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Rose, Huntington Library and Gardens, Pasadena, California, USA (photo (c) Ulrike Boehm; all rights reserved)

Hamlet and Women

Eve and Her Daughters

"Frailty, thy name is woman!"

Each word fired off like an arrow from Apollo's quiver: the centerpiece of Prince Hamlet's first major monologue, and ever since first spoken just over fourhundred years ago by Shakespeare's original Prince of Denmark, Richard Burbage, on the stage of London's Globe Theatre, the quintessential male indictment of Eve and all her daughters for every conceivable woe ever brought on mankind – and on man – since a woman first listened to a serpent's lies.

For all is not well in Denmark: Hamlet's father, the rightful King, has suddenly died, allegedly stung by just such a serpent; Hamlet's uncle Claudius has swiftly sidelined the Prince's own aspirations to rule and ascended the throne in his stead; and last but not least, Hamlet's mother, Gertrude, has consented to marry Claudius a little month after the death of her first husband. And although Hamlet does not yet know exactly how all of this fits together, he has premonitions of the worst kind, summed up in his damning indictment of his own mother.

Except that ... Gertrude didn't murder her first husband. Gertrude isn't trying to govern in his stead. Gertrude didn't, so far as we know at least, engage in any extramarital affair before Claudius came along: indeed, for thirty-odd years, she seems to have been the loyal wife of a man whose first (and royal) duties necessarily had to be to his country, not to her. Yet, while she probably did try to make the most of any attentions her husband could give to her, she seems to have borne the burdens of her position without any public show of malcontent, or without ever conspiring against her own husband.

No, indeed, Claudius is the cause and origin of all of Denmark's woes: He is the one who committed regicide and fratricide when he murdered his own brother. It is his reign that is driving the country closer and closer to the abyss of social, economic, and moral bankruptcy; based on a thoroughly corrupt world view that we have already heard him express by the time Hamlet utters the above damning words about his mother – namely, the view that a son not merely exhibiting the trappings and the suits of woe for his father's death but truly grieving commits nothing short of a fault to heaven, a fault against the dead, a fault to nature. And Claudius, too, was the one whose desire for the crown als well as for the Queen, his brother's wife, drove him to commit not only murder but also adultery and incest in the first place. Sure, he dragged a highly vulnerable Gertrude down into the mire with him; and she most certainly ought to at least have had the sense of decorum not to marry him within a month of her first husband's death. But that doesn't change the fact that Claudius is the principal actor here: Gertrude had – and for the better part of the play, has – no knowledge of the precise scope and nature of his acts, however wilfully she may be blinding herself to the adultery and to her own part in it. This, however, merely makes her an accomplice to an indecent, "o'erhasty" marriage. It does not make her complicit of a murder of which she had no knowledge, let alone making her the main driving force behind this entire sordid tale of vice, immorality, corruption and murder.

Or does it?

Listening to the Prince throughout this play, one might well get the impression that it does indeed; that Gertrude's mere involvement with Claudius and her acceptance of his hand in marriage a single month after her first husband's death is more indicative of the country's slide into ruin and decay than anything Claudius himself could possibly have done, including murder – both regicide and fratricide at that. Before deploring his mother's "frailty," Hamlet has already compared her to a satyr, one of those profligate mythological wood-dwellers, half human, half goat, usually found in the company of the reveler god Dionysos (Bacchus); and even earlier, he has scolded her for what he sees as a show of false grief over his father's death – a charge he repeats in this very monologue by calling her tears over that event "most unrighteous," only to conclude, "O, most wicked speed, to post with such dexterity to incestuous sheets! It is not, nor it cannot come to good." And even this is only the beginning: When confronting Gertrude after the "play within the play," even his – at that time express – charges of adultery, incest, and complicity with regicide and fratricide ("You are the Queen, your husband's brother's wife, and (would it were not so!) you are my mother," and [with regard to Polonius's killing] "[a] bloody deed – almost as bad, good mother, as kill a King , and marry with his brother") are only the opening salvos to a tirade sparing his mother no form, mode or shape of abuse whatsoever, and very likely underscored by a fair amount of physical violence, too:

And as bad as Gertrude's is Ophelia experience's at the Prince's hands after she has, obeying her father's express orders (!), decided to refuse his courtship. Not only does he break into her bedchamber, where he quite possibly comes very close to doing her physical harm; once that fatal violation of her but budding womanhood has occurred – again: at Hamlet's own hands! – he mercilessly starts to treat her as a slut; a fallen woman, a whore; not a jot better than his own mother. In their "chance" encounter arranged by Claudius and Polonius after To be, or not to be, he whips out that "the power of beauty [like Ophelia's] will sooner transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the force of honesty can translate beauty into his likeness," as a response to Ophelia's question whether beauty could have "better commerce than with honesty;" and in short order he proceeds to send her to the cloister, on the grounds that she can only bring the dishonour already attached to her onto her future husband as well:

Equally brutally he taunts her – this time even publicly – before and during the "play within the play":

And of course, at the tragedy's very beginning and under the guise of guardians of Ophelia's maiden virtues, her own brother and – even more so – her father in turn have already let her have a similarly strong dose of the corresponding, not any less venomous antidote when warning her off Hamlet:

There is an ongoing debate over the roles that William Shakespeare accorded to the women in his plays: While some see them as surprisingly independent, early progenitors of women's lib, others argue that such a reading would simply not be in conjunction with the era's predominant views, which were anything but charitable when it came to women's role in society. Personally, I would hesitate to make any kind of universal, "one size fits all" judgement when it comes to Master Shakespeare's works, and I think this is particularly true in this particular context: here, perhaps more than anywhere else, an idividual analysis of each and any one of his individual plays seems tobe in order. But while some of Shakespeare's Women are indeed refreshingly strong, self-assured, liberated and downright modern ladies (Rosalind in "As You Like It" comes to mind, as do, inter alia, Beatrice in "Much Ado About Nothing," Portia in "The Merchant of Venice," Viola in "Twelfth Night," and Juliet Capulet; and I also think that it is possible to read Katherina in "The Taming of the Shrew in that manner), much of the abuse we hear Hamlet and other male protagonists in this particular play hurl at the representatives of the fair sex conspiciously echoes the well-known statements by the founders of Catholic doctrine, first and foremost the four principal early doctors – Saint Augustine of Hippo, his teacher Saint Ambrose of Milan, their contempoary, bible translator Saint Jerome, and Pope (Saint) Gregory I (Gregory the Great) – as well as the "golden-mouthed" patriarch of Constantinople, Saint John Chrysostom, imperial Roman scholar Tertullian (Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus), and medieval scholars such as Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, Saint John Bonaventure and Saint Thomas Aquinas – and, of course, the inquisitors Heinrich Kramer and Jakob Sprenger, authors of the "Malleus Maleficarum" ("Hammer Against Witches" or by its German title, "Hexenhammer"), the ultimate anti-female sourcebook and the manual behind threehundred years' worth of witch hunts; as well as the writings of virtually every other theologian and philosopher of note over the course of a millennium and a half, who – doctrinal differences in detail notwithstanding and with only a few, albeit notable exceptions like Sir Thomas More – in near-perfect unison held as true and indisputable gospel the following core tenets, which they repeated mantra-like, and from which to digress carried nothing short of the risk of excommunication: **

• 1.) By listening to the Devil – the serpent – and, on his instructions, thereafter seducing Adam, Eve brought Original Sin into the world, which she transmitted to all her daughters (as well as through Adam, once he was "infected," to the rest of mankind).
  • Heinrich Kramer and Jakob Sprenger, Malleus Maleficarum (Hammer Against Witches), 1487 AD:
    Though the devil tempted Eve to sin, yet Eve seduced Adam. And as the sin of Eve would not have brought death to our soul and body unless the sin had afterwards passed on to Adam, to which he was tempted by Eve, not by the devil, therefore she is more bitter than death.
  • Johannes Teutonicus, Apparatus ad Decreta (1215 AD):
    Original sin is called original because it had its origin from a woman before it came to man.
  • St. Irenaeus (ca. 135 – 202), Adversus Haereses:
    [Eve was] deceived by Satan hidden within the serpent and play[ed] right into Satan's hand by leading Adam into sin.
  • Saint John Chrysostom (347 – 407 AD), Sermons on Timothy:
    Women taught once and ruined all ... What happened to the first woman occasioned the subjection of the whole sex.
• 2.) As a consequence, Woman is inherently inferiour to Man: inferiour not only in faculties but also in that, whereas Man exists in God directly, Woman exists only through and by license of Man – first her father, then her husband. Most definitely, she herself is not made in the image of God.
  • Corpus Iuris Canonici (1582):
    The image of God is in man and it is one. Women were drawn from man who has God's jurisdiction as if he were God's vicar because he has the image of the one God. Therefore, woman is not made in God's image.
  • Johannes Teutonicus, Apparatus ad Decreta (1215 AD):
    God is not glorified through the woman, as through a man, because through a woman the first sin came about.
  • St. Thomas Aquinas (1225 – 1274 AD), Summa Theologiae:
    By a kind of subjection woman is naturally subject to man, because in man the discretion of reason predominates. ... In a secondary sense the image of God is found in man, and not in woman: for man is the beginning and end of woman; as God is the beginning and end of every creature.
  • Heinrich Kramer and Jakob Sprenger, Malleus Maleficarum (Hammer Against Witches), 1487 AD:
    And it should be noted that there was a defect in the formation of the first woman, since she was formed from a bent rib, that is, a rib of the breast, which is bent as it were in a contrary direction to a man. And since through this defect she is an imperfect animal, she always deceives. ... And blessed be the Highest Who has so far preserved the male sex from so great a crime [as heresy]: for since He was willing to be born and to suffer for us, therefore He has granted to men the privilege.
• In fact, Woman is still every bit as natural, dangerous, and evil a temptress as was Mother Eve. She is under no circumstances to be trusted.
  • St. Augustine (354 – 430 AD), Letters:
    Whether it is in a wife or a mother, it is still Eve the temptress that we must beware of in any woman.
  • Heinrich Kramer and Jakob Sprenger, Malleus Maleficarum (Hammer Against Witches), 1487 AD:
    A woman is beautiful to look upon, contaminating to the touch, and deadly to keep. ... [A]s she is a liar by nature, so in her speech she stings while she delights us. ... And indeed, just as through the first defect in their intelligence that are more prone to abjure the faith; so through their second defect of inordinate affections and passions they search for, brood over, and inflict various vengeances, either by witchcraft, or by some other means. Wherefore it is no wonder that so great a number of witches exist in this sex.
  • Saint John Chrysostom (347 – 407 AD), In Mattheum Homili, XXXII:
    What else is woman but a foe to friendship, an inescapable punishment, a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, a domestic danger, a delectable detriment, an evil nature, painted with fair colours?
  • Saint John Chrysostom (347 – 407 AD), Discourse 2 on Genesis:
    Among all the savage beasts, none is so bestial as woman.
• 3.) Therefore, Woman must be reigned in and tightly controlled; including and in particular with regard to her manner of dress and outward appearance.
  • St. Jerome (340 – 420 AD), Letter 22 (To Eustochium):
    "Whosoever looketh on a woman," the Lord says, "to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart." So that virginity may be lost even by a thought. Such are evil virgins, virgins in the flesh, not in the spirit. ... Sampson was braver than a lion and tougher than a rock ... and yet, in Delilah's embrace, his resolution melted away. David was a man after God's own heart ... and yet as he walked upon his housetop he was fascinated by Bathsheba's nudity, and added murder to adultery. Notice here how, even in his own house, a man cannot use his eyes without danger.
  • St. Jerome (340 – 420 AD), Letter 38 (To Marcella):
    The women who ought to scandalise Christians are those who paint their eyes and lips with rouge and cosmetics; whose chalked faces, unnaturally white, are like those of idols ... . A Christian woman should blush to do violence to nature, or to stimulate desire by bestowing care upon the flesh. "They that are in the flesh," the apostle tells us, "cannot please God."
  • St. Jerome (340 – 420 AD), Letter 54 (To Furia):
    What place have rouge and white lead on the face of a Christian woman? ... They serve only to inflame young men's passions, to stimulate lust, and to indicate an unchaste mind. ... Such adorning is not of the Lord; a mask of this kind belongs to Antichrist.
  • St. Thomas Aquinas (1225 – 1274 AD), Summa Theologiae:
    [A] woman's apparel may incite men to lust ... [T]hose women who have no husband nor wish to have one, or who are in a state of life inconsistent with marriage, cannot without sin desire to give lustful pleasure to those men who see them, because this is to incite them to sin. And if indeed they adorn themselves with this intention of provoking others to lust, they sin mortally.
  • Tertullian (160 – 225 AD), On the Apparel of Women:
    You must know that in the eye of perfect, that is, Christian, modesty, (carnal) desire of one's self (on the part of others) is not only not to be desired, but even execrated, by you: first, because the study of making personal grace (which we know to be naturally the inviter of lust) a mean of pleasing does not spring from a sound conscience ... [W]here modesty is, there beauty is idle; because properly the use and fruit of beauty is voluptuousness.
    But, however, God saith, "Which of you can make a white hair black, or out of a black a white?" And so they refute the Lord! "Behold!" say they, "instead of white or black, we make it yellow, – more winning in grace." And yet such as repent of having lived to old age do attempt to change it even from white to black! O temerity! The age which is the object of our wishes and prayers blushes (for itself)! a theft is effected! youth, wherein we have sinned, is sighed after! the opportunity of sobriety is spoiled!
  • Saint John Chrysostom (347 – 407 AD), The True Adornment of Women:
    [Women: makeup will add] nothing to [your] beauty of face, but [will] destroy the beauty of your soul. ... Especially are you heaping up abundant fire for yourself by exciting the looks of young men, and attracting to yourself the eyes of the undisciplined; by making complete adulterers of them, you are bringing their downfall on your own head. ... You allege that you never invited others to sin. You did not, indeed, by your words, but you have done so by your dress and your deportment. ... When you have made another sin in his heart, how can you be innocent? Tell me, whom does this world condemn? Whom do judges punish? Those who drink poison or those who prepare it and administer the fatal potion? You have prepared the abominable cup, you have given the death dealing drink, and you are more criminal than are those who poison the body; you murder not the body but the soul.
• 4.) Indeed, any- and everything relating to female sexuality is inherently unclean; particularly insofar as it relates to female desirability. There is only one legitimate reason for sexual intercourse, and that is procreation – and of course, only within the bounds of a Christian marriage. (And even there, some authors went so far as to suggest that men strive for "chaste," desire-less sex; although St. Augustine, taught by the experience of his own profligate youth, was wise enough to realise that this is impossible: he rather considered the "reproductive members'" "disobedience" a consequence of The Fall and asserted that "clean" intercourse – motivated by reason and by the necessity of procreation – would have occurred in Paradise, and that the shame of lust-driven "concupiscence" was brought onto mankind as a consequence of Original Sin – hence, as a consequence of Eve's transgression.)
  • St. Jerome (340 – 420 AD), Letter 22 (To Eustochium):
    How often, when I was living in the desert, in the vast solitude which gives to hermits a savage dwelling-place, parched by a burning sun, how often did I fancy myself among the pleasures of Rome! ... [A]lthough in my fear of hell I had consigned myself to this prison, where I had no companions but scorpions and wild beasts, I often found myself amid bevies of girls. My face was pale and my frame chilled with fasting; yet my mind was burning with desire, and the fires of lust kept bubbling up before me when my flesh was as good as dead. ... I subdued my rebellious body with weeks of abstinence. ... Now, if such are the temptations of men who, since their bodies are emaciated with fasting, have only evil thoughts to fear, how must it fare with a girl whose surroundings are those of luxury and ease? Surely, to use the apostle's words, "She is dead while she liveth."
    You may see many women widows before wedded, who try to conceal their miserable fall by a lying garb. Unless they are betrayed by swelling wombs or by the crying of their infants, they walk abroad with tripping feet and heads in the air. Some go so fat as to take potions, that they may insure barrenness, and thus murder human beings almost before their conception. Some, when they find themselves with child through their sin, use drugs to procure abortion, and when (as often happens) they die with their offspring, they enter the lower world laden with the guilt not only of adultery against Christ but also of suicide and child murder. Yet it is these who say: "'Unto the pure all things are pure;' my conscience is sufficient guide for me. A pure heart is what God looks for. Why should I abstain from meats which God has created to be received with thanksgiving?" ... When they go out they do their best to attract notice, and with nods and winks encourage troops of young fellows to follow them. Of each and all of these the prophet's words are true: "Thou hast a whore's forehead; thou refusest to be ashamed."
  • St. Jerome (340 – 420 AD), Letter 54 (To Furia):
    All other sins are external, and what is external can easily be cast away. Desire alone, implanted in men by God to lead them to procreate children, is internal; and this, if it once oversteps its own bounds, becomes a sin, and by a law of nature cries out for sexual intercourse. It is therefore a work of great merit, and one which requires unremitting diligence to overcome that which is innate in you; while living in the flesh not to live after the flesh; to strive with yourself day by day and to watch the foe shut up within you with the hundred eyes of the fabled Argus.
  • St. Augustine (354 – 430 AD), On the Psalms:
    [O]ur flesh is an Eve within us.
  • St. Augustine (354 – 430 AD), Casti Connubii:
    Marital intercourse, even with one's legitimate spouse, is forbidden and immoral, if the awakening of new life is prevented. This is what Onan the son of Judah did, and on account of that God killed him.
  • Saint John Chrysostom (347 – 407 AD), In Mattheum Homili XVII:
    "And how," one may say, "is it possible to be freed from desire?" I answer ... if we were willing, even this might be deadened... .
  • Pope (Saint) Clement I (30 – 100 AD), Stromata:
    Our ideal is not to experience desire at all ... We should do nothing from desire. Our will is to be directed only toward what is necessary. For we are children not of desire but of will. A man who marries for the sake of begetting children must practice continence so that it is not desire he feels for his wife ... that he may beget children with a chaste and controlled will.
  • Tertullian (160 – 225 AD), On the Apparel of Women:
    First, then, blessed (sisters), (take heed) that you admit not to your use meretricious and prostitutionary garbs and garments. ... [E]ven the Scriptures suggest (to us the reflection), that meretricious attractivenesses of form are invariably conjoined with and appropriate to bodily prostitution.
  • St. Thomas Aquinas (1225 – 1274 AD), Summa Theologiae:
    For the active power in the seed of the male tends to produce something like itself, perfect in masculinity; but the procreation of a female is the result either of the debility of the active power, of some unsuitability of the material, or of some change effected by external influences, like the south wind, for example, which is damp.
    The more necessary a thing is, the more it behooves one to observe the order of reason in its regard; wherefore the more sinful it becomes if the order of reason be forsaken. Now the use of venereal acts ... is most necessary for the common good, namely the preservation of the human race. Wherefore there is the greatest necessity for observing the order of reason in this matter ... . Now lust consists essentially in exceeding the order and mode of reason in the matter of venereal acts. Wherefore without any doubt lust is a sin. ... [T]he sin of lust consists in seeking venereal pleasure not in accordance with right reason, ... because it is inconsistent with the end of the venereal act. On this way, as hindering the begetting of children, there is the "vice against nature," which attaches to every venereal act from which generation cannot follow; and, as hindering the due upbringing and advancement of the child when born, there is "simple fornication," which is the union of an unmarried man with an unmarried woman. ... [Simple] fornication and all intercourse with other than one's wife is a mortal sin. ... Nor is it true that fornication is the least of the sins comprised under lust, for the marriage act that is done out of sensuous pleasure is a lesser sin. ... Now ... it is a mortal sin not only to consent to the act, but also to the delectation of a mortal sin. Wherefore since fornication is a mortal sin, and much more so the other kinds of lust, it follows that in such like sins not only consent to the act but also consent to the pleasure is a mortal sin. Consequently, when these kisses and caresses are done for this delectation, it follows that they are mortal sins, and only in this way are they said to be lustful. Therefore in so far as they are lustful, they are mortal sins.
    [S]ince the man who is too ardent a lover of his wife acts counter to the good of marriage if he use her indecently, although he be not unfaithful, he may in a sense be called an adulterer; and even more so than he that is too ardent a lover of another woman.
• 5.) Since Woman is a temptress by nature and in league with the Devil, any evil befalling another person or the world in general – even if perpetrated by a man – and any immoral thoughts (and dreams!), even if they never mature into acts, can and must in ultimate consequence be traced back to the female who brought them about in the first place.
  • Tertullian (160 – 225 AD), On the Apparel of Women:
    And do you (women) not know that you are (each) an Eve? The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives in this age: the guilt must of necessity live too. You are the devil's gateway: you are the unsealer of that (forbidden) tree: you are the first deserter of the divine law: you are she who persuaded him whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack. You destroyed so easily God's image, man. On account of your desert – that is, death – even the Son of God had to die. ... [A]s soon as [a man] has felt concupiscence after your beauty, and has mentally already committed (the deed) which his concupiscence pointed to, perishes; and you have been made the sword which destroys him: so that, albeit you be free from the (actual) crime, you are not free from the odium (attaching to it).
  • St. Jerome (340 – 420 AD), Letter 22 (To Eustochium):
    [H]ear what [Job] says of the devil: "His strength is in the loins, and his force is in the navel." ... The terms are chosen for decency's sake, but the reproductive organs of the two sexes are meant. ... In his assaults on men ... the devil's strength is in the loins; in his attacks on women his force is in the navel.
  • Heinrich Kramer and Jakob Sprenger, Malleus Maleficarum (Hammer Against Witches), 1487 AD:
    All witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which is in women insatiable. There are three things that are never satisfied, yea, a fourth thing which says not, It is enough; that is, the mouth of the womb. Wherefore for the sake of fulfilling their lusts they consort even with devils. ... Now there are, as it is said in the Papal Bull, seven methods by which they infect with witchcraft the venereal act and the conception of the womb: First, by inclining the minds of men to inordinate passion; second, by obstructing their generative force; third, by removing the members accomodated to that act; fourth, by changing men into beasts by their magic art; fifth, by destroying the generative force in women; sixth, by procuring abortion; seventh, by offering children to devils, besides other animals and fruits of the earth with which they work much harm.
    What then is to be thought of the whole life of witches, that is, of all their other actions which are not pleasing to the devil, such as fasting, attending church, communicating, and other things? For in all these things they commit deadly sin, as is shown as follows. So far have they fallen in sin that ... because of their homage given to the devil ... all their works, even when they appear to be good, are rather of an evil nature. And this is not seen to be the case with other infidels.
  • Saint John Chrysostom (347 – 407 AD), In Mattheum Homili XVII:
    For in truth greater is the struggle on beholding, and not possessing the object of fondness: nor is the pleasure so great which we reap from the sight, as the mischief we undergo from increasing this desire; thus making our opponent strong, and giving more scope to the devil, and no longer able to repulse him, now that we have brought him into our inmost parts, and have thrown our mind open unto him. Therefore He saith, "commit no adultery with thine eyes, and thou wilt commit none with thy mind." ... [A]ssuredly, should [a woman] deck herself out, and invite towards herself the eyes of such as fall in her way; even though she smite not him that meets with her, she incurs the utmost penalty: for she mixed the poison, she prepared the hemlock, even though she did not offer the cup. Or rather, she did also offer the cup, though no one were found to drink it.
  • St. Thomas Aquinas (1225 – 1274 AD), Summa Theologiae:
    [N]octurnal pollution is more apt to arise from thinking about carnal sins with concupiscence for such pleasures, because this leaves its trace and inclination in the soul, so that the sleeper is more easily led in his imagination to consent to acts productive of pollution. ... Thus it is evident that nocturnal pollution may be sinful on the part of its cause. on the other hand, it may happen that nocturnal pollution ensues after thoughts about carnal acts, though they were speculative, or accompanied by abhorrence, and then it is not sinful, neither in itself nor in its cause. ... [W]hen by the work of a devil the sleeper's phantasms are disturbed so as to induce the aforesaid result. Sometimes this is associated with a previous sin, namely the neglect to guard against the wiles of the devil. ... On the other hand, this may occur without any fault on man's part, and through the wickedness of the devil alone. ... Hence it is manifest that nocturnal pollution is never a sin, but is sometimes the result of a previous sin.
• 6.) Ideally, thus, Woman should be kept far away from men so as not to be able to tempt them at all. Let her be locked up in a nunnery, castigate herself and vow perpetual virginity – or failing that, if she is already married, rejoice over her husband's untimely death and take advantage of that opportunity to make sure she remains a widow forever and at least foreswears the world henceforth.
  • St. Jerome (340 – 420 AD), Letter 22 (To Eustochium):
    I will say it boldly, though God can do all things He cannot raise up a virgin when once she has fallen. He may indeed relieve one who is defiled from the penalty of her sin, but He will not give her a crown. ... You have ... learned from a case in your own family the troubles of wedded life and the uncertainties of marriage. ... [Your sister] has lost, at once, the crown of virginity and the pleasures of wedlock. And, although, as a widow, the second degree of chastity is hers, still can you not imagine the continual crosses which she has to bear, daily seeing in her [virgin] sister what she has lost herself; and, while she finds it hard to go without the pleasures of wedlock, having a less reward for her present continence? Still she, too, may take heart and rejoice. The fruit [of virginity] and that [of widowhood] both spring from one seed, and that seed is chastity. ... Do not look too often on the life which you despised to become a virgin. ... [N]ot only must you avoid intercourse with those who are puffed up by their husbands' honours ... You must also shun those who are widows from necessity and not from choice. Not that they ought to have desired the death of their husbands; but that they have not welcomed the opportunity of continence when it has come. ... Let your companions be women pale and thin with fasting ... If ever you feel the outward man sighing for the flower of youth, and if, as you lie on your couch after a meal, you are excited by the alluring train of sensual desires; then seize the shield of faith, for it alone can quench the fiery darts of the devil. ... I do not detract from wedlock when I set virginity before it. No one compares a bad thing with a good. ... In paradise Eve was a virgin, and it was only after the coats of skins that she began her married life. ... [V]irginity is natural while wedlock only follows guilt.
  • St. Jerome (340 – 420 AD), Letter 38 (To Marcella):
    A widow who is "loosed from the law of her husband" has, for her one duty, to continue a widow.
  • St. Jerome (340 – 420 AD), Letter 54 (To Furia):
    Wherever there is holy chastity, there is also frugal living. ... But a widow "that liveth in pleasure" – the words are not mine but those of the apostle – "is dead while she liveth." ... To those who know no better she seems to be alive and not as she is, dead in sin; yes, and in another sense dead to Christ, from whom no secrets are hid. "The soul that sinneth it shall die." ... A widow who has ceased to have a husband to please ... needs nothing more but perseverance only. She is mindful of past enjoyments, she knows what gave her pleasure and what she has now lost. By rigid fast and vigil she must quench the fiery darts of the devil. If we are widows, we must either speak as we are dressed, or else dress as we speak. Why do we profess one thing, and practise another? The tongue talks of chastity, but the rest of the body reveals incontinence.
    Young widows, of whom some "are already turned aside after Satan, when they have begun to wax wanton against Christ" and wish to marry, generally make such excuses as these. "My little patrimony is daily decreasing, the property which I have inherited is being squandered, a servant has spoken insultingly to me, a maid has neglected my orders. Who will appear for me before the authorities? Who will be responsible for the rents of my estates? Who will see to the education of my children, and to the bringing up of my slaves?" Thus, shameful to say, they put that forward as a reason for marrying again, which alone should deter them from doing so. For by marrying again a mother places over her sons not a guardian but a foe, not a father but a tyrant. Inflamed by her passions she forgets the fruit of her womb, and among the children who know nothing of their sad fate the lately weeping widow dresses herself once more as a bride. Why these excuses about your property and the insolence of slaves? Confess the shameful truth. No woman marries to avoid cohabiting with a husband. At least, if passion is not your motive, it is mere madness to play the harlot just to increase wealth. You do but purchase a paltry and passing gain at the price of a grace which is precious and eternal! ... Why do you put an uncertain gain before a certain loss of self-respect?
• 7.) Mary, on the other hand, was blessed in that she was purged from Original Sin to cleanse her body for the birth of Christ. She brought salvation, where Eve brought sin. But she is the one big exception among women, not the rule. There can't be a second Mary – not even among virgins.
  • St. Irenaeus (ca. 135 – 202), Adversus Haereses:
    Eve by her disobedience brought death upon herself and on all the human race: Mary, by her obedience, brought salvation.
  • St. Jerome (340 – 420 AD), Letter 22 (To Eustochium):
    Death came through Eve, but life has come through Mary.
  • Tertullian (160 – 225 AD), De Carne Christi:
    Eve believed the serpent, Mary believed Gabriel; the one sinned by believing, the other by believing effaced the sin. But did Eve conceive nothing in her womb from the devil's word? She certainly did. For the devil's word was the seed for her, so that thereafter she should give birth as an outcast, and give birth in sorrow. And in fact she bore a devil who murdered his brother [Cain]; while Mary gave birth to one who should in time bring salvation to Israel.
  • St. Anselm of Canterbury (1033 – 1109), Cur Deus Homo (Why God Became Man):
    [It is] clearly fitting that, as man's sin and the cause of our condemnation sprung from a woman, so the cure of sin and the source of our salvation should also be found in a woman. And that women may not despair of attaining the inheritance of the blessed, because that so dire an evil arose from woman, it is proper that from woman also so great a blessing should arise, that their hopes may be revived. ... If it was a virgin which brought all evil upon the race, it is much more appropriate that a virgin should be the occasion of all good. And ... [i]f woman, whom God made from man alone, was made of a virgin, it is peculiarly fitting for that man also, who shall spring from a woman, to be born of a woman without man.
  • Pope (Saint) Siricius, in a letter to Bishop Anysius (392 AD):
    Jesus would not have chosen birth from a virgin, had he been forced to look upon her as so unrestrained [i.e. willing to have sexual relations with Joseph] as to let that womb, from which the boy of the Lord was fashioned, that hall of the eternal King, be stained by the presence of male seed. Whoever maintains that, maintains the unbelief of the Jews.
  • St. Thomas Aquinas (1225 – 1274 AD), Summa Theologiae:
    [S]in cannot be taken away except by grace, the subject of which is the rational creature alone. ... Consequently after Christ, who, as the universal Saviour of all, needed not to be saved, the purity of the Blessed Virgin holds the highest place. For Christ did not contract original sin in any way whatever, but was holy in His very Conception. ... But the Blessed Virgin did indeed contract original sin, but was cleansed therefrom before her birth from the womb.
    St. Thomas Aquinas (1225 – 1274 AD), The Hail Mary: A Commentary:
    We say that the Blessed Virgin is full of grace ... as regards her soul, in which she possessed the complete plenitude of grace. For the grace of God is given for two things: to do good, and to avoid evil; and from both these points of view the Blessed Virgin was favored with grace in the most perfect manner. For she avoided all sin more than any other saint or holy soul after Christ Himself. Sin is divided into original sin and actual sin, and this last is in turn divided into mortal and venial sin. The Blessed Virgin was preserved from original sin from the first instant of her conception, and from that moment on she remained completely free from all sin, whether mortal or venial.
    The Blessed Virgin also performed acts of all the virtues, while other saints excelled in one or other particular virtue. ... In her we find a model of humility, for she says, "Behold the handmaid of the Lord" (Lk. 1, 38), and again, "He hath regarded the humility of His handmaid" (Lk. 1, 48). She is also a model of chastity, "For I know not man," she says (v. 34). And likewise she is an exemplar of the other virtues. Thus the Blessed Virgin is full of grace both in doing good and avoiding evil. Secondly, she was full of grace as is manifested by the "overflow" of the grace in her soul onto her flesh, onto the body ... and from this same flesh she conceived the Son of God. ... The Blessed Virgin also surpasses the angels in her purity, for she was not only pure herself but obtained the gift of purity for others. For she was most pure and completely free not only from all faults, having never committed either a mortal or venial sin, but also from the punishment thereof.
    The sinner sometimes seeks in something or someone what he cannot obtain, but the just man obtains it ... . And so Eve sought the fruit but did not find in it what she desired, but the Blessed Virgin found in her fruit all that Eve desired. For Eve desired three things from the fruit. Firstly, that which the devil falsely promised her, that they "would be as gods, knowing good and evil" (Gen. 3, 5). And he lied, being himself a liar and the Father of Lies. For Eve, by eating the fruit, did not become like God but far from it, for by sin she fell far from God, her Salvation, and was expelled from paradise. But the Blessed Virgin and all Christians, by the fruit of her womb, finds what Eve sought, for through Christ we are united to God and made like to Him ... Secondly, Eve desired pleasure in the fruit, for it was good to eat, but did not find it, but sorrow instead. But in the fruit of the Virgin we find delight, and salvation, for "he who eats My flesh has life everlasting" ... Finally, the fruit of Eve was beautiful to look at, but more beautiful is the fruit of the Virgin, on whom the angels desire to look. For it is "the most beautiful among the sons of men" (Ps. 44,3), the Splendor of the Father's glory. Eve could not find these things in her fruit and neither can any sinner find these things in his sins. Whatever we desire, therefore, let us seek it in the fruit of the Virgin. ...

Potent testimony to the fact that, partcularly in the early days of Christendom, the penalty of excommunication for any overt digression from these teachings was no empty threat, is the case of fourth century monk Jovian who, by asserting, inter alia, that virgins, widows, and married women, once baptised, were equal to men, incurred the wrath of no less than three of the Catholic church's founding fathers: Saint Augustine, Saint Ambrose – who presided over Jovian's 390 AD excommunication hearings – and Saint Jerome, who was enraged enough to even retroactively appoint himself chief prosecutor in a 393 AD treatise entitled "Against Jovian." So, too, medieval French scholar Pierre (Peter) Abélard, who gained notoriety both for his nontraditional views and, probably even more so, for his long-lasting extramarital affair with a young woman named Héloïse, suffered the wrath of the defenders of conservative doctrine, led by Bernard of Clairvaux.

And lest I be accused of sectarian bias, here are a few gems by two of the founding fathers of Protestantism, who – except for the sanctity of Mary (or sanctity in general, for that matter) – alas and alack, essentially bought into the same basic image of women as their Catholic (ex-)brethren; however fundamentally their teachings differed from Catholic doctrine on salvation in general, the Last Judgement, the meaning of communion, and other issues:

But then, witch hunts weren't solely a Catholic specialty, either. The 17th century Crucible of Salem, Massachusetts, was the work of Puritans ...

In short, however happily a woman may have been married, and however much clout she may have been able to secure for herself with regard to the practicalities of every day life:

And even allowing that King Hamlet was no Henry VIII and probably really did care for Gertrude until the end – Claudius, for his part, is an entirely different matter, of course – and allowing that not even Ophelia is as unsophisticated as Katherine Howard, Henry VIII's somewhat over-enthusiastically nicknamed "Rose Without a Thorn," who believed her royal husband capable of overhearing the secret of the confessional without himself being physically present, the era's perceptions on the female sex certainly seem ample enough basis for Prince Hamlet to associate the ills befalling his world primarily with the women residing therein. But how is one to deal with this when producing the play in our times: Just take it as a given and move on? Make Gertrude and Ophelia aggressively assert their femininity, social standards and verbal abuse be damned, and have Gertrude in particular stand up to the men? Or highlight her share of blame in Denmark's woes, to show that Hamlet is justified in the way he treats her (and by extension, maybe even Ophelia, too)?

– Continue: Hamlet and Eve –

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