Frailty Thy Name is Woman: The Feminist Critique of Shakespeare’s Hamlet

Shakespeare’s works had few females because women were not allowed to act in London in the late 1500s and early 1600s. Although there are restrictions on the performance of the female character by banning women’s performance on stage in a play, Shakespeare’s plays do not absent of many female characters that were strong-willed, intelligent, and daring. For example, Juliet Capulet appears to be a shy and innocent girl at the beginning of the play, but until the end, she showed a bravery heart ready to give up life for love. Hamlet is one of Shakespeare’s most successful plays, although Shakespeare used to be famous for creating a strong heroine female character. In Hamlet, the women characters Gertrude and Ophelia do not have a quality of treatment that the reader hopes from Shakespeare’s work. They act either as a theatrical balance to the male characters or as a sounding board for their fine speeches and actions. Readers may comment on the lack of influence of the role of the female characters in Hamlet. Gertrude and Ophelia are really sexual objectification for male characters in the play or is there something else more about them.

Gertrude can be seen as a simple of the lesser and negative stereotypes of women shaped by the patriarchal values and society of the Shakespearean times. In the play, she represents many roles; she is Hamlet’s mother, Queen of Denmark. Moreover, her sensitive role at the widow of the Ghost (King Hamlet), but married to the new king Claudius who is her brother of the deceased husband, presented her in the play as an incestuous woman who only seeks affection. She is the root of the hamlet ambitious hateful because of the loss of the father and the mother betrayed. Her act of hasty marriage to her brother-in-law Claudius, less than two months after the death of her husband is condemned by Hamlet as akin to committing incest; “She married. O, most wicked speed, to post With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!” (Act I, ii, 1404). This action of Gertrude seems to unthink off by today’s standard. However, in the play except for Hamlet and the Ghost, the marriage between Claudius and Gertrude does not receive any criticizing by anyone else in the play. Moreover, the public seems to accept this marriage as a normal event. However, Hamlet still uses his mine set of incestuous marriage to criticize Gertrude and projecting his anger and disappointment to her through the play. By this action, Hamlet not only shows his sexism point of view to women specifically for the mother’s fidelity but also insult and causes psychological struggle. Nonetheless, this opinionated male viewpoint is enough to place Gertrude in a negative predisposition. 

Gertrude could also be considered as a voiceless and silenced character because Shakespeare does not let her have many lines in the play. She does not speak much, this depends on the male characters, Hamlet, Claudius, and the Ghost, to describe and shape her behavior. The audience does not hear enough of her voice, so people cannot catch what she is thinking. She was described by Hamlet and the Ghost at the lustful women, although she herself has never given the audience any sign of being lustful. Her silence is perhaps considered one of the many signs of weakness which Hamlet can not overlook it. That why he despises her marriage and also Hamlet is the most ardent critic of her, when he spewed his most famous notion of women’s frailty, “frailty, thy name is woman!” (Act I, ii, 1404). Shakespeare states that her silence is meant to show her weakness. Moreover, in the eyes of Hamlet, Gertrude is guilty and is blamed for being the source of problems in Denmark. She is guilty of not properly grieving King Hamlet as Hamlet himself mourned; “O God, a beast, that wants discourse of reason, Would have mourned longer – married with my uncle,” (Act I, ii, 1404) Gertrude is referred to as “a beast” that lacks the faculty of reason or common sense by marrying her brother-in-law shortly after her husband’s death. According to Hamlet’s subjective, Gertrude should mourn King Hamlet for at least half a year, wear mourning clothes for two years, and cannot participate in public for at least one year. Instead, she even asks Hamlet to “cast thy knighted color off” (Act I, ii, 1402), to stop wearing black mourning garments and to “not forever with thy vailéd lids” (Act I, ii, 1402), to stop lowering his eyes. This seemingly meanless conversation with Hamlet is a prelude to Gertrude being viewed as a shallow, sinful woman, only wanting to maintain her high position. Eventually, Gertrude has regained fairness by the act of defending Hamlet when the veil covering the truth of the death of the king is clipping, so she can wash away all of her sins were created by the subjective view of Hamlet. She gives up her life for Hamlet in the same way of Shakespeare always portrays her as a quiet woman but with decisive actions. Gertrude seemed like a character with little influence in the play but it was a misconception. She is the reason to drive Hamlet to his frantically revenge and also she is a Hamlet protector to the end. Shakespeare clearly uses Gertrude as a figure for the most important core values of a woman who never abandons their child.

The patriarchal society of Western culture held powerfully negative implications over women. In this way the freedom for women to express themselves was not considered by men. Unfortunately, the male regard for females was, connected with the female body. Thus it was acceptable that the female body was a man’s “property” and the dominance over women was a life goal for men in the Renaissance age. Hamlet’s sexual conversation with Ophelia during the Mousetrap scene would have been acceptable to a Renaissance audience.

Hamlet: Lady, shall I lie in your lap?

Ophelia: No, my lord.

Hamlet: Do you think I meant country matters?

Ophelia: I think nothing, my lord.

Hamlet: That’s a fair thought to lie between maids’ legs. 

It appears to a modern day audience that the “noble” prince shares a very inappropriate joke with Ophelia. In Elizabethan slang, “nothing” was a term for the female genitalia. Thus “nothing” is what lies between maids’ legs, portrays the male visual system of representation and desire, women’s sexual organs, in the words of the French psychoanalyst Luce Irigaray, “represent the horror of having nothing to see”. When Ophelia is mad, Gertrude says that “Her speech is nothing,” mere “unshaped use.” Ophelia’s speech thus represents the fear of having nothing to say in the public. Deprived of thought, sexuality, language, Ophelia’s story becomes the empty circle or mystery of feminine difference, “the cipher of female sexuality to be deciphered by feminist interpretation”. Hamlet wields the power of words as weapon and uses them against Ophelia. Overall, a direct impact on the women in the play comes from powerful use of words. Hamlet and other male characters such as Ophelia’s father and brother, scold Ophelia as if she were a child. They disrespect her as if she is less of a person than they are. At one point Ophelia was told that she should be in a brothel instead of being a ‘breeder of sinners’ (Act III, i, 1440). ‘Get thee to a nunn’ry.’ The term ‘nunnery’ does not mean to have a religious connotation, but is used to disrespect and lash out on innocent Ophelia. In this scene, the hate towards women is amplified. As the play progressed, Hamlet constantly keeps showing his feeling of dissatisfaction with the idea of women altogether. Hamlet speaks to Ophelia offensively so she will not become a ‘breeder of sinners’, because he believes that the sins committed by a child is because the mother is the true sinner. ‘Frailty, thy name is woman!’ (Act I, ii, 1404) The above quote expresses Hamlet feeling that all women are weak. Ophelia is surrounded by powerful men and these men in her life ultimately become the cause of her madness. Ophelia’s portrayal of madness comes into an unusual form which is through song. Ophelia’s death is not represented on stage renders the image of Ophelia singing as less precarious. A speech made by Gertrude only recounts the girl’s death and “marks a crucial moment in the play’s response to the threats of excess and disorder embodied in Ophelia’s music”. Romanska further elaborates that, Shakespeare made the decision to reduce Ophelia significant as a feminine representation by cutting her death from the play’s climax and including Gertrude’s patronizing speech about it. Thus, the character of Ophelia may be portrayed in two senses through her maddening song as an expression of female opposition to male dominance or merely as an insignificant sexual object. 

Either way, Hamlet is primarily about male superiority and Ophelia provides perfect evidence for this statement. No representation of her own character, insufficient lines to explain her own actions and thoughts, and the reduction of her only power which is her music all lead to the conclusion that Shakespeare wrote Hamlet as an anti-feminist text. 

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