Frailty Thy Name is Woman: Depiction of Female Characters in Hamlet

Hamlet is one of the largest books for Shakespeare to have ever been written, where only two female characters are introduced, being Ophelia and Gertrude, within Shakespeare’s longest play, with it being over thirty thousand words. Therefore it can be said that the women of Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’ appear to be inferior as well as submissive, who die impulsively after the mistreatment of men. However, during the seventeenth century, male actors were more superior as they were typically the actors who played both male and female characters in theatre, showing the inferiority status of women leading to them being emphasised as repressed, and so throughout the play, Hamlet’s soliloquies will dramatize the idea of a man wrestling his thoughts to make sense of his complexed feelings and emotions.

In act one, scene two, Hamlet is presented as a misogynistic character as his sexist views begin to seep out his hate for women overall and can be seen when he exclaims, “frailty, thy name is woman,” which highlights the fact that women are feeble due to the fact that he generalizes his mother’s faults, which can be seen in the frailty of all ‘woman,’ which shows the extent of his hatred towards his mother. However, not in the sense that they are physically weak, but instead that they lack moral principles and strength given that he views Gertrude as a woman, who lacks the moral fortitude to resist being seduced by Claudius and remarrying so quickly after the death of his father. Due to this, he argues that she is immoral due to the marriage following quickly after his father’s death, despite the fact that widowed women were not expected to remarry, but instead to dedicate their lives in providing for and raising their children. Though, Freud had argued that women’s egos were not as developed as those of men and therefore were prone to acts of immorality, although her remarriage is not as shocking to modern audience as it was at the time the play was written! The noun, ‘frailty’ represents ‘woman’ as they are vulnerable in nature and so she is weak because she has committed a sin. This is continued with him being more disappointed as she proves that she is weaker than men as Hamlet speaks to Gertrude with a passionate anger, which shows her dominance as he intrudes in her privacy and sexual life as he says it is, “with such dexterity to incestuous sheets!”. The hissing sibilants in Hamlet’s words convey the repulsion as he imagines his mother and uncle in bed together, showing Gertrude’s shameful conduct has made him lose faith in all woman and their respect for them. An audience in the Elizabethan period would have also found it disturbing if a woman had slept with a sibling’s spouse as it was considered incestuous by social convention. This, therefore, gives the idea of men regulating women given that it mirrors societal needs of women to have a husband to keep things stable and in check as Hamlet’s mistreatment of the female characters in the play is a vain attempt to sublimate his own feminine characteristics. On the other hand, some may argue that scholars have speculated that Hamlet’s fixation with the wrongfulness of Gertrude’s incestuous marriage to her dead husband’s brother was meant to make a favourable impression on Queen Elizabeth, who was the reigning monarch at the time Shakespeare wrote Hamlet.

Nevertheless, Gertrude can be seen as solidary and keeping the uniting of women as she responds to Laertes saying, “as one incapable of her own distress” which shows that she is reflecting Ophelia’s innocence, with this description being pathos, which suggests that Ophelia’s death could have been caused by physical frailty as she was “incapable” of handling her “own distress,” making the audience feel pitiful for Ophelia. This explains how Ophelia was “pull’d the poor wretch from her melodious lay to muddy death”, where her “melodious lay” suggests to an Elizabethan audience that she feels at ease around the water and it is soothing for her. To add on, it can be implied that Ophelia was struggling and drowning causing her to die and this can be seen when Gertrude bellowed that “her clothes spread wide, and mermaid-like awhile they bore her up (…) she chanted snatches of old tunes,” with this powerful imagery showing her concern for Ophelia and so presenting Gertrude as a caring and loving woman. This is supported by Carolyn Heilbrun, a critic, who says that the audience “fails to see Gertrude as the strongminded, intelligent (…) sensible woman that she is,” especially since she a formidable widow as she can be seen similar to Elizabeth the first, though she did later on marry Claudius in order to keep her throne stable.

In spite of this, it can be interpreted for Ophelia, this scene in act four, scene seven is so poignant that Ophelia may feel as if she no longer belongs to anyone as if she has no longer has any reason to live given that her father is dead and her lover (Hamlet) has been callously unkind to her and therefore this may suggest that it would have been unclear for her as to what her future would have been like if her life had not ended there since she became physically weak over the mourning of her father enough to let life defeat her and therefore Ophelia is presented as a weak victim. For a modern audience, victims of suicide (i.e. Ophelia) would feel sympathetic and have empathy for the desperation that preceded their demise, yet an Elizabethan audience saw this as a gruesome form of murder. Subsequently, comparing Ophelia with Gertrude is incompatible because Gertrude does not mourn over the loss of her previous husband as well as Hamlet’s feelings, of anguish, as he is cantankerous over the loss of his father, similar to Ophelia. This can be seen when she responds to his grief with the neglecting words being, “cast knighted colour off,” with the word ‘cast’ connoting with a mask, that can be simply removed so that Hamlet can be at ease. This highlights her lack of empathy overall about the situation and is supported by a critic named A.C. Bradley as he describes her being a “soft animal nature, very dull and very shallow” as she does not seem to care at all about her real family, but instead her happiness and her pleasure that she only wants interest and attention in.

The presentation of women in the play as a whole is presenting the icon of women as victims. This is because both female characters are considered naïve and sexually revolting, a form of misogyny due to Gertrude’s relationship with Claudius and the undermining of Ophelia’s knowledge by Polonius and Laertes, who use her for their own benefit. Though in ‘Hamlet’ both sexes display the same experience of loosing a loved one and therefore the same bereavement they both encounter. For a Shakespearean audience, the way women were treated is known due to the standards of the patriarchal society, but for a modern audience it would result in discrimination towards women of their sexuality as it would come out as offensive!