| Hamlet’s desire to cleanse his mother is his attempt to rectify her image in his eyes and indicative of the patriarchal society in the 17th century | 1)Point on Gertrude and the patriachy |
| ‘in the rank sweat of an enseamed bed…over the nasty sty’; ‘Something is rotten in the state of Denmark’; ‘act’…’blurs the grace and blush of modesty, calls virtue hypocrite’; ‘blister’ and ‘rose’; ‘get thee to a nunnery’ to Ophelia | 1) Quotes |
| Mary Queen of Scots; marriage to brother in law condemned in Leviticus and was used by HVIII | 1) Context |
| ‘Characters struggle unsuccessfully to reconstruct a coherent worldview from the ruins of the old’ Kastan | 1) Critics |
| Shakespeare adeptly portrays both Ophelia’s real madness and Hamlet’s feigned madness thus demonstrating the supposed ‘frailty’ of the female mind in Elizabethan England. (Talk about sexualised treatment) | 2) On Ophelia’s madness |
| ‘By Cock [men] are to blame’; ‘tumbled me’; (Polonius thinks that Hamlet has succumbed to * without considering his daughter might too be subject to the same kind of madness) ‘the very ecstasy of love’; Hamlet: ‘you are a fishmonger’; ‘I am but mad north-north-west’ | 2) Quotes |
| Women’s minds were considered weaker than men’s and less able to withstand trauma as their minds were governed by an inconsistent moon | 2) Context |
| Katherine Mansfield: ‘poor wispy Ophelia’ | 2) Critics |
| Ophelia is treated by Polonius and Laertes as a passive and easily manipulated female ie as a pawn in Claudius’ and Polonius’ entrapment of Hamlet | 3)Point on Ophelia and Polonius |
| ‘Think yourself a baby/ That you have ta’en these tender for true pay/ Which are not sterling’ | 3) Quotes |
| Renassaince women were ‘chattels’ -no seperate identity in the eyes of law. Hope of good marriage relied on virginity | 3) Context |
| View Ophelia’s character as limiting and constraining attitudes to women at the time | 3) Feminist critics |
Hamlet: Gender
August 18, 2019