Shakespeare created female characters with a great variety of characteristics that challenged the accepted archetype of the typical Renaissance women. Shakespeare’s iconic tragedy Hamlet features but two female characters, Gertrude and Ophelia, who despite having to conform and comply to the men’s injunction, display a considerable amount of power and agency. The two women consistently make decisions throughout the play, that don’t conform to the views of the characters surrounding them. Gertrude displays agency at many points in the play; she chooses to marry Claudius, she influences the legal perception of Ophelia’s ambiguous death, and she constantly struggles to maintain the integrity of her family, eventually repenting her actions, realising the corruption that she has aided. Ophelia uses her agency to actively speak out against the cancerous corruption and injustice that exists in the Danish court, exploiting her madness as a means of astute communication. Finally, both Gertrude and Ophelia commit ambiguous suicides, using their deaths as subversive acts against the Danish Court. Shakespeare portrayed women with louder voices than traditionally accepted, and through these two character’s divergence from the paradigm, Shakespeare created radical illustrations of women, lighting small sparks that would grow and contribute to the eventual flame of feminism in the years to come.
Women in Elizabethan times were born simply with less power and agency than men, however Gertrude acquires and uses agency through her actions, becoming a more powerful character. Though she has sovereignty and is self assured, she is naive, and allows herself to be manipulated by Claudius, therefor taking some of her agency away. Despite this, Gertrude had a large amount of power throughout the play, having the sole vote as to the fate of the Danish Monarchy and actively choosing to marry Claudius. She is aware of the abnormality of her marriage, as when asked by Claudius for the reason for Hamlet’s madness, she replied quite simply ‘I doubt it is no other but the main: His father’s death and our o’erhasty marriage.’ (Act 2 scene 2). This shows the … Gertrude comes into her own after Ophelia’s death, possibly taking something away from Ophelia’s speech, and masks her suicide by illustrating the circumstance of her death as a tragic accident. There, on the pendant boughs her coronet weeds / Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke, / When down her weedy trophies and herself / Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide, And mermaid-like’ Not only does she describe the incident as an accident, she uses language that paints a picture of Ophelia as innocent and naive, illustrating her as ‘mermaid-like’. Through this she manipulates and influences the legal perception to help ensure Ophelia’s fate, not letting her be buried at a crossroads, away from friends and family. Whether or not she saw this tragic incident, she begins to act the way she believes to be right, away from the politically and socially accepted response to suicide.
Ophelia can be argued for having the most agency of any of the characters in the book. After suffering loss and rejection, she is forced to make decisions independently from the men in her life, where she makes choices that are noble and highlight the contrast between the injustice of the men and the hopelessness of her situation. Ophelia is initially portrayed as being naive and dependant on the her father and brother, as she accepts their arguments against her affections towards Hamlet. However she talks back to her brother saying ‘Do not, as some ungracious pastors do, / show me the steep and thorny way to heaven/ whiles … Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads / and recks not his own rede.’ Here she speaks actively about his tendencies towards sleeping around and tells him to practice what he preaches. She speaks outwardly about her own values. Ophelia begins to speak out against the royal family in act IV as her search for justice and her unfair treatment of herself begins. After Polonius dies, Ophelia has no male figures in her life to instruct her as to what to do, and she begins to assert her own beliefs, speaking out against the corruption of the Court. She says ‘There’s fennel for you, and columbines.—There’s rue for you, and here’s some for me. … I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died.’ Violets are associated with faithfulness and in speaking of them, she makes accusations as to the betrayal of her father. Even when she may be mentally unstable, she uses her power as a form of political rebellion.