Sexism In Shakespeare's Hamlet

Sexism in Hamlet

Today’s society sees many of Shakespeare’s works as beautiful and poetic. The sonnets, plays, stories, anecdotes, and almost every piece of his are seen as remarkable. They seem remarkable yet, they all have something in common. All his works contain sexism, primarily towards women. Sexism is obscenely visible in his very own, Hamlet. Sexsim is the prejudice or stereotyping, typically against women solely because of their gender. In Hamlet, Shakespeare shows absolute disregard for women when he uses Lord Hamlet as someone who blames women for his sanity, by making them seem weak, vulnerable, and submissive due to the time frame, and using women for certain topics or occurrences needed to keep the story going..

In Hamlet, Lord

According to Jocelyn Crawley, a graduate from Georgia State University, “... most Shakespearean romances reinforced and perpetuated male power becomes evident…” (Crawley). Due to the fact that Gertrude makes her own decision and marries Claudius, Lord Hamlet hates it, becomes distraught, and states, “By what it fed on. And yet, within a month (Let me not think on 't; frailty, thy name is woman” (Shakespeare 1.2.141-150)! Lord Hamlet believed his mother should follow his decisions and not make her own. By saying she is frail, he insinuates that she is weak and morally obligated to follow and accept his advice over her own conscious. Their behavior also includes who they sleep with, which is nobody’s business in today’s day and age but back in the 1500s, women were looked down upon for having sex out of marriage and considered “whores’ (Picard 172). This describes how men had their grip on women even when it came to certain personal issues or acts. Another story where Shakespeare demonstrates male power is in The Taming of the Shrew. Cawley says, “Demonstrating that he views women as fundamentally inferior by noting that they are born to bear, Petruchio concludes their conversation with the assertion that he is born to tame and must have her as his wife” (Crawley). Shakespeare writes about women in the sense of being in the Renaissance Era in which

By using women to create a conflict and add drama, Shakespeare reveals that he feel women are problematic and add unnecessary attitude or pizzazz. Three professors explain how women were used to show that only they had weakness and that men do not when they state, “ Laertes exclaims, “the woman will be let out,” as he begins to weep showing that a man does not cry and that only women do” (Gerlach, Almasy, Daniel). When Laertes says, “the woman will be let out,” he is ultimately saying that only women cry and that men do not. Also, Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar is a perfect example of how woman are used to add drama and go over the top. According to Sparknotes, Portia, Brutus’ wife, kills herself out of grief showing how weak she is to things that have nothing to do with her. (Sparknotes 434). In Julius Caesar, Brutus tells his wife everything. When she is not told of Brutus and the other senators’ plot to kill Julius, Portia commits suicide because she cannot handle the fact that he would not tell her about the plot. Not one character in Hamlet commits suicide other than Ophelia because she could not handle her heart break with Lord Hamlet and the death of her father. Lord Hamlet did not commit suicide after his father’s death, nor did Laertes. However, Lord Hamlet did contemplate suicide, but that was mostly because of Gertrude was not listening to him and his wishes against her