Hamlet was one of Shakespeare’s biggest books, with more than 30000 words. Ophelia is the only female character introduced. Shakespeare’s Hamlet portrays women as inferior and submissive who are impulsively killed after men abuse them. Male actors were a superior class in the seventeenth century because they portrayed both female and male characters.
Hamlet becomes a misogynist in Act One, Scene Two. He shows his hatred for his own mother by generalizing her faults. Hamlet does not mean that women are weak physically, but rather that they lack the moral strength and principles to resist Claudius’ seduction and marry so soon after his father died. Because of this, he says that she’s immoral as a widowed woman for marrying quickly after her father’s passing, even though widowed wives were not supposed to remarry. They were instead expected to raise their children and provide for them. Freud believed that women had less developed egos than men, which made them more susceptible to immoral behavior. Although her remarriage was shocking at the time, it isn’t as shocking today. The word ‘frailty,’ is used to represent a woman because they are weak and vulnerable by nature. Hamlet becomes more and more frustrated as Gertrude demonstrates that she has a weaker nature than men. Hamlet shows his anger by speaking to Gertrude in a way that reveals her dominance. Hamlet uses hissing sounds to express his disgust when he imagines Gertrude in bed with his mother. He has lost faith in all women, as their conduct is shameful. A woman who slept with her sister’s spouse would also have disturbed an Elizabethan audience as incestuous was the social norm. Hamlet’s treatment of female characters is an attempt to sublimate Hamlet’s own feminine traits. It is possible that Hamlet was trying to impress Queen Elizabeth by focusing on the incompetence of Gertrude to handle her own “distress” as a way to show his solidarity and keep women united. Gertrude, however, can be seen to reflect Ophelia as she says, “as a woman incapable of her distress”, which shows her innocence. The “melodious lie” of Ophelia suggests that the Elizabethan audience is able to understand her comfort around water. Gertrude’s powerful words “her clothes were spread wide and they carried her up (…) like mermaids” show her love and concern for Ophelia. Carolyn Heilbrun, an American critic, says the audience does not see Gertrude’s intelligence and strength.
Ophelia could feel unworthy of anyone’s love and affection because of the death of her father. Her lover Hamlet was also cruel towards her. Modern audiences view suicide victims (i.e. Ophelia might feel sympathy for the desperateness that led to their deaths, but Elizabethan audiences would view this as a horrifying form of killing. Ophelia is not comparable to Gertrude because Gertrude’s grief is different from Hamlet, who has a similar cantankerous reaction over his father’s death. She responds to Hamlet’s grief by saying, “cast off knighted colours,” with ‘cast’ meaning a mask. This is a way of putting Hamlet at ease. It shows her general lack of empathy and is backed up by A.C. Bradley who describes her as a “soft, animal-like nature” that only cares about herself and her own happiness.
The play presents women as victims. Because both females are misogynists, they are called naive. Gertrude is with Claudius. Ophelia has been used by Polonius and Laertes to undermine her knowledge. In ‘Hamlet,’ both genders experience loss and bereavement in the same way. Shakespearean audiences would know the standard of treatment for women because of patriarchal society. But a contemporary audience might find it offensive.