Ophelia

Of all the pivotal characters in Hamlet, Ophelia is the most static and one-dimensional. She has the potential to become a tragic heroine -- to overcome the adversities inflicted upon her -- but she instead crumbles into insanity, becoming merely tragic. This is because Ophelia herself is not as important as her representation of the dual nature of women in the play. Ophelia's distinct purpose is to show at once Hamlet's warped view of women as callous sexual predators, and the innocence and virtue of women.

The extent to which Hamlet feels betrayed by Gertrude is far more apparent with the addition of Ophelia to the play. Hamlet's feelings of rage against his mother can be directed toward Ophelia, who is, in his estimation, hiding her base nature behind a guise of impeccability.

Through Ophelia we witness Hamlet's evolution, or de-evolution into a man convinced that all women are whores; that the women who seem most pure are inside black with corruption and sexual desire. And if women are harlots, then they must have their procurers. Gertrude has been made a whore by Claudius, and Ophelia has been made a whore by her father. In Act II, Polonius makes arrangements to use the alluring Ophelia to discover why Hamlet is behaving so curiously. Hamlet is not in the room but it seems obvious from the following lines that he has overheard Polonius trying to use his daughter's charms to suit his underhanded purposes. In Hamlet's distraught mind, there is no gray area: Polonius prostitutes his daughter. And Hamlet tells Polonius so to his face, labeling him a "fishmonger" (despite the fact that Polonius cannot decipher the meaning behind Hamlet's words). As Kay Stanton argues in her essay Hamlet's Whores:

Perhaps it may be granted...that what makes a woman a whore in the Hamlets' estimation is her sexual use by not one man but by more than one man.... what seems to enrage [Hamlet] in the 'nunnery' interlude is that Ophelia has put her sense of love and duty for another man above her sense of love and duty for him, just as Gertrude put her sense of love and duty for her new husband above her sense of love and duty for her old. Gertrude chose a brother over a dead Hamlet; Ophelia chooses a father over a living Hamlet: both choices can be read as additionally sexually perverse in being, to Hamlet, 'incestuous'. (Stanton,New Essays on Hamlet 168-9)

But, to the rest of us, Ophelia represents something very different. To those who are not blinded by hurt and rage, Ophelia is the epitome of goodness. Very much like Gertrude, young Ophelia is childlike and naive. Unlike Queen Gertrude, Ophelia has good reason to be unaware of the harsh realities of life. She is very young, and has lost her mother, possibly at birth. Her father, Polonius, and brother, Laertes, love Ophelia tremendously, and have taken great pains to shelter her. She is not involved with matters of state; she spends her days no doubt engaged in needlepoint and flower gathering. She returns the love shown to her by Polonius and Laertes tenfold, and couples it with complete and unwavering loyalty. "Her whole character is that of simple unselfish affection" (Bradley 130). Even though her love for Hamlet is strong, she obeys her father when he tells her not to see Hamlet again or accept any letters that Hamlet writes. Her heart is pure, and when she does do something dishonest, such as tell Hamlet that her father has gone home when he is really behind the curtain, it is out of genuine fear. Ophelia clings to the memory of Hamlet treating her with respect and tenderness, and she defends him and loves him to the very end despite his brutality. She is incapable of defending herself, but through her timid responses we see clearly her intense suffering:

Hamlet: ...I did love you once.
Ophelia: Indeed, my, lord, you made me believe so.
Hamlet: You should not have believed me...I loved you not.
Ophelia: I was the more deceived.

Her frailty and innocence work against her as she cannot cope with the unfolding of one traumatic event after another. Ophelia's darling Hamlet causes all her emotional pain throughout the play, and when his hate is responsible for her father's death, she has endured all that she is capable of enduring and goes insane. But even in her insanity she symbolizes, to everyone but Hamlet, incorruption and virtue. "In her wanderings we hear from time to time an undertone of the deepest sorrow, but never the agonized cry of fear or horror which makes madness dreadful or shocking. And the picture of her death, if our eyes grow dim in watching it, is still purely beautiful". (Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy 132-3). The bawdy songs that she sings in front of Laertes, Gertrude, and Claudius are somber reminders that the corrupt world has taken its toll on the pure Ophelia. They show us that only in her insanity does she live up to Hamlet's false perception of her as a lascivious woman.

Gertrude
Gertrude is, more so than any other character in the play, the antithesis of her son, Hamlet. Hamlet is a scholar and a philosopher, searching for life's most elusive answers. He cares nothing for this "mortal coil" and the vices to which man has become slave. Gertrude is shallow, and thinks only about her body and external pleasures. Like a child she longs to be delighted. We do not see much of her in daily activity, but if we could we would see a woman enraptured by trinkets and fine clothes, soft pillows and warm baths. Gertrude is also a very sexual being, and it is her sexuality that turns Hamlet so violently against her. The Ghost gives Hamlet, who is already disgusted with his mother for marrying his uncle such a short time after his father's death, even more disturbing information about the Queen:
Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast,
With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts,--
O wicked wit, and gifts that have the power
So to seduce!--won to his shameful lust
The will of my most seeming-virtuous queen. (I.V.42-5)
Many critics misread the line "adulterate beast" as proof that Gerturde had been the lover of Claudius even before Hamlet's father had died. This would make the Queen a far more loathsome character than Shakespeare had intended, and the rest of the play makes no mention of this adultery. Adulterate, by definition, means to change to a worse state by mixing; to contaminate with base matter. And Claudius has indeed, according to the Ghost, contaminated his precious Gertrude, but this does not mean that Claudius did so before Hamlet's father died. If Gertrude were an adulteress, she would have been almost certainly been involved in Claudius' plot of murder, and therefore she would be the play's villainess and not its child-like victim. Claudius would believe her to be an accomplice and confide in her, but he does not. Moreover, if it were true, it most surely would be foremost on Hamlet's mind, but when Hamlet confronts Gertrude in her closet and announces all her crimes, he does not once even imply that she has committed adultery. And, as Olav Lokse points out in his book Outrageous Fortune:
[The scholar J.W. Draper] also draws attention to the Ghost's complaint that he was "Of life, of crown, of queen at once dispatch'd" (I.v.75), which is echoed by Claudius's "My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen", in III, iii, 55, which may be taken to indicate the sequence in which the pre-play events had occurred. (82)
That Gertrude has an aversion to the truth is not in dispute. She lies to herself about the consequences of her actions, and she lies to those around her. But she lies to protect. Hers are not cruel and wicked falsehoods; hers are white lies that she feels she must tell in order to keep her and those around her safe physically and emotionally. She must tell the King that Hamlet has killed Polonius, but, she does what she can to help Hamlet, telling Claudius that Hamlet "weeps for what is done" when clearly he does not.
On the surface it is hard to comprehend why Hamlet, his father, and Claudius all have such a deep devotion to Gertrude. But the qualities that save her from condemnation along with Claudius are subtly woven into the play. She loves Hamlet, and, underneath her shallow exterior, shows great emotion when he confronts her. Gertrude truly does not know what she has done to make Hamlet so furious, and it is only when he tells her that she understands her actions to be wrong:
O Hamlet, speak no more:
Thou turn'st my very eyes into my soul,
And there I see such black and grained spots
As will not leave their tinct (III.iv.88-91)
...O speak to me no more;
these words like daggars enter my ears;
No more, sweet Hamlet! (III.iv.94-6)
There is no reason to believe that Gertrude is lying to appease Hamlet in the above lines. No where else in the play is Gertrude portrayed as cunning or Janus-faced, as is Claudius.
Even though Hamlet lashes out at her with all the rage he can muster, Gertrude remains faithful to him, protecting him fron the King. And, although her love for Claudius is wrong by moral standards, she is now his queen, and remains loyal to him. We see she has the potential for great love -- she wants to protect Claudius from the mob, and she cares deeply about Ophelia and Polonius, and is concerned for Hamlet in the duel even though she has no idea that it is a trap. It is Gertrude's underlying propensity for goodness that redeems her. Her men forgive her for her shallow, sensual nature and her addictions to comfort and pleasure because they see that she is innocent of premeditation. It is sad but fitting that Gertrude meet her end drinking from the poisoned goblet, demanding that she taste what is in the pretty cup, as trusting as a new-born babe.
References
Bradley, A.C. Shakespearean Tragedy. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1966.
Burnett, Mark, ed. New Essays on Hamlet. New York: AMS Press, 1994.
Evans Lloyd Gareth. Shakespeare IV. London: Oxford university Press, 1967.
Granville-Barker, Henry. Prefaces to Shakespeare. New York: Hill and Wang, 1970.
Loske, Olaf. Outrageous Fortune. Oslo: Oslo University Press, 1960.
Muir, Kenneth. Shakespeare and the Tragic Pattern.
How to cite this article:
Mabillard, Amanda. Shakespeare's Gertrude. Shakespeare Online. 20 Aug. 2000. (date when you accessed the information) < >.

Revisiting Shakespeare and Gender

Jeanne Gerlach, Rudolph Almasy, and Rebecca Daniel

Just as the Renaissance defined female roles, it clearly delegated certain behaviors to males. Theirs was a patriarchal society. We catch a glimpse of this patriarchy in a play like Romeo and Juliet with the power of Lord Capulet. It's easy to see that the male had a place and a role to play, just as the female had a lesser place and a role. The woman is either in the house of her father as Juliet is or in the house of her husband as Lady Macbeth is. Notice in Macbeth that Lady Macbeth is observed only within the castle at Enverness, and it is her duty to make "preparations" for the arrival of King Duncan. Lord Capulet underscores this female responsibility when he announces, in anticipation of the marriage of Paris and Juliet, that he will "play the huswife for this once." In Macbeth, as in Renaissance society, men were expected to engage in public affairs (as soldiers, politicians, leaders), to be talkers, make decisions, move events forward. They led lives which were duty-bound (mostly to the state), aggressive, and self-satisfying. On the other hand, women were expected to assume a more passive role. For example, at the beginning of Romeo and Juliet when the boys are milling around the streets of Verona and talking dirty about girls, Sampson (one of Capulet's servants) remarks, "And therefore women, being the weaker vessels, are ever thrust to the wall; therefore I will push Montague's men from the wall, and thrust his maids to the wall." The passage is ripe with stereotypical Renaissance thinking: women are weaker (physically, emotionally, intellectually, morally), and they exist for male sexual gratification-they're only good for "thrusting" to the wall. When Lady Macbeth decides to become an "active" partner in her husband's deadly mischief, she needs to pray "Come, you spirits ... unsex me here, / And fill me from the crown to the toe topful / Of direst cruelty," which suggests that it is not "natural" for a woman to be cruel.

Yet, as is often the case, these ideological statements, often placed in the mouths of minor characters, are questioned, proved false, reversed in the telling of the story. Shakespeare rises above the stereotypical views of Renaissance society as he portrays women as more than passive vessels. For example, the love of Romeo and Juliet is an equitable experience. Each assumes responsibilities for making their relationship work. Lady Macbeth goes beyond Juliet's collaborative nature and takes charge of her relationship with Macbeth. When Macbeth sends his wife a letter relating all the strange happenings and prophecies so that she may know all-know that what is promised is promised not only to him but to her, he calls her "my dearest partner of greatness." Perhaps she sees herself more "manly" than her husband, for she fears his kindness and passivity, calling him to her-"Hie thee hither."

Certain characteristics were associated with the male and a different set with the female. Shakespeare reflects this Renaissance distinction between, and joining of, the masculine and the feminine, a juxtaposition which is also apparent in the female monarch of his day, Queen Elizabeth. The chief worry of Elizabethan males was to get the Queen married off to someone so she could produce children. Surely she knew that if she had done just that, she would have lost the great power she had as an unmarried Renaissance female prince. Elizabeth, of course, was not above playing with gender distinctions when it was to her advantage. In her famous speech to the troops at Tilbury who had gathered for the landing of the Spanish Armada, Elizabeth played both the female and the male role: 'I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too ... I myself will take up arms, I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field."