Sandra Gilbert Gender

Freud and Sandra Gilbert meet at Starbucks to discuss Ophelia in Act 4 scene 5. Gilbert is examining Ophelia’s madwoman image while Freud is diagnosing her with hysterics.
FREUD: Ophelia is to be diagnosed with hysterics, because she is bringing her fears into account when she is singing her song. Especially the part where she says, “He is dead and gone lady/ He is dead and gone”(93) she is realizing that her father is gone. This is her female trouble and she needs to be treated medicine for her hysterics. Her female trouble is prompted by her sexuality because she has a uterus and that is where her hysteria is coming from.
GILBERT: So, you believe she is a madwoman?
FREUD: I believe that she has hysterics because she is having a fantasy about Valentine’s day and showing it through her song. She is also relating injustice to her father’s death by saying “At his head a grass green turf,/ At his heels a stone” (93). So, if that is what you call a madwoman then, yes, she is a madwoman.
According to you, Oedipus complex manifests itself at the age of five. You say that the Oedipus complex is where a boy unconsciously is fighting for the love of his mother with his father. We could simply say that Ophelia that since her mother is not in the picture Ophelia does not have to fight for the love of her father, because she already has it. This makes his death send her into a depression. Shakespeare uses madwomen Ophelia to show Hamlet as the hero of the