A Victim of Villainy Shakespeare’s Hamlet portrays Gertrude as a victim trying to make sense of what is going on around her. She has no clue about what is true and is getting exposed because of it. Because Gertrude becomes blinded, she is also easily taken advantage of by others which makes her vulnerable to other people’s plans such as Claudius’. Although Gertrude seems to be a villain, she turns into a victim that leads to her demise. To begin, Gertrude is a victim because she is naive that eventually leads to her death. At the end of the play when Hamlet and Laertes are fencing, Gertrude unknowingly drinks the cup of wine filled with poison. Even after Claudius warns her not to drink it, she persists and tells him, “I will, my lord; I pray you pardon me” (5.2.318). Gertrude here thinks …show more content…
When Hamlet goes to see her after his play, he makes her realize what wrong she has done. It causes her to cry out, “O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain” (3.4.177). She has no clue who she really has feelings for. Is it her first husband or her current husband that killed the first one? At this point, she still doesn’t know that Claudius killed her first husband, but it still causes her grief about whether marrying her husband’s brother was the right thing to do. Her dilemma of having to choose one man over the other is driving her to insanity because she can’t pick just one of them. Certainly she loves both of them or at least that’s what she thought, but Hamlet’s father is her true love while Claudius is the brother of her husband that just so happened to become king after his brother died. In short, she doesn’t know her true feelings for either person. Gertrude feels confused and overwhelmed by everything that just unfolded in front of her. It causes her an undesirable grief that she shouldn’t have had to deal