Examine how Shakespeare explores the role of women in Hamlet. What might the response of a modern audience be to this aspect of the play?

However, Shakespeare’s portrayal of an innocent Ophelia is not a view shared by everyone. Jacques Lacan described Ophelia as an of Hamlet’s male desire. This view could be based on Hamlet’s teasing of Ophelia in ‘The Mousetrap Scene’.

Ophelia. You are keen my lord, you are keen.

Hamlet. It would cost you a groaning to take off mine edge.

Ophelia. Still better, and worse.

Ophelia reacts embarrassed suggesting her innocence and naivety. She parries Hamlet’s jokes and is clearly made uncomfortable by his maniac behaviour. However, as Hamlet is comfortable aiming sexual puns at Ophelia, it creates an ambiguous feeling about her virginal innocence. Elizabethan attitudes towards issues such as sex invited many double standards. Shakespeare emphasizes this through Ophelia and her female sexuality.

Shakespeare uses Ophelia as a passive obedient character to emphasize women’s inferior state to men in Elizabethan times. Both Ophelia’s father and brother take control of her sexuality, “tis in my memory locked And you shall have the key of it”. Women were restricted in Elizabethan society which can be seen in the lock and key of the image Ophelia uses to describe her sexuality. Polonius sees Ophelia as a tool when he spies on Hamlet. He says he will “loose” her to him. The use of the world “loose” suggests that Polonius has enough power over Ophelia to be able to choose when to get her her freedom back. He objectifies his own daughter and uses her as an instrument in his plot. This also reflects the passive role women had in Shakespeare’s time and the sexist view towards them that men controlled or even owned them.

Ophelia’s madness is arguably the climax of her character in the play. Elaine Showalter questions if her madness stands for oppression of women in society as well as in tragedy. Ophelia’s madness may have been a result of the way she was treated in an inferior way by three main people in her life. This emphasizes the extent to which Ophelia was oppressed by the opposite sex and what effect it had on her and other women. However, many would argue that Ophelia’s madness is completely understandable and shouldn’t be seen as rebellion to her status. Surely the madness is caused by irreconcilable emotions she feels when her father is killed, for no reason, by the man she loves. Showalter also suggested that Ophelia’s suicide by drowning was seen to represent the fluidity of women. The water could be viewed to represent tears and the blood, amniotic fluid and milk of a woman’s body. Everything about Ophelia’s madness and suicide was feminine. Shakespeare, again, takes a sexist attitude to something Ophelia does.

Showalter also suggested that ‘Ophelia represents the strong emotions that the Elizabethans as well as the Freudians thought womanish and unmanly”. Women were seen as weak and frail. Cook said ‘Ophelia is not guilty of showing a dangerously strong mind of her own’ and ‘her own personal tragedy is that she has insufficient strength to sustain her after Hamlet’s inexplicably harsh treatment and her father’s murder’. Shakespeare explores Ophelia’s weak-mindedness through her lack of control and ability to stand up for herself.

Since the rise of feminist literary criticism in the 1970s the interpretation of Ophelia’s madness has changed. It is now viewed by some as a rebellion to her oppression and is seen as the exact opposite of the weak-mindedness we had seen in Ophelia before. Some feminists view Ophelia as a heroine, “a powerful figure who rebels against the family and the social disorder”. Ophelia’s madness empowers her by enabling her to go against the social constraints she would have experienced and she was able to regain the freedom she had lost, or arguably never had, to the men in her life.                                                        

Showalter addresses the melancholy figure in Ophelia’s behaviour and appearance. Women’s melancholy was seen as biological, and emotional in origins.  Ophelia’s behaviour, similar to Hamlet’s, is said to originate from emotion whereas Hamlet’s, as a man, was supposedly associated with intellectual and imaginative genius. It was fashionable for a man to be melancholy yet was regarded as madness if it was a woman.

Gertrude, as Hamlet’s mother, is seen by some as central to understanding Hamlet. Hamlet is still in mourning for his father during which Gertrude consoles her son: “good Hamlet”, “Thy noble father”. However, by marrying his hated uncle, Claudius, Gertrude is a major source of confusion for her son and some argue she is a factor of his madness. Hamlet questions if Gertrude is guilty of adultery as well as incest, as Rebecca Smith mentions. Smith goes on to question if the closet scene demonstrated Gertrude’s sexual guilt and if this is her reason for aligning with Hamlet in his quest for revenge. However, it becomes obvious that Gertrude only cares about the two men in her life- Claudius and Hamlet. Her first speeches are to Hamlet, some of which are begging him to stay in Denmark: “Let not thy mother lose her prayers, Hamlet I pray thee stay with us, go not to Wittenburg.” Gertrude shows a deep understanding of her son: “I doubt it is no other but the main, his father’s death and our o’erhasty marriage”. Gertrude knows what is bothering her son. Her dying words also go to warning Hamlet about the poison. Shakespeare emphasizes the mother/son relationship Gertrude and Hamlet have. This suggests that the lives of women in Elizabethan times revolved around the men they were involved with. It seems that the women were expected to live in order to care of their husbands and to look after sons if they ever had them.

Hamlet is very aware of Gertrude’s sexuality and it becomes a main focus for his anger. The majority of Hamlet’s first soliloquy expresses his anger and disgust of Gertrude’s incest. The ghost of Old Hamlet shares in this obsession: “let not the royal bed of Denmark be a couch for luxury and damned incest”. Hamlet has a low opinion of his mother and he reflects this view onto other women i.e. Ophelia. He describes his mother as ‘frail’ and ‘pernicious’. Hamlet’s low opinion of women could have been a common view amongst men in Elizabethan times. It may have been a common opinion that women were “frail” and “pernicious”. However, it could be a view only held by Hamlet as a result of the quick marriage to his uncle, the killer of his father.

Gertrude is usually played as a deceitful, slow-witted woman. This, again, could be argued to reflect the sexist view of women found in Elizabethan society. To oppose this view Smith comes to the following conclusion:

“…when one closely examines Gertrude’s actual speech and actions in an attempt to understand the character, one finds little that hints at hypocrisy, suppression or uncontrolled passion and their implied complexity.” Smith then concludes with “Gertrude has not moved towards independence or a heightened moral stance; only her divided loyalties and her unhappiness intensify.”

Shakespeare uses Hamlet to reflect the society he was living in therefore inviting the audience to criticise, not only the society put forward in Hamlet, but Elizabethan society also. In modern society, women are used to having equal rights to men and so watching this play, where the women have no rights whatsoever and are constantly being oppressed by male figures, the audience may be shocked. They may be angry that women had to live this way, especially the female members of the audience. They made find it strange watching a community where the opinion of women was so much lower than that of men and may react to it accordingly.

Many, if not all, of Shakespeare’s heroines fall into one of two categories: the active women exerting power over men (Beatrice from Much Ado About Nothing) or the passive instrumental character which usually appear in tragedies. Those women in tragedies that do possess power, often of a sexual nature, are ultimately destroyed. This is demonstrated in Hamlet. When Gertrude or Ophelia have any power, even of a sexual nature, it is destroyed, just as Ophelia is destroyed by this so much so that she ends her life. However, the fact that most women roles were played by boys in Shakespearian times is overlooked. This limited the experience and range of talent the actors had and, therefore, Shakespeare would have had to restrict the roles women had in his plays to enable boy actors to play them.

Word Count: 1786