In William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, there are various issues regarding gender construction and how women are portrayed in the play. The women of the play have zero to no power and control over situations and are often viewed as weak and incapable. The idea of power and control over women is widely shown through Ophelia’s character, who does not get to choose how her future will play out and who she will spend it with. This thoroughly connects to the Oedipus complex in the play as Gertrude’s sexuality
Portrayal of Women in Shakespeare's Hamlet Shakespeare was possibly the first writer to portray women as strong, crafty, and intelligent. However, he has still received criticism from feminists about his representation of women. Some have even accused him of misogyny. There are only two female characters in the play Hamlet - Gertrude, Hamlet's mother and Ophelia, daughter of Polonius. Any debate based upon gender roles must therefore focus upon these two characters. Shakespeare portrays
Question 12 Shakespeare’s introduction of a ghost in Hamlet serves various objectives in the play, to the characters as well as the audience. The ghost is a controversial character who challenges the audience’s view of the plot, the motifs, as well as the flow of events in the story. The appearance of the ghost is associated with tragedy, usually where the humans entangle with the supernatural forces, but in this case, the ghost seems to conform to human capabilities and relies on other human beings
The revenge tragedy of Shakespeare’s Hamlet examines the submissive representation of women in the Elizabethan era. In the sixteenth century, it was a cultural norm to deem women as inferior to men. Specifically, this patriarchal setting involves Gertrude, the Queen of Denmark and Ophelia, the daughter of Polonius. Through literary analysis, this essay will give insight on the role of women in the Elizabethan era and the depiction of Gertrude and Ophelia as obedient, passive, and dependent characters
is a story of one, or at most two persons. As a rule, they are male protagonists. But to say that Shakespeare’s female characters are shallow, undeveloped and used just as a decoration on the stage is very wrong. Women in Shakespeare’s tragedies have no leading role and they are, to paraphrase Northrop Frye,[1] not tragic heroines, but heroines in a tragedy. All female characters in Shakespeare’s tragedies have one thing in common – they end up dead. It is always an untimely, unnatural death. This
common theme in Shakespeare’s writings is the exploration of gender and sexuality (Gerlach et al.; McManus). His cleverly crafted and complex characters challenge the audience’s expectations of what it means to be masculine or feminine by displaying traits of each gender in single beings and questioning gender roles and standards (Gerlach et al.). This often playful consideration of gender norms was enhanced by the practice of men playing the female parts; in fact, theatres of Shakespeare’s era used costume
between gender roles and social status from a sociological point of view and comparing them to the ways in which we see those differences in literary texts, we can fully understand how these standards are shown. According to Sociology, A Brief Introduction by Richard T. Schaefer, “Research shows that patterns of gender socialization are not homogeneous, but rather vary according to the social class to which a person belongs to” (Schaefer, 221) The differences of social status and gender roles in society
In William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Ophelia is the most static character in the play. Instead of changing through the course of the play, she remains suffering in the misfortunes perpetrated upon her. She falls into insanity and dies a tragic death. Ophelia has issues surviving without a male influence, and her downfall is when all the men in her life abandon her. Hamlet’s Ophelia, is a tragic, insane character that cannot exist on her own. In Elizabethan times, Ophelia is restricted as a woman. She
As Shakespeare wrote Hamlet, the fiction was set in the Renaissance era and therefore the persona of women was reflective of that period. The natural stereotype of that time viewed women as weak, fickle, and dependent of the men in their society and subject to the decisions that men make for them. It was an exceedingly common depiction and very rarely was it proven wrong to the men of that time. Women’s rights were nonexistent in this time period so it wasn’t unusual for the portrayal of women to
AP English Literature & Composition March 14, 2012 Betrayal and Loyalty in William Shakespeare's Plays William Shakespeare is one of the most recognized playwrights in the history of man. People have analyzed every sentence of his works and have taken note of the various styles used in his writing. Ironically enough, little is known about Shakespeare's personal life. It is assumed, however, that like other literary writers, Shakespeare relates occurrences in his life into his writing. The average