The Women in Hamlets Life
The Women in Hamlets LifeThe Women in Hamlets Life
“I have loved to the point of madness” (F.Sagan). Emotions are a powerful force which can shape a persons entire being and even drive them to madness. In Hamlet, written by William Shakespeare, Hamlet is driven to act on his feelings. Through their impact on his emotions, Gertrude and Ophelia, the two main women in his life influence his every thought, word and action. Hamlet feels great anger towards his mother because she married his uncle Claudius. Hamlet can’t deal with his love for Ophelia, so he uses his antic disposition to push her away. Hamlet finally fulfills his obsession to kill Claudius, but only after losing the two women he cares for most.
Hamlet sees in his mother a manifestation of the premise that an unthinking woman, guided by her emotions, might through her actions inflict great stress upon men. At the same time, such a woman might unknowingly make it very difficult for such men to deal with that stress. The enormity of the stress that Gertrude puts upon Hamlet makes Hamlet develop a substantial resentment towards her. Since to Hamlet, Gertrude embodies the weaknesses of women in general, Hamlet’s resentment towards Gertrude is also projected against women in general. Ordinarily, Hamlet would not greatly resent women, but since in this case they have cornered him into an extremely stressful situation, he becomes exasperated. In his state of stress, the petty resentments he might have previously harboured towards woman for their “mercurial” emotional nature turns into a full-fledged resentment or hatred. Hamlet wants to achieve two goals with respect to Gertrude. One is to express his anger against her, which he harbours for essentially the same reasons that he had it for Ophelia. Two is to somehow induce her to stop loving Claudius. This latter development would eliminate the possibility that Hamlet might feel estrangement from motherly love in attempting to kill or from succeeding in killing Claudius. After all, in killing Claudius, Hamlet would not be killing the man his beloved mother loves. Gertrude would also not condemn Hamlet for killing or attempting to kill Claudius if she did not love Claudius. Thus, Hamlet would have the psychological freedom he would need to kill Claudius and thus relieve him of his obsession
His overall resentment towards women explains why Hamlet berates Ophelia to the point of driving her insane and towards...
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