Gender has great significance in sociolinguistic and interdisciplinary literature, and is a central theme of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. However, Shakespeare’s revenge tragedy reveals little regarding the respective motives and emotions of its two central female characters, Gertrude and Ophelia, as both are largely representations of women of the time, and are created through the prism of male perspective. Their gender allows for them to be regarded entirely within the confines of a patriarchal lens; sexually, socially, and solely via their relationships to men. Gertrude and Ophelia often manifest as either counterpoints to the male characters, or provide an audience for their eloquent dialogue and respective exploits. During the 16th century, when Shakespeare composed Hamlet, the masculine view of women was inextricably connected with the female body. The status of men was considerably higher than that of women, who were treated as male property, and thus the female body was regarded as the male’s rightful possession. Ophelia’s existence is a balancing act, representing a blurred line between sex and love for Hamlet. She balances her venereal inclinations with her father’s biddings, and provides Hamlet with a sense of stability when he becomes irrational and distressed over the death of his father. The sexual intimation in Hamlet’s dialogue towards Ophelia would have been transparent, and therefore predominantly conventional, to a Renaissance audience. Hamlet says to Ophelia, “That’s a fair thought to lie between maids’ legs”, a crude jape for a seemingly honourable prince. Hamlet is evidently at ease making such a jest, and Ophelia appears unoffended. The writer is male, writing in an era of masculine-dictated culture, and the dialogue likely embodies the widespread consensus of the time; a consensus that allowed for women’s sexuality to be defined by male interpretation of it.
Conversely, Gertrude serves as a contrast to Ophelia, as she is antithetical to the conventional, archetypal perceptions of femininity. This is depicted through her negation of the gender-based expectations portrayed in Hamlet, and derivative of the period in which it was written. Gertrude’s obstinate, unorthodox actions are fundamentally accountable for the downfall of the ordered power structure within Elsinore, as well as bringing about her own collapse. At no point in the play is she admired or praised for her beauty; Gertrude is older, and furthermore, never repudiates her sexuality. She is not compliant to the expectations of femininity, and determines her actions despite protestations from Hamlet, Claudius and the Church. Following the pronouncement of Gertrude’s remarriage to Claudius in Act I, Hamlet attacks the authenticity of her grief. She marries Claudius regardless of his sentimentalities, and thus, Hamlet is repelled by this remarriage and reprimands her, condemning her for living “in the rank sweat of an enseamed bed”. Gertrude is dismayed by her son’s criticisms, yet whilst making no attempt to defend herself, refuses to conform to the asexual ideal of an older woman and a mother, the sexless stereotypes that Hamlet wishes to impose on her. Gertrude’s unconventionality is furthermore the ultimate cause of Claudius’s downfall, who has been reliant upon Gertrude’s defiance of blood and God alike. In his arrogance, however, Claudius is incapable of taking into account that by the very virtue of her disposition, Gertrude would most surely defy him as well. The patriarchal structure of the social system present within Hamlet emphasises the contrasted compliance of women, as Ophelia dies by her own hand after losing her father, the source of both authority and regulation, whilst Gertrude dies due to her unwillingness to capitulate to authority. In her rejection of her conventional role in society, Gertrude triggers her own tragic downfall. In essence, to be female is to be punished. Ophelia operates within the rules, Gertrude transgresses them, yet their similar fates underpin that gender dictates the limited options and truncated trajectories for women in the patriarchal and misogynistic setting of Hamlet.
Psychoanalytical
By adopting a psychoanalytical perspective upon interpreting Hamlet, it is thus possible to analyse the characters, and furthermore evaluate the way in which the text enables readers to examine suppressed desires or fears. Psychoanalytical literary criticism, based upon the prototypical ideologies theorised by Sigmund Freud throughout the 20th century, explores human behaviour, the unconscious mind, as well as the ideas of desire and sublimation. Primarily, Freud’s conceptualised Oedipus Complex surfaces in Hamlet, as Shakespeare explores Hamlet’s psychogenic circumvention of killing Claudius, thus avenging his murdered father. Claudius is presented as a manifestation of Hamlet’s Oedipal desires for Hamlet’s mother, having married Gertrude subsequent to the murder of King Hamlet. It is conceivable that Hamlet’s fixation with Gertrude’s ostensibly incestual relationship with Claudius is an extension of his own sexual desires. Thus, Gertrude’s alacritous matrimony positions Hamlet in a state of self-loathing, as he feels mortified by his subconscious desires, and henceforth, his invectives directed at his mother invoke a sense of self-depreciation. During several occurrences, Hamlet appears more distressed with Gertrude than with Claudius, and is affronted by her promiscuity. If Hamlet nurses a conflicted sexual desire for his mother, this may be revealed by his numerous interactions with Ophelia. In one instance, Hamlet forces himself to forsake Ophelia, saying “get thee to a nunnery”, only to later retract that assertion and acknowledge his love, saying, “I lov’d Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers could not with all their quantity of love make up my sum”. These exchanges correlate with Hamlet’s irregular feelings towards his mother due to his subconscious urges. Hamlet’s relationship with Ophelia is distorted by his salacious obsession with his mother, and his torturous relationship with women as a whole. This is fundamentally exhibited in Hamlet’s command, “Get thee to a nunnery”, whereof “nunnery” could potentially be a colloquium for brothel, demonstrating Hamlet’s corrupt view that all women are promiscuous whores.
Freudian ideologies surrounding the Id and Superego can also be considered within Hamlet. Claudius can be seen as a symbolic illustration of Hamlet’s Id – the primeval and instinctive element of his disposition – having acted upon Hamlet’s desires by murdering his father and sleeping with Gertrude. Through this interpretation, Claudius functions as an embodiment of Hamlet’s innermost subconscious urges, and thus killing him would subsequently entail his own death. At numerous intervals, Hamlet endures existential crises spawned from his volition to avenge his father. Rather than identifying his options as killing Claudius or allowing him to live, Hamlet instead believes the choice is between killing Claudius or committing suicide. Hamlet circumvents murdering Claudius whilst he is praying, as Hamlet believes he will send Claudius to Heaven, rather than hell, saying, “am I then revenged, to take him in the purging of his soul, when he is fit and season’d for passage? No!”. Furthermore, the Ghost of Hamlet’s father could represent his superego, the aspect of Hamlet’s psychogenic disposition that seeks to control his Id. King Hamlet’s Ghost bestows thoughts of justice in Hamlet’s mind. He conveys his anger for his death at the hands of Claudius, and his desire for Hamlet to “Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder”. However, King Hamlet does not wish for Hamlet to inflict harm upon Gertrude, as he asks his son to “Leave her to heaven/And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge/To prick and sting her…”. Hamlet’s supposed Superego symbolically grasps control of his Id, reinforcing ideas of justice and revenge, ultimately leading Hamlet to avenge his father’s death.