Gender Roles

While reading an analysis by David Bevington, an editor of one of the editions of Hamlet, I was especially interested in Bevington’s beliefs that “Ophelia is more innocent than her father and brother, and truly more affectionate towards Hamlet.” The specific gender roles in Hamlet are very much apparent. Ophelia, a woman, is seemingly more “innocent” and “affectionate” that her masculine relatives. Still, I included “seemingly” because I am still not sure how to define the relationship between Ophelia and Hamlet. In the two movies we have watched, there have been two different interpretations—one in which Ophelia is frail and innocent and the other in which Ophelia has already submitted to her relationship to Hamlet. Therefore, while Bevington might suppose Ophelia as innocent, appearances are deceiving, as evidenced by Hamlet’s and Claudius’s own respective facades.

However, while I’m not completely sure about Ophelia’s innocence, I can still sympathize with Ophelia. She is under the control of three men and isn’t free to exert her own independence. In fact, Ophelia and even Gertrude both have very few lines in the play, showing their relative unimportance and lack of strength. Ophelia demonstrates her passivity by simply conceding to the commands of her father and her brother. Even today, when we acted out the scene between Ophelia and Hamlet, Hamlet grabs Ophelia’s arm with such a tight hold in a way that is perhaps Hamlet’s way of declaring his power over her.

I feel that it is also important to compare the two central female characters in the play, Ophelia and Gertrude. Both women are defined by their relationships to men. Gertrude, at first married to Hamlet’s father, is now married to Hamlet’s uncle. Whether she married the uncle by choice or was forced to, Gertrude doesn’t seem to have much role in the kingdom except as wife. In a similar way, while Hamlet seems to be a large part of Ophelia’s life, Ophelia is of limited concern to Hamlet. It is no wonder that Hamlet exclaims “frailty, thy name is woman” because the two women in his life are subservient to men and rarely follow their own will.

Besides Ophelia and Gertrude, I also want to comment on Hamlet’s own almost frail state. Hamlet, acting like a madman, seems to be committing the same rash decisions that he accused his mother of doing. I think that, as we read the novel, we are going to realize that Hamlet’s mental state stems from his belief that the world itself is an “unweeded garden/ That grows to seed. Things rank and gross in nature/ Possess it merely.” Hamlet has little faith in the world, and thus, seems to have awakened his own tragic flaw. As he seeks revenge for his father, I think that Hamlet is frail and weak in the sense that he succumbs to his feelings of revenge and hate. Hamlet may not realize it, but just as his mother supposedly “succumbs” to his uncle, Hamlet is falling prey to another evil—an evil that may eventually lead to his downfall.