society women are objectified, and used by men just as the men in Hamlet objectified and used Gertrude and Ophelia. When looking at these two remarkable women- if you are honest with yourself- you are in fact looking at a mirror.
Bibliography:
Bloom, Harold. Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. New York: Berkley Publishing Group, 1998. Print.
Dane, Gabrielle. “Reading Ophelia’s Madness.” Exemplaria 10 (1998): 405-23. Print
Epstein, Alex. “By the Way, Ophelia is Pregnant”. Craftyscreenwriting.com. Crafty Screenwriting, 2005. Web. 5 Dec. 2009.
Karlsen, Kathleen. “Flower Symbolism Guide”. Livingartsoriginals.com. Living Arts Enterprises LLC, 2009. Web. 5 December 2009
Kusunoki, Akiko. ‘Oh most pernicious woman’: Gertrude in the Light of Ideas on Remarriage in Early Seventeenth-Century England.” Hamlet and Japan. Ed. Yoshiko Uéno. Hamlet Collection 2. New York: AMS, 1995. 169-84. Print.
Mabillard, Amanda. “Gertrude”. Shakespeare Online.com. 20 Aug. 2000. Web. 5 Dec. 2009
Mabillard, Amanda. “Ophelia”. Shakespeare Online.com. 20 Aug. 2000. Web. 5 Dec. 2009.
Neely, Carol Thomas. “Feminist Criticism and Teaching Shakespeare”. Web2.ade.org.1987. Web. 5 Dec. 2009.
