Patriarchal Power In Hamlet Essay

The whole play of Hamlet by William Shakespeare is filled with relationships that either shape or influence Hamlets quest for vengeance and ultimately ends in tragedy. The romantic relationships in the play have a major impact and eventually leads to the death of all the central characters in them. The patriarchal power struggle at Elsinore leads to the death of the women and eventually Claudius ' and Hamlet 's as well.

Hamlet is cunning, calculated and intelligent. His continuous puns, insinuations and theatrical behaviour could suggest that he is indeed acting mad in order to achieve vengeance for his father. Still his emotions controls him entirely, unlike Claudius who at all times when in front of the court behaves with composition and

Ophelia also further strengthens Hamlet 's madness. His desperate and ludicrous confessions of not loving and loving her drives her away from him. It could be exactly his intention to do this in order to shield his beloved from what is about to happen. She does eventually becomes a puppet to unveil Hamlet 's madness, and pays with her life for it by drowning. Perhaps she is influenced by Hamlet 's madness and begins to see the appeal of his suicidal tendencies and ends her life. The figure of Ophelia is tragic one, she is the victim of a patriarchal power struggle, where they use her as a puppet to influence each other. Her father Polonius and brother Laertes strongly advice her to end her relationship with Hamlet, and she does what

As Hamlet 's mother, and the widow of the late king Hamlet, Gertrude is also involved in some sort of deception. Because she keeps up the charade of the happily newly married queen and not the mourning widow she fuels the conflict in the story. She dies when she drinks the cup Claudius has poisoned, perhaps on purpose because she learns from Hamlet what Claudius has done. It could also be because of the pain and suffering she has inflicted on her child, however that seems unlikely when Claudius reacts to her drinking the poison. Because Claudius wants the duel of Laertes and Hamlet to end in Hamlet 's death, he no longer cares about Gertrude but only about himself. Gertrude is indeed involved in the conflict, because if she did recommend Hamlet to stay, rather than go to Wittenberg, and the whole conflict could have