Women and Frailty in Shakespeare’s Hamlet

Women and Frailty

The two women in Shakespeare’s tragic play Hamlet play larger parts than meets the eye. These two women embody the saying, “there are no small parts, only small actors.” While Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother, and Ophelia, Hamlet’s lover, are very different and lead different lives, they suffer similar fates. Both women have control not of their lives but of their deaths.Gertrude and Ophelia are anything but independent women. The two women need and rely on the strength of the men in their lives. Once they stray away from these influential men, the women find their ultimate demise.

Gertrude, the Queen of Denmark, appears to have no genuine thoughts. She agrees with her husband each time he opens his mouth. While Hamlet continues to mourn over his father’s death, the King asks, “How is it that the clouds still hang on you?” (I, ii, l. 66). The king implies that Hamlet should be over the recent death of his father. Gertrude echoes Claudius’s statement remarking, “Good Hamlet, cast thy knighted color off,/ And let thing eye look like a friend on Denmark” (I, ii, 68-69). Gertrude lets both her husband, Claudius, and her son walk all over her throughout the play. Claudius is constantly telling his wife, “Come, away,” dismissing her from a room as if she were an animal. When Polonius presents the King and Queen with his theory for Hamlet’s madness, the Queen does not interject or protest. The King asks, “Do you think ‘tis this?” (II, ii, 151) and the Queen merely remarks, “It may be, very like” (II, ii, 152).

Hamlet treats his mother with disrespect and speaks down to her. Hamlet looks down on women as a whole exclaiming, “frailty, thy name is woman” (I, ii, 146) making his views on women very clear. If Gertrude were not so meek and weak, Hamlet would not find it so easy to be disgusted with his mother. Her weakness means she never attempts to discuss her "incestuous" behavior with Hamlet as she is not strong enough to defend herself against his anger. Due to her inaction, Hamlet’s rage grows. Where first he criticized his mother for marrying too soon after his father’s death but he knows he must not speak his true feelings aloud, “Within a month,/ Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears/ Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,/ She married. O, most wicked speed, to post/ With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!/ It is not, nor it cannot come to good./ But break my heart, for I must hold my tongue” (I, ii, 153-159). Hamlet’s attitude soon changes. Hamlet does care about his mother and does not want to hurt her too much. He makes this very evident when he gives his speech for the fifth soliloquy. Hamlet remarks that he must do as his father asked and not punish him mother:

Soft, not to my mother./ O heart, lose not thy nature; let not ever/ The soul of Nero enter this firm bosom./ Let me be cruel, but not unnatural;/ I will speak daggers to her, but use none./ My tongue and soul in this be hypocrites:/ How in my words somever she be shent,/ To give them seals never, my soul, consent! (III, iii, 400-407)

Hamlet knows that what he has to do, he must follow his father’s wishes, all of them. Not only did the ghost request that Hamlet avenge his death but he made sure to keep a watchful eye on his wife. Hamlet gets carried away while speaking with his mother in her bedroom forgetting what he has said about being cruel, but not unnatural. He raises his voice to his mother crying out his feeling:

Sense sure you have,/ Else could you not have motion, but sure that sense/ Is apoplexed, for madness would not err,/ Nor sense to ecstasy was ne’er so thralled/ But it reserved some quantity of choice/ To serve in such a difference. What devil was’t/ That thus hath cozened you at hoodman-blind?/ Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight,/ Ears without hands or eyes, smelling sans all,/ Or but a sickly part of one true sense/ Coul not so mope./ O shame, where is thy blush? Rebellious hell,/ If thou canst mutine in a matron’s bones,/ To flaming youth let virtue be as wax/ And melt in her own fire. Proclaim no shame/ When the compulsive ardor gives the charge,/ Since frost itself as actively doth burn,/ And reason panders will. (III, iv, 72-89)

Hamlet viciously attacks his mother for her marriage to Claudius. He calls her stupid and says that she has no sense. What Hamlet may not have