Hamlet

Feminist literary theory, like feminism itself, encompasses a range of attitudes and approaches. A Marxist feminist, for example, would assume that gender inequality flows from material economic conditions, and might examine how a work of literature challenges or upholds men’s ownership of women’s reproductive capacity. By contrast, a postmodern feminist would consider language itself key to gender inequality, and might question the way a work depicts womanhood or femininity (e.g. as a natural category, as inferior to masculinity, as intrinsically powerful). Feminist criticism may also consider the way gender interacts with other categories (race, sexual orientation, etc.), questioning the Western literary canon’s white male bent, examining how gender influences an individual’s experience as a writer or reader, and related questions.

What ties all these approaches together is the belief that literature needs to be understood within the context of patriarchy. From a feminist critical perspective, a given work might depict, critique, or uphold patriarchal norms, but it nearly always engages societal ideas about women and gender roles in some way. This is certainly true of Hamlet, which was written at a time when women weren’t even allowed to perform on stage, meaning that male actors would have portrayed both Gertrude and Ophelia. Ironically, this underscores perhaps the most important feature of how the play represents women: Gertrude and Ophelia are largely voiceless, so that the audience perceives them mostly through or in relation to Hamlet.

Hamlet’s misogyny, which is notable even by the era’s standards, makes this all the more significant. His views of both Gertrude and Ophelia reflect Renaissance anxieties surrounding female sexuality—specifically, the enormous value society placed on female chastity, coupled with the wariness of women, who were seen as naturally lustful. His disgust with his mother’s remarriage assumes both that sexual desire motivated it, and that such desire is inexcusable; he describes the relationship as “liv[ing] / In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed / Stewed in corruption” (3.4.89-91). Similarly, he questions whether Ophelia is “honest” (I.e. chaste) and implies that she isn’t (3.1.102). This is at worst unfounded and at best hypocritical. If Ophelia has slept with anyone, it was presumably Hamlet himself, but as a man he isn’t expected to remain celibate until marriage.

Furthermore, if Gertrude or Ophelia seem weak or deceitful, it’s worth noting how their subordinate position might be shaping their behavior. As a young, unmarried woman, Ophelia is required to obey her father. She’s therefore placed in a double bind when Polonius enlists her help spying on Hamlet; she can’t flout her father’s wishes and retain her status as a “proper” woman, but by complying with his request, she lends credence to Hamlet’s accusations that she and all women are treacherous and unfaithful. A similar Catch-22 may have motivated Gertrude to marry Claudius—she was in a vulnerable position as the former king’s widow, and might have sacrificed her reputation for her safety—but since this takes place before the play begins, her motives are more ambiguous.

Another strand of feminist criticism resists the idea that Gertrude and Ophelia are simply victims, or at least that the play leaves no room for alternative stagings. Feminist literary critic Carolyn Heilbrun was among the first to argue this; in her 1957 essay “The Character of Hamlet’s Mother,” she suggests that Hamlet doesn’t bear out the conventional “sympathetic” reading of Gertrude as weak-willed and foolish, and instead defends the validity of her sexual desires, unfortunate as her choice of objects is.

Ophelia is also open to reinterpretation. As critic Elaine Showalter notes, the symbolism surrounding her madness and suicide reflect the era’s gendered assumptions:

“In Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, the stage direction that a woman enters with disheveled hair indicates that she might either be mad or the victim of a rape; the disordered hair, her offense against decorum, suggests sensuality in either case. […] Drowning too was associated with the feminine, with female fluidity as opposed to masculine aridity. […] Water is the profound and organic symbol of the liquid woman whose eyes are so easily drowned in tears, as her body is the repository of blood, amniotic fluid, and milk”.

Those archetypal symbols of weak or deranged femininity aside, feminist criticism has often taken the opportunity to reframe literary ”madwomen” as “powerful figure[s] who rebel against the family and social order […] who refuse[] to speak the language of the patriarchal order”, wrote Showalter. Ophelia’s madness can therefore be seen not as a passive product of mistreatment, but as the only way she can resist or opt out of that mistreatment.