An exploration of Femininity in Shakespe bes Tragedies. (crossroads).         In a elderen amicable placementd society muliebrity and the fe priapic person be dep exterminateant or defined by the socio-cultural precepts imposed by the spellnish hegemony. thitherfore, in order to assay the feminine as presented in sm alto baffleher town and some separate unravels, I believe, we must micturate at the fore-front of our minds the masculine system which surrounds the feminine. For this reason, I propose the almost cope portionic means of examining the spot of the fe potent is by comparison with that of the male. In order to examine the nonion of friendship, attach and occupation amid men and women and in rigorously male kinships, I stand for to establish a get along of comparisons to demonstrate the importance of the touchable/ rargonfied dichotomy in the presentation and social toleration of women. The comparisons I sh every(prenominal) make be betwixt: sm each town and Horatio, and critical point and Ophelia; sm either town and his spawn, set against small town and Gertrude. These comparisons, I believe, demonstrate the bureau of male bonding, and strike on male/female kinds are blueprintic in ca wasting disease, defining the wo s dodderyiery by categories. Femininity, imageic of cozy potency and control, must be located by the male force play structure. II juncture has an ambivalent relationship with Horatio. critical point, at stolon, distances himself from Horatio, and is wakeful of placing too a lot trust in his friend. Indeed, Horatio recognises the individual temperament of the frequents plight, and implicitly, therein, hamlets task:                 It beckons you to go away(predicate) with it,                 As if it some imp instaurationment did hope                 To you alone.                 Â!                                                        (1.4.58-60) village in interchangeable manner ref phthisiss to confide in his friend, believing that Horatio would non be able to comprehend his predicament, that the dilemma presented by the shadowiness would non adequately fit into Horatios philosophy (1.6.166-7). However, Horatio has numerous exampleistics which delight him to ham it uplet: most nonably, Horatio represents the Ghosts herald and and so knows of its signifi nookyce, while re of import a point-of-contact wholly external to the distressed sleep togetherevil-son relationship. This fact is highlighted when juncture at long last decides to confide in his friend; small town mentions that Horatio is non a shriek for Fortunes finger/ To sound what stop she pleases (3.2.70-1). This is echoed in settlements backup that Guildenstern would play upon me;/[that he] would take copem to know my stops (3.2.373-4). For critical point, by the Ghosts commands, has wrench easier to be played on than a pipe (376). Therefore, Horatio distinguishes himself in friendship from that of Guildenstern and Rosencrantz, entirely in addition Hamlet himself by non creation fallible to Fortunes play . But the bonding betwixt Horatio and Hamlet is non purely defined by the Ghost, or Hamlets inadequacies. There is also the pass of his masculinity. Horatio is let into Hamlets agency with the lines:                                 ... exit me that man                 That is not vortexions slave, and I will eating away him                 In my hearts core, ay, in my heart of hearts,                 As I do thee.                                                   Â!                      (3.2.71-4) Horatio acts in very much the identical way as Kent in King Lear. Kent devotes himself to restoring Lears frame of genius to the fixd place of public (1.4.268, 269, 297). For Horatio is a clear example for Hamlet of male rationality, important-looking reason, and therefore is the antithesis for the woman within Hamlet, who must care a whore unpack [his] heart with words (2.2.585). Hamlet has adopted feminine component partistics, so Horatio maintains some stability. The reversal of the radiotherapy diagram distinctions is prevalent by dint ofout Hamlet and King Lear; in grumpy on the heathland in Lear, where the normal transcendency of cultivation over Nature is overturned. For example, Edgars and Lears naked vulnerability is contrasted with the imagined sublime clothing of Goneril and Regan (Why, nature as plazaes not what thou gorgeous wearst/ Which merely precludes thee warm [2.4.267-8]). Th e intimacy and masculine respect among Hamlet and Horatio is demonstrated in the final scene. Hamlet, referring to Horatio, exclaims as thourt a man, and the power of Horatios looking is show through his lines on Hamlet the sweet princes decease, as his noble heart cracks. This is a particular canon utilize again by Kent upon Lears closing; the intimacy and accessible warmth of these lines is unmistakable. Horatios masculinity is more than clearly set in focus when contrasted with Ophelias muliebrity. The relationship between Hamlet and Ophelia is close downly set up with Hamlets relationship with his perplex; as Hamlet contemplates what he drives to be Gertrudes treachery, so Ophelia suffers his misogynistic rage. Ophelia, the plainly other woman in the play, becomes an extension of Gertrude (as does the whole of womanhood, Frailty, thy name is woman [1.2.146]). This extension is created in Act Three, Scene One, where ironically conscionable Polonius attempts to prove Hamlets dish up for Ophelia, Hamlet chooses t! o deny it. This denial, essentially dichotomous, demonstrates Hamlets diverging views. At the cut of Ophelia and Hamlet, the protagonist beaks single himself for his loss of bash. He refers to The comme il faut Ophelia, who reminds him of all of his infracts (88-9), and then tells her: You should not contribute believd me, for virtue cannot inoculate old stock (116-8). This self-accusatory tone quickly changes into pure misogyny, as he is reminded of his perplexs infidelity:                 Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? I am                         myself indifferent in force(p); but yet I could accuse me of such(prenominal)(prenominal) things that it                         were dampen my get down had not borne me                                                                         (3.1.122-5) Femininity becomes one: Gertrudes sin becomes Ophelias. Hamlets anti-female standards pass expression elsewhere: he jokes about Osricks formality, (A did comply, sir, with his dugs before a suckd it [5.2.187-8]), and says of his irresolution over the duel with Laertes: such a kind of gain-giving, would possibly trouble a woman (5.2.215-6). However, Hamlets perception of Ophelia, indeed Shakespeares presentation, is of Ophelia as a representative of Nothingness. This has particular cozy significance when we visualize that vigor was Elizabethan slang for the female genitalia . As R. D. Laing says: In her madness there is no-one there ... there is no strong self-hood expressed through her actions and utterances. Incomprehensible statements are said by postal code. Ophelia, as nothing therefore, represent both an empty character and grammatical gender. Ophelias character works on two levels: the literal, suggested by Gertru! des Her [Ophelias] actors line is nothing demonstrating Ophelias unshaped use, he wishing of self-hood; and secondly, on a metaphorical level, picked up by Hamlet: Ham:         Thats a fair thought to lie between a maids legs. Oph:         What is, my headmaster? Ham:         Nothing.                                                                 (3.2.117-9) This form of knowledgeable innuendo is used by the Fool in King Lear. Lear, having recalln the gat (1.4.174) to his daughters, turns his member into a shealld peascod (200). The Fool, here, is referring to Lears empty masculinity, his lack of male control, and is rebu business leader the King for disordering the sex hierarchy. For now Lear has become a woman: ... thou art an O without a invention ... thou art nothing (192-3). Now that Lear is female and the hierarchy i s in chaos, the Fool can only conclude that he is better than nothing, in other words male. In the comparable way, Hamlet refers to the sexual inferences of Ophelias negativity, lack and absence. Indeed, it has been argued that representing Ophelia as nothing is a stratagem by the patriarchal structure to silence or void female tickling power, through a strategy of containment. This containment is adequately expressed by Hamlet in his Get thee to a nunnery speech, expressing the liking to negate female promiscuousness and erotic power by removing it from the male governmental domain. But, the bulwark of female power, the silencing of Ophelia and her sexuality is also clearly demonstrated by her brother and Father. Laertes advice to his baby is teeming with sexual metaphors. Sexuality and masculinity are symbolise as aggression, (the contagious blastments and the shot and gamble of exposure of disposition), against Ophelias tangible treasure, her button and her liquid dew (1.3.29-42). Laertes urges his sister to keep he! r sexuality closed, as Ophelia states: Tis in my memory lockd/ And you yourself shall keep the key of it (86-7). Laertes has laid a (metaphoric) chastity belt upon Ophelias chaste treasure, and lockd her amativeness from the d cholers of masculinity. On the other hand, Polonius desire to comprehend Ophelia is furthest more misogynistic: he mocks Ophelias thoughts of love, reducing Hamlets come uponion to numerous tenders (2.2. 162), and reprimands his daughters visibility (You yourself/ take hold of your audience been most free and rich [1.3.93-4]). To avoid being free and bounteous, she should lock herself from his [Hamlets] reanimate (2.3.143), or in other words remain closed, secure away her eroticism. Indeed, in Polonius eyes Ophelia represents poor more than a means of espial Hamlet, a pawn in a male political game (Ill loose my daughter to him [2.2.162]). Hence, Hamlets role to Polonius as a fishmonger (174), make reference to the Elizabethan slang for pimp. T he ending of negating Ophelias eroticism comes in the Graveyard scene, which presents Ophelia as eternally vestal.                 ... write down her i th earth, And from her fair and unpolluted flesh whitethorn violets spring.                                                                 (5.1.238-40) Laetes and Hamlets quarrel is on male wrong; Ophelia has lost her erotic power, so all that remains is the competition of male bonding. Hamlets diction, his use of terms uncommunicative for weight or mass, (I lovd Ophelia. forty thousand brothers/ could not with all their quality of love/ devise up my sum [5.1.269]), shows the squabble to be no more than male bravado. There has been a resurrection of the ideal, distant, powerless Ophelia to be monumentalised for all time, (This grave shall flip a living monument [5.1.301]), as a mudd le to oertop old Pelion (276). The idealise Ophelia ! becomes the form of femininity desired by the patriarchal order, and indeed the antithesis of Gertrude, as shall be seen. III The question of filial duty is primal to the play. The Ghosts mien upon the battlement catalyses the tragedy, kindle action with foreboding doom; but also, due to his predicament, the Ghost is also ironically one of the main reasons for Hamlets hesitation. Hamlets relations with his parents is paradigmatic of the ideal/ sure dichotomy within the play itself. The Ghosts first manifestation demonstrates the idealisation of the draw direct in Hamlets mind, and shows Hamlet seniors image as a warrior and king to his subjects. The Ghosts fair and competitive form coup take with his military dress, causes those that see him to reminisce over the angry parle with the Polacks. Hamlets perception of his pose is also exceedingly reckon: the Ghost is as an Hyperion to a lech [Claudius] (1.2.140). To Hamlet, his father represented the ideal husband, Gertr ude would hang on him/ As if outgrowth of appetite had grown/ By what it fed on (143-5) . However, Hamlet is torn by the speech of his father between this idealisation, and the credit of his fathers shame and need for strike back. Love for Hamlets terra firma is corresponding with obedience, whence the Ghosts: If thou didst ever thy father love ... vindicate his terrible and most abnormal murder                                                                 (1.5.23-5) Yet, there is an disgraceful sexual aspect to the Ghosts grievance, which by making the cause gluey turns Hamlets anger impotent. Although this aspect, namely Cuckoldry, is by no means central to Hamlets revenge dilemma, as far as his bonding to his father and fuss is concerned, it is fundamental. The Ghost tries to play down this particular grievance. He refers to the stark wits and gifts t hat have the power/ So to score (1.5.43-4), as thoug! h the witchcraft of [Claudius] wit (42) will lessen or explain away the Ghosts thread nature. Indeed, Claudius becomes a serpent (36), evocative of the temptation of Eve; the serpent (an extremely priapic image) symbolising how the Ghost feels he has been penetrated in the garden. When the Ghost very label the offense, however, he turns it from a personal insult into a political insult, in other words an insult against Denmark:                 allow not the royal bed of Denmark be                 A arrange for sumptuousness and damned incest                                                                         (1.5.82-3) The King and the Country can use the same signifier, so the Ghost is making the victim of the crime ambiguous. The effect of cuckoldry is mentioned only the once, by Lae rtes:                 That drop of blood thats ease proclaims me bastard,                 Cries cuckold to my father, brands the harlot                 Even here between the chaste unsmirched os frontale                 Of my square mother                                                                         (4.5.115-8) Laertes uses the term, metaphorically, to indicate how if he were not angry he would not be his fathers son. Cuckoldry represents a prodding to his duty to his father. However, in Hamlets case, cuckoldry is a reality, which only complicates his duty by adding an ill at ease(p) dimension to his fathers death. Although, a blemish on his idealised persuasion of his father, the notion of cuckoldry is a bone of contention in Hamlets relationship with Gertrude. It is here, in th! e filial relationship with the mother figure in Hamlet that the emphasiss of the charge of cuckoldry can be most clearly seen. Gertrudes role, in the play, is ambivalent but cannot mirror the dichotomous exposure established by Hamlet: the ideal father as inappropriate to the cuckolded father, and the suffer mother as opposed to the incestuous woman. Gertrude, ironically, sponsors married love throughout the play, particularly between Ophelia and Hamlet:                 And for your part, Ophelia, I do wish                 That your nice beauties be the cheerful cause                 Of Hamlets wildness.                                                                         (3.1.37-9) and, I hoped thou shouldst have been my Hamlets wife:                                         I thought thy bride bed to have decked, sweet maid, And not have strewed thy grave.                                                                 (5.1.247-49) Gertrudes unconventional marital status, her incest, coupled with this support of marital love makes Gertrude an ambiguous character. However as T.S. Eliot claims: Hamlet (the man) is prevail by an emotion which is inexpressible, because it is in excess of the facts as they appear... Hamlet is up against the difficulty that his rebuff is occasioned by his mother, but that his mother is not an adequate equivalent for it: his disgust envelops and exceeds her ... [I]t is just because her character is so negative and insignificant that she arouses in Hamlet the feeling which she is unable(predicate) of representing.                        !                                          ( inviolate Wood, 100-1) In representing Hamlets revenge dilemma, and the problem of the real/ideal distinction, Gertrude is wholly inadequate.
Gertrude realises that she may well be the reason for Hamlets brokenheartedness, his wilderness (I doubt it is no other but the main,/ His fathers death and our oerhasty marriage [2.2.56-7]). This is partially due to her visibility, which has a curious affect on Hamlet: hook and disgust. Such a reception is evaluate by the Ghosts lines:                 So lust, though to a bright pitch linkd                 Will sate itself in a gossamer bed                 And prey on garbage.                                                                         (1.5.55-7) The diction, here, shows a two-edged response to Gertrudes sin: bright angle and celestial bed suggest attraction (attributable to the assertable continuing love of his wife), and garbage and lust suggesting disgust. Indeed, it is just this unnatural lust which disqualifies Gertrude from the motherlike ideal. For this reason, Hamlet establishes the ideal mother in Hecuba in the Players scene. Once, Hecubas maternal identity is established (her spindly and all oer-teemed loins [2.2.508]) we are expected to connect her with true trouble for her husband (bisson rheum [2.2.506]) as opposed to the table season of [Gertrudes] most unrighteou s tears (1.2.154). For Hecuba, Hamlet would drown the! constitute in tears at the sight of the ideal suffer wife and mother. Ironically, Hamlet recognises the insubstantiality of his idealisation, commenting (2.2.560 ff) that an actor can produce the ruefulness that his mother cannot. The concept of the meta-tragedy provides the audience with a parallactic view of Gertrude as an actress, and as a mother. Maternal abandonment also highlights, if negatively, the peremptory importance of women for a sane social order. Femininity does have a role to play, but it must remain by all odds virginal or else maternal. King Lear manages to grab both these characteristics in the one character. Cordelia, ever virtuous, holds a maternal ambience (if only in relation to nature). Our foster-nurse of nature (4.4.12), referring to the power of Cordelias tears, idealises Lears daughter and allows her to put on the male bonding provided by t he Heath followers.                         ... wholly blest secrets,                 All you unpublishd virtues of the earth,                 Spring with my tears; be aidant and remediate                 In the good mans distress                                                                         (4.4.15-8) Cordelia, both mother of nature and symbolic of unpublishd virtues, Lear believes redeems nature from the general curse (4.6.206) and hence she dons unequivocal centrality at the end of the play. She is as much mother as Hecuba, and as much virgin as Ophelia. In contrast to this idealisation of femininity, Gertrude is railed against for her sins. It is not until the Closet scene, however, that we discover the strain upon the filial relationship. The charges of incest, adultery, female inconstancy and the oerhasty marriage injects Hamlets diction with disgust for the real Ger! trude (Mother, you have my father much offended [3.4.9] and, makes marriage-vows/ As false dicers oaths [3.4.45-6]). Yet, again Hamlet idealises his father, referring to him as Hyperion, Jove, Mars and Mercury, and describing his kisser in hyperbolic terms (every god did seem to set his seal/ To give the world assurance of a man [3.4.63-4]). This exaggeration of his fathers peak and status allows Hamlet to blame Gertrude alone. Hamlet, dwelling upon the cuckoldry of the Ghost, turns on Gertrudes sexual appetite: Could you on this fair mountain leave to collapse/ And batten on this tie down? (67-8). Indeed, his voyeuristic excitement at the sexual act has led many Freudian interpreters to postulate that Hamlet suffers from an Oedipal complex.                                 ... Nay, but to decease                 In the absolute sweat of an enseamed bed,                 Stewed in corruption, honeying and making love                 everywhere the nasty sty.                                                                         (3.4.91-4) Hamlets almost blunted direct, which the Ghost has come to whet, seems to be decidedly one-tracked, as is Hamlets disgust. The Ghosts return only complicates the issue, as according to the Quarto schoolbook he returns in his night gown (103). By maintaining the need to leave Gertrude to promised land (1.5.86), the Ghost holds tender concern for Gertrude. Ironically, therefore his second bearing represents the Ghost as Hamlets father in reality, no drawn-out the mighty warrior, but now unarm as he was in the garden at the secure hour. The real Ghost still loves Gertrude. Hamlet, ever idealistic, believes he should be excite at Gertrude and so th e reality of his father only conflicts with this art! icle of faith and endangers the mother-son relationship in the domestic sphere. IV The presentation of femininity is inextricably linked to that of the male world; that is to say, as far as bonding and friendship are concerned, the purely male relationships determine the form and depth of the male-female ones. The idealisation of women as virginal or maternal is coupled with a negation of the feminine (particularly erotic) power. Hamlets relationship with Ophelia is essentially a negation of her sexual potency, and a rejection of her eroticism which is seen as destructive in the male political world. Misogyny is back up by the crucial importance of male bonding for Hamlet. His close friendship with Horatio, and his idealisation of his father show a desire or need for rationality, as opposed to the fickleness, epitomised for Hamlet in Gertrude. Gertrude and Ophelia have roles to fulfil. However, these roles are so idealised that they bear little relation to reality. They involve a such a negation of self-hood, such a cultivation of nothingness that in act to fit into them, Gertrude and Ophelia risk becoming empty characters. Indeed the supreme role, the virgin until death achieved by Ophelia turns her into nothing more than a monument, a symbol for the male politics to fight over. On the other hand, when Gertrude deviates from the ideal, and ceases to play the grieving mother, she incurs the disgust of her son and jeopardises her relationship with him. The conflict between ideal and real is the tragedy for femininity within such a social order. BIBLIOGRAPHY: Abbe Blum,                 Strike all that look upon with Mar[b]le: Monumentalising Women in                                 Shakespeares plays in, A. M. Haselkova         The conversion English woman in shanghai: Counterbalancing the Canon         and B.S. Travitsky                 (pub. Univ. Massechusetts Press,! 1990) p. 99-108. T. S. Eliot,                 The Sacred Wood Peter Eriskson,                 Patriarchal Structures in Shakespeares Drama                                         (pub. Uni. of atomic number 20 Press, 1985) R.D. Laing,                 The Divided Self: An Existential require in saneness and Madness                                         (pub. London, 1960) David Leverenz,                 The Woman in Hamlet: An Interpersonal View                                         in, Signs, 4 (1978) 291-308. eds. P. Parker,                 Shakespeare and the Question of Theory and G. Hartman                 (pub. London, 1985) Valerie Traub,                 Desire and worry: Circulations of Sexuality in Shakespearean Drama                                         (pub. Routledge, London 1992) If you inadequacy to get a full essay, order it on our website:
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