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Comparing Women In Hamlet And Brave New World

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In Hamlet’s soliloquy, he explains his resent towards his mother, Gertrude, for marrying his uncle, Claudius, so soon after his father’s death. Hamlet holds his father in high regard and does not think that Claudius can even be compared to him. Therefor, Hamlet thinks that by Gertrude marrying Claudius, she shows no love toward his father, and he is aware of how much his father loved his mother. When Hamlet says “Frailty, thy name is woman,” (Hamlet, I.ii) he is referring to all women. Because of his disgust with Gertrude, he believes that all women are frail and possess a weak character. When comparing Gertrude with other literary women, we can look back on characters such as Daisy from The Great Gatsby, Curley’s wife from Of Mice and Men, and Lenina from Brave New World. All of these women show a weak sense of character throughout their stories. Starting with Daisy from The Great Gatsby, she was a very self-centered and distracted …show more content…

Like everybody else in the society of this story, Lenina is conditioned to feel only happy and good. She is obsessed with the idea of sex and intrigues a lot of men. She does not want to be involved with only one man, but many. So for Bernard, who is very attracted to her, he feels wrong about getting intimate with her because he knows she doesn’t want to feel as attracted to him as he does to her. This same situation is introduced later in the story when Lenina and John the savage meet. John is immediately interested in Lenina, but not in the way that most men are. When Lenina wants to become sexually intimate with John, he becomes angry and confused and almost hurts her, getting him into trouble. By Lenina getting sexually involved with so many men, she puts several men’s feelings at stake. But she is so obsessed with the good, happy feelings that she doesn’t really care for the men who care about her. This strongly shows a weak

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557 Words | 3 Pages

John grew up with that trauma, but after all, he loves his mother. When Bernard and Lenina invited them to go to London, john was happy because he thought he could save his mom. When they arrived to London, Mustaphan did not agree with Linda and john presence, Lenina went to john’s room and seduce him with the objective to sleep with him, but john was traumatized due to the problem that he had with her mom, so he acts weird with her. - What is wrong with you jhon? Asked lenina - This is wrong lenina, you cannot just have sex with

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711 Words | 3 Pages

In this quote we see John shouting at Lenina, after she tries to have an intimate moment with him. Where John is from it is not ok for people to have more than one partner so he is very upset when Lenina tries to do this. In our everyday society many many people would frown upon this, it is not exactly socially acceptable. John proceeds to get very mad and Lenina has no idea why because to her it is a very normal thing to do. 5.

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1406 Words | 6 Pages

When Lenina becomes infatuated with John, she begins to lose all of her former morals. Instead of wanting to be with everyone Lenina begins her focus on just John. Lenina's obsession with John directly contradicts the World State's idea of having everyone. Lenina expresses to John that she "wanted you so much", which implies that Lenina was focused on John, when there were plenty of other options.(Huxley 130) Huxley wants again illustrates how Lenina is confused because she starts to feel a sort of love for John, but still recognizes her morals. She later tells John to "kiss me till I'm in a coma", which is against John's morals(Huxley 131).

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1595 Words | 7 Pages

She, upon finding out that John loves her, essentially tries to rape him. He resists and eventually violently pushes her away,calling her a whore (Huxley194). To Lenina, it is assumed that she and John would have sex because they have mutual feelings for each other. But to John, it is almost a guarantee that they would not, at least until they are married. Their values are purposely exaggerated, with Lenina’s being the generally more frowned-upon, especially at the time the novel was written.

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1389 Words | 6 Pages

While she obviously is not free as her entire life is dictated by Mustapha Mond and other higher-authorities, she perceives herself to be free. That feeling of freedom and happiness is innocent and real and there is no denying her happiness. However, Lenina’s idea of happiness is not satisfactory to everybody such as her short-lived romantic “partner” John. John was raised in a Savage Reservation and grew up reading from his “ancient” copy of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. John learned everything he knows about human nature from this book and that created his own definition of happiness.

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879 Words | 4 Pages

Lenina shuddered. “How I loathe intravenals…”(38). Lenina hates having to take all of these pills yet to live in the world state it is mandatory, yet they have nothing for men to take to become sterile. Although it is okay for both men and women to be promiscuous Lenina is the only one who is punished for being this way. When she tries to be intimate with John “the savage” she is beaten and humiliated by him.

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597 Words | 3 Pages

Four months with Henry Foster, without having another man, why he would be furious if he knew” ( Aldous Huxley 37). Lenina has learned through observation that to fit in or be normal, she has to be promiscuous. Bernard Marx who, Lenina at one point goes out with believes that you should only have one partner at a time, because of this he seen as an outcast to society. Lenina recognizes that unless she is promiscuous, she will turn out like Bernard Marx, alone and disrespected.

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1048 Words | 5 Pages

Whether it’s the way he acts with Lenina, his love interest, or the way he refuses to take their widely accepted drug of choice, soma, he exudes free will and individual thought process. One of the World states' societal rules is that everybody belongs to everybody so there are no monogamous relationships, when John develops feelings for Lenina and she for him, things get a little complicated. Lenina tries to persuade John to take part in sexual relations with her while he wants to wait to develop their emotional relationship first which goes against what the world state abdicates for. Taking the drug soma is another prevalent societal standard the world state encourages, one that John does not like or participate in due to this being the cause of his mother’s death. John believes it to be “poison to the soul as well as body” (Huxley, 211) and states this opinion multiple times after his mother’s death occurs.

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1099 Words | 5 Pages

Why does John push Lenina away even though he loves her? This essay will compare Lenina and John the Savage and discuss the reasons why their relationship is a failure. Lenina is described as “pneumatic” which means “filled with air”. This expression is a metaphor for being curvy and attractive. In the new world people are encouraged to have sex, including Lenina.

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1793 Words | 8 Pages

In addition never questioning why she does what she does, also being promiscuous. Until she meets Bernard. Her sexual attraction to Bernard is momentarily in the novel; however the time he spends with her influences her perspective of what she’s known all her life. As the novel progresses, they go on a date, where Bernard hovers his helicopter over the sea to watch the moonlight in doing so leaving him time to question lenina free will . “Yes, 'everybody’s happy nowadays.'

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511 Words | 3 Pages

Throughout the beginning of the novel, Lenina is shown as naive to all cultures and phenomena that she has never been exposed to, with one exception. She may not realize it, but Lenina does tend to rebel against the “everybody belongs to everybody else” ideal, as shown when she converses to Fanny Crowne about her longer than usual relationship with Henry Foster: “... But after all, it’s only been about four months now since I’ve been having Henry” (p 46). The aforementioned quote displays the first signs of character development within Lenina.

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671 Words | 3 Pages

In the novel, Lenina and Fanny have a conversation about Lenina’s growing relationship with Henry Foster. Fanny is concerned with Lenina’s relations with Henry as they have been seeing each other for months, which stems from the fact that it is prohibited in their society to be in a long term relationship. It is apparent that Lenina has feelings for Henry; however, she can’t fully act on them due to society’s restriction on relationships. This restriction may seem absurd to the audience who would typically have the right to feel emotion to whomever they choose. In reality, people aren’t normally limited to being in short relationships because being in love is normal, and it is an important emotion that

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827 Words | 4 Pages

Which was dangerous because she likes him. The tone I use is informal and hopes to reach school students and adults audience. I use simple language to make Lenina’s ideas, feelings, and desires easier to understand. For example, it contains phrases that express her constant changes of humor like, “Soma controls me, it gives me a superficial happiness…” or “I

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1478 Words | 6 Pages

Throughout Hamlet, the thoughts, intentions, and actions of all of the characters can be explained through predisposed gender roles in the play. Hamlet is a tragedy in which the main character, Hamlet, attempts to seek vengeance for his father’s murder, while the relationships with him and around him begin to strain. In the play, gender plays a huge role in assuming the capability and worth of people. Women are most commonly depicted as being weak, powerless, and confused, while men are commonly shown as being strong, analytical, and intuitive. Hamlet features Ophelia and Gertrude as the only two female roles, and even then they show little independence from the males.

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1056 Words | 5 Pages

Hamlet shows his true feelings towards women. Must like a whore unpack my heart with words and fall a-cursing like a very drab,/a scullion. (2.2. 574-576) He believes that all women are unfaithful to their significant other. Hamlet feels as if all women are weak and fragile comparing them to frailty.

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