'Examine Hamlet’s Relationship with Gertrude Essay\r'

'At the beginning of the contact, during crossroads’s first soliloquy, hamlet contemplates suicide be pillow slip he is so furious with his catch for drawing Claudius within a month of his suffer’s final stage. This is when hamlet comwork forcets, ‘ feebleness thy agno custody is charr’ to announce his bitter feelings towards his mformer(a) for not unaccompanied the despatch of her re jointure and betrayal of his sire, alone the ‘dexterity to incestuous sheets’. The situation, and settlement’s reaction to it, is a trigger of an increase negative attitude towards all women, viewing them as weak. It is sh admit finished his relationships with Gertrude and Ophelia.\r\nThe hearing learn through the other characters that juncture has sh take in affections towards Ophelia; whether they ar genuine and lasting feelings is indeterminate as Leartes advices Ophelia that they are not. Leartes asks Ophelia to ‘hold it a fash ion, and a toy in blood;/\r\nA reddish blue in the y stunnedh of primary nature.’ Leartes not just now hypothesises that hamlet’s feeling towards Ophelia is short-lived hokum of his y bulgeh besides highlights that ‘for he himself is subject to his nascence’. Polonius also echoes a negative portrayal of village’s relationship with Ophelia as he advises her to ‘be somewhat scaner of your maiden presence’. Ophelia sees that crossroads’s feelings are genuine as he ‘hath importuned me with revere / In honourable fashion’ and ‘hath br to each onen smiler to his speech… with almost all the holy vows of paradise’.\r\nHowever, she is o get byient and follows the wishes of her brother and drive to ‘keep as watchman to my heart’ or to not ‘give words or talk with the Lord’. The rejection of juncture by Ophelia is a significant influence in him believing that ‘debi lity thy make up is woman’ as Ophelia could be seen as weak for following the orders of others who fabricated that small town’s affections could not be certain(p) when she, herself, believed them to be true.\r\nHamlet’s reaction to Ophelia’s rejection is extreme and she is ‘affrighted’ by his state of ‘knees knocking each other… with a look so sorry in purport/ As if he had been loosed out of hell’. His bitterness has been magnify by the ‘ wonderful dis function’ that he has adopted since learning that his father was murdered by his uncle from his father’s ghost. This would put on him feel even to a greater extent anger towards his amaze for marrying Claudius. He is manipulated by the Ghost who encourages his frustration for her when he says, ‘ shameful lust/ The will of my most seeming-virtuous poove’.\r\nHamlet is in a vulnerable position as he is shocked by the revelations and is alleviate grieving his father; it is comforting to ally his own feelings with his father’s in his resent towards Gertrude for marrying Claudius so soon after the King’s goal and is quick to believe that he is a murderer. Hamlet follows the Ghost’s orders to not seek retaliate on Gertrude but to ‘leave her to heaven’. Hamlet’s despise for Gertrude festers within him through the play and with it, his views of women. Hamlet follows the Ghost’s wishes not to determine action against Gertrude and as a result he amazes Ophelia suffer for his hatred of his aim.\r\nThe extreme behaviour which Ophelia reports to her father leads Polonius to believe that he is ‘mad’ with the ‘very deification of love’. Ophelia was obedient to her father’s wishes and ‘did snub his letter, and denied/ His access to me.’ In contrast to Hamlet’s ‘mad’ behaviour a letter scripted by him to Oph elia shows his strong feelings of affection towards her as he says, ‘To the celestial and my soul’s idol, the most/ beautified Ophelia’. The words is passionate in a very exaggerated style and shows that Hamlet had coercive emotions for her, and a rejection would cause an exaggerated reaction also.\r\nIn conversation with Polonius, Hamlet’s bitter feelings towards women come out through quick and unsmooth puns: ‘Let her walk not I’ th’ sun. Conception is a blessing, but not as your daughter may create by mental act’. This echoes Hamlet’s comment that ‘frailty thy name is woman’ as the punning suggests women are untimely and easily influenced. In Hamlet’s contiguous meeting with Ophelia he is harsh towards her and denies sending her letters but speaks abruptly to her, making connections between chastity, hit and immorality.\r\nHe repudiates Ophelia, the woman he once claimed to love, in the harshes t terms and urges her to go to a nunnery as she ‘wouldst guanine be a breeder of sinners’ and comments unfavourably on the flirtatious tricks of women such as ‘lisp’ and ‘ sobriquet’. Hamlet says ‘we will have no more marriage’, this is not only because he believes women make ‘monsters’ of their husbands but the resent of his experience’s marriage to Claudius is also implied.\r\nWhen Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are sent to find out what is troubling Hamlet he feels betrayed his gravel as his pose and Claudius are together plotting together ship canal spying on Hamlet; his mother is being led by Claudius. He goes on to say that he has lost all interest in life, ‘Man/ delights not me; no, nor woman either’. He talk of men and women separately suggesting that they are disparate creatures.\r\nDuring the play Hamlet is cold towards both Gertrude and Ophelia, when his mother asks him to sit by her he refuses as ‘ coat more attractive’. He comments, ‘how cheerfully my mother looks, and my father died within these two hours’, and speaks of ‘country matters’ artlessly to Ophelia. Hamlet is hazarding about the way his mother has acted and as he cannot confront her he offends Ophelia. flush though it is not suggested that Gertrude connived at her husband’s murder, but by marrying Claudius she is guilty by association, â€Å" no(prenominal) wed the second but who killed the first’. It reminds the audience the way in which the circumstance has changed him to believe ‘frailty thy name is women’.\r\nOnce the play has been stopped, Gertrude asks to speak to Hamlet which is when he confronts her about his feelings as before he had to ‘hold my tongue’. He tells her that it was Claudius ‘blasting his well brother’. He asks why she would desert his father for his uncle and aggressively shames her ‘in the rank sweat of an enseamed bed/ Stewed in corruption, honeying, making love/ everywhere the nasty sty’. The audience recognise the crude language that he used when speaking to Ophelia as he condemns the ‘frail’ women. Gertrude is convinced mainly by Hamlet’s insistence and power of feeling, which illustrates her ‘frailty’ and tendency to be dominated by powerful men and her need for men to show her what to think and how to feel.\r\nOphelia is driven mad by her father’s death and it contrasts strongly with Hamlet’s, differing primarily in its legitimacy: Ophelia does not feign madness to come across an end, but is truly driven mad by the death of her father. After Polonius’s sudden death and Hamlet’s subsequent exile, she finds herself abruptly without any(prenominal) of them. She is obsessed with death, beauty, and an ambiguous sexual desire, expressed in startlingly frank imagery:\r\n‘Youn g men will do’t, if they come to’t,\r\nBy Cock, they are to blame.\r\nQuoth she\r\n‘Before you tumbled me,\r\nYou promised me to wed.’\r\nShakespeare has demonstrated her chaste dependence on the men in her life; similar to Gertrude’s character. Ophelia is in such a ‘frail’ state when in the same situation as Hamlet †their fathers both murdered †she commits suicide, which Hamlet also contemplated in his first soliloquy. Ophelia is associated with flower imagery from the beginning of the play. In her first scene, Polonius presents her with a violet; after she goes mad, she sings songs about flowers; and then she drowns amid long streams of them. The ‘fragile’ beauty of the flowers resembles Ophelia’s own ‘fragile’ beauty, as well as her nascent sex activity and her exquisite, doomed innocence.\r\nDespite Hamlet’s harsh treatment of Ophelia, Hamlet is bereaved and outraged when declaring in agonised fury his own love for Ophelia. He fights with Laertes, saying that ‘forty m brothers / Could not, with all their quantity of love, / make up my plus’. This shows that his despise of women could not overcome his love for Ophelia in the same way that Hamlet had trusted his mother to believe he is not mad but not tell Claudius that is an act, even though he had felt betrayed by her throughout the play.\r\nTherefore, Hamlet was burst by his mother’s decision to marry Claudius so soon after her husband’s death, Hamlet becomes cynical about women in general, wake a particular obsession with what he perceives to be a connection between female sexuality and moral corruption. This motif of misogyny, or hatred of women, occurs periodically throughout the play, but it is an important inhibiting factor in Hamlet’s relationships with Ophelia and Gertrude.\r\nHe urges Ophelia to go to a nunnery rather than experience the corruptions of sexuality a nd exclaims of Gertrude, ‘Frailty, thy name is woman’. Gertrude seems to have a powerful instinct for self-preservation and proficiency that leads her to rely too deeply on men much like Ophelia who is also submissive and dead dependent on men. As these are the only two significant women in Hamlet’s life it is easy for him to conclude that ‘frailty thy name is women’.\r\n'