Portrayal Of Women In Hamlet Essay

To what extent are women in "Hamlet" victims in a man's world?

Although Shakespeare's primary concern in his plays is not to portray women as victim's, to an outsider looking in this is what it may seem like as there are only two women in the play (Ophelia; Polonius' daughter, and Gertrude; Queen and Hamlet's mother) and both end up dying. Some people say that Shakespeare presents women throughout "Hamlet" as easy to convince and submissive to men and their demands. This is not too strange for a play of Shakespeare's time however as in the past, women were regularly portrayed as socially and mentally weaker than men. A prime example of the weakness shown in the women is in act three, scene four in which Hamlet confronts his mother for the first time about her "incestuous" marriage to his father's brother. From the very start of the scene, Hamlet ultimately has control over the conversation which already shows weakness on
Hamlet stabs Polonius thinking that it may be Claudius and even though this opens a new world of freedom for Ophelia, it is also obviously very upsetting and traumatic for her to deal with, especially as it was her love that killed him. After the death of Polonius, Ophelia goes insane and spends her days singing songs that make no sense to anyone but herself. She is found dead later on in the play drowned and it is quite possible that she killed herself to escape her madness. The only reason for Ophelia's madness is the men in the play and the way they treated her throughout; her father controlled her and caused her to unfairly loose her love, her brother agreed with Polonius and forced Hamlet and Ophelia apart and Hamlet was rude and hurtful and ended up murdering her father. In this way, Ophelia can be seen as a victim in a man's world because they lead her life for her and drove her to insanity that in turn killed