Hamlet Essay The Unlike Characters of Gertrude and Ophelia

Hamlet -- the Unlike Characters of Gertrude and Ophelia The Shakespearean tragedy Hamlet features two ladies who are very unlike in character. Queen Gertrude, denounced by the ghost as faithless to King Hamlet, is pictured as evil by many, while Ophelia is seen as pure and obedient and full of good virtues. Let’s explore these two unlike people. Rebecca Smith in â€Å"Scheming Adulteress or Loving Mother† presents an unusually â€Å"clean† image of the present queen that is not consistent with that of the old queen presented by the ghost: Although she may have been partially responsible for Claudius’ monstrous act of fratricide and although her marriage to Claudius may have been indirectly responsible for making a†¦show more content†¦. . . O shame! Where is thy blush? Rebellious hell, If thous 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. And of the Queen’s punishment as it goes on throughout the play, there can be no doubt either. Her love for Hamlet, her grief, the woes that come so fast that one treads upon the heel of another, her consciousness of wrong-doing, her final dismay are those also of one whose soul has become alienated from God by sin. (97-98) Very palpable is the moral difference between Ophelia and Gertrude. Disregarding the â€Å"erotically charged† songs (Lehmann and Starks 2) sung by the young girlfriend of the hero in her maddened mental state shortly before her death, one finds nothing incriminating in her conduct. Quite opposite the criminality of the king’s wife is the innocence of Ophelia – this view is generally expressed among Shakespearean critics. Jessie F. O’Donnell expresses the total innocence of the hero’s girlfriend in â€Å"Ophelia,† originally appearing in The American Shakespeare Magazine: O broken lily! how shall one rightly treat of her loveliness, her gentleness and the awful pathos of her fate? Who shall dare to hint that she was not altogether faultless? One feels as if wantonlyShow MoreRelatedComparison Of Ophelia And Hamlet By William Shakespeare1382 Words   |  6 PagesShakespeare portrayed and meant the two major female characters to be (Ophilia and Gertrude), and an example of the interactions between Ophelia and Hamlet, as they were very consistent throughout the story, and are an interesting but very easy display of societal norms at that time. After the fallout of my previous essay I tried to stay as far away from using resources to avoid anything else from happening. So almost all the ideas in this essay are mine. Articles I ended up using were from sparkRead MoreEssay on The Character of Gertrude in Shakespeare’s Hamlet1453 Words   |  6 Pagestragedy, Hamlet, presents ten male characters for every one female character. The only prominent female characters are two: Ophelia, Laertes’ sister and Polonius’ daughter; and Gertrude, the queen and wife of Claudius and mother of Hamlet. This essay will explore the character, role, and importance of Gertrude.    Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude, is apparently disturbed by her son’s appearance in solemn black at the gathering of the court, and she requests of him:      Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Good Hamlet, cast thyRead MoreThe Character of Gertrude in Shakespeare’s Hamlet Essay1558 Words   |  7 Pages    The character of Gertrude in Shakespeare’s tragedy, Hamlet, is not a woman for emulation by others. She is too human, and not very intelligent. Let’s consider her in this essay.    Mary Bradford-Whiting, in her article â€Å"Mothers in Shakespeare† compares the mother of Juliet to the mother of Hamlet:    Juliet has a mother, to whose heart of stone she appeals in vain:    . . . O, sweet my mother, cast me not away! [Romeo and Juliet, III.v.198]    Hamlet has a motherRead More Shakespeares Hamlet Essay: Who is Gertrude?1691 Words   |  7 PagesHamlet –Who is Gertrude?  Ã‚        Ã‚   This essay intends to explore Gertrude’s situation in the play in an attempt to answer many questions about her, the queen, wife of Claudius and former wife of his deceased brother, King Hamlet.    Back in 1883 Samuel Taylor Coleridge in Lectures and Notes on Shakspere and Other English Poets comments on what he interprets as a problem or inconsistency in the presentation of the character Gertrude in Shakespeare’s tragedy, Hamlet:      Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Ham.Read MoreEssay on Women Dont Exist in Their Own Right in the Play1641 Words   |  7 Pages In the time `Hamlet was performed, the Elizabethan audience would not have believed in equality for women, so the play seems far more sexist to us, the modern audience, than it ever would have to the Elizabethans. In our lifetimes women are viewed as equals to men, women can have a job and dont have to take orders from the men in their family. As Paul Thomas says in `Authority and Disorder in Tudor times, `It would seem that the least dignified, that of uncomplicated submission in aRead More Custom Written Essays: Contrasting Gertrude and Ophelia of Shakespeares Hamlet1951 Words   |  8 PagesContrasting the Ladies in Hamlet  Ã‚        Ã‚  Ã‚   How can anyone view or read the Shakespearean tragedy of Hamlet without observing an obvious differentiation between the characters of the two female characters? And yet, not all critics agree on even the most salient features of this contrast.    Quite opposite the criminality of the king’s wife is the innocence of Ophelia – this view is generally expressed among Shakespearean critics. Jessie F. O’Donnell expresses the total innocence of theRead More Shakespeares Hamlet Essay: Observations on Gertrude2572 Words   |  11 PagesAnd What of Gertrude in Hamlet?      Ã‚  Ã‚   To what extent does evil reign in the heart of Queen Gertrude in Shakespeare’s Hamlet? This essay will delve into her character, and into the deposit of literary criticism regarding her, in order to analyze her character in depth.    Philip Edwards’ â€Å"The Ghost: Messenger from a Higher Court of Values?† expresses the necessity of the Ghost leaving the guilt of Gertrude to the afterlife:    The final injunction, ‘Leave her to heaven’, mustRead MoreFemale Characters in Hamlet4091 Words   |  17 Pagesis a story of one, or at most two persons. As a rule, they are male protagonists. But to say that Shakespeare’s female characters are shallow, undeveloped and used just as a decoration on the stage is very wrong. Women in Shakespeare’s tragedies have no leading role and they are, to paraphrase Northrop Frye,[1] not tragic heroines, but heroines in a tragedy. All female characters in Shakespeare’s tragedies have one thing in common – they end up dead. It is always an untimely, unnatural death. ThisRead More Shakespeares Hamlet - Gertrude Essay examples2462 Words   |  10 PagesRegarding Hamlet’s Gertrude  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚        Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Angela Pitt in â€Å"Women in Shakespeare’s Tragedies† comments that Shakespeare’s Gertrude in Hamlet is, first and foremost, a mother:    Gertrude evinces no such need to justify her actions and thereby does not betray any sense of guilt. She is concerned with her present good fortune, and neither lingers over the death of her first husband nor analyses her motives in taking another. . . .She seems a kindly, slow-witted, rather self-indulgentRead More Shakespeares Hamlet - Regarding Gertrude Essay1965 Words   |  8 PagesRegarding Hamlet’s Gertrude  Ã‚        Ã‚  Ã‚   In William Shakespeare’s most famous tragedy Hamlet, the audience meets a queen who is a former and present queen. She was unhappy before – how does she feel now? Is she evil, guilty, motherly, lascivious? The multiple aspects of her personality deserve our attention.    Angela Pitt in â€Å"Women in Shakespeare’s Tragedies† comments that Shakespeare’s Gertrude in Hamlet is, first and foremost, a mother:    Gertrude evinces no such need to justify