A patriarchal society has several cultural implications on most societies, where the biological differences that set the male and the female apart in many cultures remain eminent. This is especially true for the character Gertrude, who has been marked by a corrupt monarchy, crazed offspring and a cursed union. She silenced by her male counterparts in the play, in the sense that we get a description of from through the lenses and voices of these players. The character Gertrude, although portrayed as a straight forward mother and wife is actually quite ambiguous and the most mysterious main persona in the Shakespearean play “Hamlet”. She is the mother and aunt of Hamlet. She is also the wife/ex sister-in-law of King Claudius. In the play Gertrude is shown to have many characteristics/traits as the play progresses. The reason for …show more content…
He is a scholar, searching for the elusive answers life has to offer and he doesn’t care for the vices and mortal coil that men are slaves to. Gertrude on the other hand thinks only about herself, body and external pleasure (or at least that is what we are told by the male characters). She is described as a very sexual woman and it is her vibrant sexuality that turns Hamlet against her. Even though Hamlet once conveyed to us through his soliloquies the picture of an obedient and loyal woman who lived in the shadow of one king whom she was devoted to, he still calls her fickle- “frailty, thy name is woman”. The implication of the line is that he blames her sexuality for her speedy alliance in love and politics with the exact opposite of the man she once claimed to love. This is one of the main event -not including the death of his father- that fuels Hamlets rage in the first act. Hamlet continuously obsess over her overexerted sexuality and the physical relationship she now has with Claudius, labelling their marital bed as “incestuous sheets”