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

Hamlet and Eve

I have dodged the poison pot issue of 16th century anti-semitism in connection with the characters of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, because for purposes of this particular play – as opposed to, particularly, "The Merchant of Venice" – I ultimately don't think it matters decisively. But I cannot, nor do I want to dodge the "women's issues."

On Hamlet's, Gertrude's and Ophelia's respective character pages, as well as on the pages dealing with their major scenic interactions ("O my lord, my lord, I have been so affrighted!," "Get thee to a nunnery!," "What have I done that thou dar'st wag thy tongue ...?," "Where is the beauteous majesty of Denmark?," and "There is a willow grows aslant a brook"), as well as on the page dealing with the warnings Ophelia receives from her brother and her father ("For Hamlet, and the trifling of his favour .../What is't, Ophelia, he hath said to you?"), I have described how my approach to the question relating to the play's two female characters and their dealings with the Prince (and some of the other male principals) would work out in particular. Here let me outline the reasons for my approach.

A natural reaction to as much mysogyny as displayed by Hamlet, in particular, but also by Polonius and in part even by Laertes might be the carnal counterpiece to "let them eat cake": a forcefully realised, openly displayed sexuality, such as it is shown particularly by Glenn Close's and Julie Christie's Gertrudes in the movie versions by Franco Zeffirelli and Sir Kenneth Branagh and, to some extent or other, by virtually every Ophelia in her "mad" phase since the onset of women's lib in the late 1960s. But while this does seem to have the attraction of freeing the two women from the bonds imposed by a male-dominated society (and therefore also seems to be an approach endorsed not least by part of the psychoanalytic community), I ultimately find it not only unrealistic but downright counterproductive.

Medieval and Renaissance
Women's Voices

It is unrealistic because both Gertrude and Ophelia actually buy into the anti-women clichés propagated by the men surrounding them – and how would they not? They are women of their time, not revolutionaries by any stretch of the imagination. Neither of them is a Christine de Pizan who, although formally accepting the denial of political rights to women in general, skillfully and vehemently argued for their intellectual and moral equality, and dismissed the notion of women's alleged "frailty" as a bad case of the pot calling the kettle black:

"[S]ince [men] accuse women of frailty, one would suppose that they themselves take care to maintain a reputation for constancy, or at the very least, that the women are indeed less so than they are themselves. And yet, it is obvious that they demand of women greater constancy than they themselves have, for they who claim to be of this strong and noble condition cannot refrain from a whole number of very great defects and sins, and not out of ignorance, either, but out of pure malice, knowing well how badly they are misbehaving. But all this they excuse in themselves and say that it is in the nature of man to sin, yet if it so happens that any women stray into any misdeed (of which they themselves are the cause by their great power and longhandedness), then it's suddenly all frailty and inconstancy, they claim. But it seems to me that [men] should not ... ascribe to [women] as a great crime what in themselves they merely consider a little defect."
Christine de Pizan, Le Livre de la Cité des Dames (Book 2, Chapter 47; translation mine.)

Or, as Venetian poet Moderata Fonte would put it so succinctly roughly two centuries later:

"What makes [men] think they can boast of the same thing that in women brings only shame?"
Moderata Fonte (Modesta Pozzo Zorzi), The Worth of Women

Similarly, on the Fall itself, Christine de Pizan quipped in her "Letter to the God of Loves:"

Now as to the deceitful act
For which our mother Eve is brought to blame,
Upon which followed God's harsh punishment,
I say she never did play Adam false,
In innocence she took the enemy's
Assertion, which he gave her to believe.
Accepting it as true, sincerely said,
She went to tell her mate what she had heard.
No fraudulence was there, no planned deceit,
For guilelessness, which has no hidden spite,
Must not be labelled as deceptiveness.
Christine de Pizan, "Letter to the God of Loves"

– and Moderata Fonte even went a step further on the subject, asserting that:

"... it was with a good end in mind – that of acquiring the knowledge of good and evil – that Eve allowed herself to be carried away and eat the forbidden fruit. But Adam was not moved by this desire for knowledge, but simply by greed: he ate it because he heard Eve say it tasted good."
Moderata Fonte (Modesta Pozzo Zorzi), The Worth of Women

Shakespeare's Women:
A Selection of Portraits

Statements like these might well have come from some of Shakespeare's other female protagonists: Rosalind in "As You Like It" particularly comes to mind, as well as Beatrice in "Much Ado About Nothing," Portia in the otherwise so problematic "Merchant of Venice," despite her closing monologue most definitely also Katherina in "The Taming of the Shrew," and in Gertrude's generation, surely also Coriolanus's mother Volumnia. But Gertrude and Ophelia are leagues away from such an attitude. Nor is Gertrude an Eleanor of Aquitaine or Empress Maud, let alone a Queen Elizabeth I of England: We don't have any indication that even her first husband ever accorded her the position of Queen Regnant during his own absence (as Henry VIII did with his first wife, Catherine of Aragon) – given Polonius's pride in his position at court and in the King's confidence, and given the condescension he shows towards Gertrude, it seems much more likely that already under King Hamlet (and even more so under Claudius) during such times the country's reins would fall to the hands of the Royal Council, headed by Polonius himself. By the same token, Ophelia, for all her prophesies, is no Hildegard of Bingen or Héloïse, who found strength in her love for Peter Abélard even in the times of the worst public shame she suffered for his sake, and who salvaged that love even into her monastic life. (But then, Hamlet is no Peter Abélard, either: when he goes about sending Ophelia off to a nunnery, it is pure spite that is speaking, not the care for her own perceived best interest.) – Indeed, it is Ophelia's very inability to cope with her sudden transformation from virgin to (alleged) whore at the hands of the man she loves (as well as, of course, that man's killing of her own father) which ultimately drives her into madness; and Gertrude, trapped in a marriage whose illicit nature she has finally come to understand and own up to in full, bitterly complains: "To my sick soul (as sin's true nature is) each toy seems Prologue to some great amiss. So full of artless jealousy is guilt, it spills itself in fearing to be spilt." These just aren't the reactions of two women telling men to go to hell with their views on Eve and Original Sin. And even to the extent that Ophelia does indeed live out her newly-awakened sexuality in her "mad" phase, this is merely one of the various – and substantially conflicting – instinctive reactions she displays after having been divided from herself and her fair judgment.

Worse, however, ultimately I think that, even today, an approach dealing with Gertrude's and Ophelia's roles in such an offensive manner is still downright counterproductive. Because "It is my shame that keeps me alive ... I have a freedom they cannot understand" – the attitude epitomised in the words spoken by John Fowles's "French Lieutenant's Woman" in his 1969 novel of the same name – has, alas, over the course of history never truly worked for women cast in this role: from Daniel Defoe's "Moll Flanders," Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Scarlet Letter," Leo Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina" and Theodor Fontane's "Effi Briest" to Alexandre Dumas's "Dame aux Camélias," the Abbé Prevost's "Manon Lescaut," Émile Zola's "Nana," Gustave Flaubert's "Madame Bovary" and beyond, literary history is replete with examples to the contrary; and the brilliance of all of these works consists precisely in their pointed and accurate portrayal of their respective societies' conditions and views on women, which unfailigly bring about the heroine's downfall – or would, if she did not, like Fowles's Sarah Woodruff, manage to substantially change her own social circumstances (e.g., by moving to a different place and assuming a different name). And truthfully, even today, women's advancement in society, politics, education, and the professional world notwithstanding: Can you honestly say you've never heard a woman in a professional environment described variously as a bitch, a witch or a shrew – while her male colleagues were praised for their "uncompromising attitude"? Or heard an unfaithful wife called an adulteress, while an as unfaithful husband gets to bask in the glory of his promiscuity? Or heard about a rape victim that she must surely have "had it coming;" if for no other reason, because of the way she was dressed? And (s)he who has never told a "blonde" joke just go ahead and cast the first stone ...

Alright, I hear you object: but doesn't Gertrude's complicity with Claudius give Hamlet reason aplenty indeed to go after her, if not also after Ophelia, who all things considered looks almost more like a casualty of war in the Prince's one-man stance against Claudius and his minions (including Ophelia's own father)? Doesn't Gertrude, at the very least, then have them coming indeed, all those daggers that her son hurls at her, once he has all but abandoned his resolution to speak daggers ... but use none?

Well, one person who clearly doesn't seem to think so is Hamlet's father, the murdered King, who already in their first interview not only expressly cautions his son not to "taint [his] mind, nor let [his] soul contrive against [his] mother aught," and to "leave her to heaven, and to those thorns that in her bosom lodge to prick and sting her," but who even makes a pointed second appearance during Hamlet's and Gertrude's confrontation, on which occasion – besides warning Hamlet not to forget his all-important charge to revenge the King's murder – he again urges his son to "step between [Gertrude] and her fighting soul" and to "speak to her." And his voice as that of the primary victim, I think, should have some weight in the matter. But more generally speaking: If you think Gertrude's transgressions justify the way Hamlet abuses her, would you also hack off a thief's hand (or even just one finger)? Burn an arsonist at the stake? Slap a muzzle on a person's mouth for telling a single lie? Devise, in other words, for any kind of crime a punishment matching in quality but grossly exceeding in quantity?

There is no question in my mind that someone ought to have to spoken to Gertrude long before the onset of the play's disastrous series of events; and that if she herself had used her brain in time and not deliberately shut her eyes to the utter immorality of Claudius's pursuit (which must, after all, have begun when her first husband was still alive), she might have hampered and, who knows, maybe even prevented him from realising his plans. So yes: reproach she certainly deserves, and plenty of it, too. But even if one does not follow the advice of her first husband's Ghost and leave that reproach entirely to her own conscience, there is still a world of a difference between a justified (even severe) reprimand and the loads of abuse that Hamlet piles on her, not only verbally but very probably also physically.

And quite apart from Gertrude: What has Ophelia ever done that she merits the same treatment as the Queen? Nothing but precisely what custom, doctrine and decorum expected from her: to obey her father to the letter. That Hamlet's feelings are injured by her sudden refusal is understandable – but this alone does not give him any reason to go after the maid the way he does; and most certainly it does not justify his put-downs of her as a shallow seductress. To that extent, his reaction is pure spite; the response of a spoiled male ego – not a spurned lover's understandable grief (nor simply part of his "madness" act, either, as his 19th century apologists, however, affirm almost down to the last man: If anything, he is exploiting the disguise which he has had to adopt anyway in order to vent his feelings even more forcefully than he might do otherwise, with nary a thought as to what he is doing to the girl).

Now, of course I'd have to be blind not to see that our Prince is under an enormous pressure, due to his father's charge as much as with regard to the two women: particularly as far as his mother is concerned, he has had to bottle up a lot during the months preceding their confrontation after the "play within the play;" and similarly, his intial feelings towards Ophelia were undoubtedly sincere and thus, his injury at her refusal in and of itself is perfectly natural and understandable. And there is only so much anybody can take at a given time anyway. But much as I want my hero, my promoter of civilisation and patron of the Muses, my lone and much-preoccupied fighter against a reign of terror, my setter-right of a time profoundly out of joint – much as I want the guy who stands for all these wonderful things and whose legacy so crucially needs to be maintained for posterity by his friend and chronicler Horatio – much as I want him to treat his women with respect and understanding, I have to contend with the realisation that Hamlet is no superhero: he is a complex and highly flawed human being, more so than any of the play's other characters; afflicted with an excess of emotions way too forceful for his own good, and a resulting tendency to act rashly and with catastrophic consequences (balanced by a reluctance to do the one thing he has actually been charged to do – and not that this is a small thing to begin with, of course), all of which I think we finally also ought to see from Gertrude's and Ophelia's point of view; and not just in a "play about the play" like Margaret Clarke's 1993 "Gertrude and Ophelia" but in a (cinematic) production of The Play itself ... not to mention that the scenes involving the two women also present an opportunity to shed a light of particular intensity on the oppressive court environment in which they live.

My Gertrude and Ophelia, then, are no medieval forerunners of women's lib; nor sisters-in-spirit to the likes of Emma Bovary, Moll Flanders, Anna Karenina, Hester Prynne and Sarah Woodruff; nor, for that matter, as easily transferable to modern times or even accessible from a contemporary point of view as some of Shakespere's other heroines, such as the above-mentioned Rosalind, Beatrice, Portia, Katherina, or Volumnia. They are simply two women stuck in a time and place that encroaches their freedom of movement even more than it encroaches that of the men surrounding them; and while they are trying to cope with their situation as best they can, ultimately they fail as miserably as the men. (Alright, so Ophelia has her brief moment of victory when, due to her madness, she is finally free from censure. But ultimately, there is no future for her in that state, either; and perhaps even worse, none of her prophecies and warnings are taken seriously by anybody – not to mention that madness is a terrible price to pay for her kind of freedom to begin with.)

But even if you don't go along with this reading of the two women's characters, please let's be clear about one thing at the very least: the principal cause of Denmark's woes is Claudius ... not Gertrude or Ophelia.