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Gender roles in shakespeare
Shakespeare's treatment of female characters
Gender roles in shakespeare
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More handpicked essays just for you.
Gender roles in shakespeare
Shakespeare's treatment of female characters
Gender roles in shakespeare
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
It is far too often that women, in even the most modern of literature, are portrayed as nothing more than snivelling cowards, used merely to motivate the inevitably male heroes. Certainly, this is still the case in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, which is inarguably a product of its time; sexism runs rampant, as Ophelia, the female lead, is told by Hamlet himself to “Get thee to a nunnery” (3.1.121), with not a batted eye nor consideration of why this would be wrong. In this day and age, such blatant disrespect for women would be greatly frowned upon by a modern and discerning audience, no doubt filled with cultured women who would take offence. Bonham-Carter’s Ophelia is far from the frail and tragically beautiful flower that she is often interpreted as; “ she's like a rag doll losing its stuffings” (Hinson).
After the death of her father and departure of Hamlet, Ophelia arrives at the castle and pays an unsolicited visit to the royal majesties. She sings, “Young men will do’t, if they come to’t./ By Cock, they are to blame” (4.5.60-61). This passage is often interpreted as Ophelia airing the grievances that Hamlet has committed toward her--namely, he used her solely for sexual pleasure and discarded her when he lost interest. In summary, Ophelia exposes the double standard prevalent in her society: to a man, a woman’s value lies only in her virginity. She blames “Cock”, which represents the patriarchy at large, for society’s willingness to excuse male lust and irresponsibility.
By verbally harassing Ophelia and estranging himself from her, Hamlet provides the apparent image of losing his prior care without a great amount of consideration. Additionally, Hamlet further displays his anger for his father’s death through this display. By dissolving his relationship with Ophelia, Hamlet furthers his image of insanity to further illustrate himself as incapable within Claudius’s eyes while still communicating distaste for his loss of his father. With Hamlet’s intentionally swift change of heart for Ophelia, Hamlet’s procedure warrants a certain level of sanity. Regardless of the sudden nature, Hamlet’s continual barring from Ophelia possesses procedure which causes further doubt of Hamlet’s mental instability from the audience of the
Ophelia vs Herself Throughout the book Hamlet, by William Shakespeare, there are many conflicts that characters have to face, and lessons they learn through them. One character who struggles in particular is Ophelia. Ophelia struggles a lot with self doubt and not being sure about how she feels. Everyone expects her to behave a certain way.
Sometimes in life people do not portray things how the really mean to. Sometimes people treat the people they truly love harshly. Sort of like how in the play of Hamlet, Hamlet acts like he does not really love Ophelia. But, in the tragedy of Hamlet, the protagonist, Hamlet, really did love Ophelia. This can be seen through his actions toward her before he found out about his father’s death being a murder, pretending to be crazy simply to prove to the king and Polonius, and by his actions after Ophelia 's death.
In “Hamlet” William Shakespeare uses the character Ophelia to get to the men around her. She’s portrayed as a weak, trusting woman that tells her father and brother everything. They see her as a virtuous, unsuspecting, loyal daughter. Hamlet sees her differently. He sees her as an object, easily disposable.
For the duration of the play, Ophelia was portrayed as a naïve and submissive woman. Her passivity and powerlessness reinforce the voicelessness of women during the Elizabethan era. For example, “I shall obey, my lord” (I.iii.134) shows that Ophelia concedes to her father’s will, even though she believes Hamlet’s love is genuine. She is willing and expected to obey her father despite the fact that she still loves Hamlet, which emphasizes her character’s submissive nature. Furthermore, in Act I Laertes warns Ophelia that it would be shameful of her to love Hamlet, and she responds with “I shall the effect of this good lesson keep as a watchman to my heart” (I.iii.45).
Every modern society since the beginning of time has painted the female as frail and individuals at the mercy of men, unable to reap the same freedoms and aspirations as their male counterparts. The English Renaissance is no different as women were not allowed to play themselves on stage, and more often than not were seen as weak characters in their portrayal. In Shakespeare's “Hamlet”, all the female protagonists all have flaws that eventually leads to them meeting their deaths. The characters of Ophelia and Gertrude are two different women trapped in the same predicament, partly being due to the inefficacy of being taken seriously, and are therefore perceived as feeble women; looking at the persona of Ophelia, she tends to follow the direction
Hamlet once again fails to understand that Ophelia much like himself is only trying to stay loyal to her father, much like what he is doing himself. In addition, Hamlet blames woman for giving birth to such evil and deceiving men like Claudius and himself. When he was talking to Ophelia he told her "Get thee to a nunnery. Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest, but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better
As a young woman of the 1600’s Ophelia is most likely unaware of the patriarchy that shadows above her. “I do not know my lord, what should I think?”. Ophelia is so unsure about her affair with Hamlet that she
Farewell.” (3.1.136-141) He tells her that all women make husbands into monsters. Hamlet is assuming that all women are unfaithful and that all wives cheat, and this is why he tells her to go to a nunnery. Even her own father doesn’t trust Hamlet and demands that Ophelia does not talk to him.
This is encapsulated in Hamlet exclaims, “frailty, thy name is woman!” about his mother’s hasty marriage to her deceased husband’s brother (Shakespeare 1.2.150). In this quote, Hamlet is dismissing all women as weak-willed like he believes Gertrude to be, which affects his interactions with Ophelia also. Hamlet is cruel to her because of this anger he has towards women in general, so when pretending to be mad, he goes “full force in the misogynist rage” when telling her he used to love her, but now she should go to a nunnery (Traub 192). Ophelia can be seen as weak in this scene because she protests little against Hamlet and only hopes that his insanity will end.
Women have suffered an extreme misdeed by men throughout the history. Women in Shakespearean times were bounded with their husbands and their fathers, the women weren’t expected to do much rather that just looking pretty and not talking. In the play Hamlet women are mistreated and are shown in Shakespeare novel. There are women that have experienced exploitation in the novel. Hamlet poor mistreatment and misjudgment of Ophelia, her behavior started to change throughout the novel and eventually she ended up killing herself.
Hamlet does not value Ophelia 's feelings he belittles her. In Hamlets defense this is the way he was brought up to treat women, during that time this was a common way to treat a women. Even though in today 's society it is not at all ok to treat women with such disrespect. He also likes for everything to go as planned and this may result in why he can not have a stable relationship with a woman. This also causes him to have many stumbling blocks in his life that causes some emotional pain
The main point of Ernest Jones’ article “ Tragedy and the Mind of the Infant” is that Hamlet is in love with his mother. He roots Hamlet 's misogyny in Gertrude and Ophelia rejecting him sexually. “When sexual repression is highly pronounced,