Oppression Of Gertrude And Ophelia In Shakespeare's Hamlet

In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, women are portrayed as weak, foolish, easily manipulated, and dependent on men through their behaviours and interactions with the male characters. Gertrude is dependent on Claudius as he is her new husband and king. Ophelia is manipulated by both her father and her brother, as well as Hamlet. Gertrude and Ophelia are two of the most misunderstood and oppressed characters. Hamlet himself castigates both of them, for very different reasons, in misogynistic rants which accuse women of being sly seductresses, deceivers and lustful schemers. “Frailty thy name is a woman!” What Hamlet does not see is that Gertrude and Ophelia are products of their environment, forced to make difficult and even lethal decisions in an attempt

Left alone by Laertes, who is off studying in France, pursuing his future while his sister sits at court by herself, and is forced to reckon with the death of her father. Ophelia is a young girl who is seen as immature and foolish, as expressed by her father, “you speak like a green girl”. Hamlet no longer cares for her therefore she has no one to be there for her especially at a time where she is in need of someone to guide and comfort her. As a result of her solitude, she came to an early death. We sympathise for Ophelia, she lost the people closest to her so when she was drowning in the lake, she made no attempt to save herself. Despite her tragic death, in a way it gave Ophelia the freedom to do and say what she could not before. Her death impacted people which was something she never had the power to do when she was alive and was always

The text suggests that while Gertrude was likely not directly involved in the murder, she was aware of the truth about Claudius all along and chose to marry him anyway. While Hamlet accuses his mother of lusting after her own brother-in-law, killing her husband, and revelling in her corrupted marriage bed with her new spouse, he fails to see that perhaps Gertrude married Claudius out of fear of what would happen to her if she didn’t. Gertrude, as a woman, holds no political power of her own, and with her husband dead, she might have lost her position at court, or forced into another, less appealing marital arrangement. Marrying Claudius was perhaps, for Gertrude, the lesser of several evils—and an effort just to