Hamlet and the Oedipus Complex
Hamlet and the Oedipus ComplexThe Oedipus Complex is a theory formed by Sigmund Freud, stating that individuals have a repressed desire for sexual involvement with the parent of the opposite sex while feeling rivalry with the parent of the same sex. There is much evidence in the play that suggests Hamlet is a victim of the Oedipus Complex.
In the beginning of the play when Hamlet is reciting his first soliloquy, he makes may references to his disgust in his mother when she is with other men. “Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him, as if increase of appetite had grown.” He says this of his deceased father. He does not want to remember how his mother hung on his father, as if to satisfy some great appetite, a need for his love. He tells that his mother married his uncle with “most wicked speed,” to “incestuous sheets.” He then continues, “It is not nor it cannot come to good; But break, my heart; for I must hold my tongue.” Hamlet must keep quiet about his feelings and it tears him apart.
If Hamlet does, indeed, have the Oedipus Complex, he would have violent and hateful feelings toward his father, perhaps even enough hatred in him to kill his father. When Horatio and Marcellus tell Hamlet of their encounter with his dead father’s ghost, Hamlet voices that it is very strange, but also he also states, “This troubles me.” If he loves his mother and hates his father, he would not want to be concerned with his father after he is supposed to be dead and out of the picture. Hamlet asks his friends, “Arm’d, say you?… From top to toe? … Look’d he frowningly?” Perhaps Hamlet is concerned that his father knows of Hamlet’s relief in his father’s death, and is worried that...
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