Ophelia & Gertrude

Feminist Literary Criticism

Gertrude

Ophelia

Feminism
~the doctrine advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men. ~an organized movement for the attainment of such rights for women.

Aristotle: "The female is female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities" St. Thomas Aquinas's belief that woman is an "imperfect man."

History of Feminist Literary Criticism

~Mary Wollstonecrafts A Vindication of the Rights of woman (1792) marks the first modern awareness of women's struggle for equal rights. ~Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own (1929) became an important precursor for feminist literary criticism. Virginia Woolf argues that patriarchal society prevented women from realizing their creativity and potential. ~Kate Millet's Sexual Politics (1969) contained the first modern principles of feminist criticism by criticizing novels that were authored by males for their assumptions about females. Also introduced many new terms.

This type of criticism is concerned with the impact of gender on reading and writing. It usually includes a critique of patriarchal society. Feminists often argue that male fears are portrayed through female characters. This criticism looks at the female characters and their roles in the text.

Feminist Literary Criticism

Elaine Showalters Three stages of development for Female Characters: 1. Feminine Stage Involves acceptance and acquiescence to the role society has assigned. (2) Feminist Stage Involves protest and doubts about societys patriarchalism. (3) Female Stage - "phase of self-discovery; freedom from dependency. A search for identity.

Important Terms Defined

Erotomania: Female love-melancholy in Elizabethan time Phallologocentrism - "language ordered around an absolute Word (logos) which is masculine [phallic], systematically excludes, disqualifies, denigrates, diminishes, silences the feminine Essentialism - taken from Women Studies page of Drew University - "The belief in a uniquely feminine essence, existing above and beyond cultural conditioning Phallocentrism: a doctrine or belief centered on the phallus, esp. a belief in the superiority of the male sex. Patriarchy: ~a form of social organization in which the father is the supreme authority in the family ~a society, community, or country based on this social organization.

Elizabethan Women
Limited Roles Schools reserved for boys Could not enter into professions of law, politics, medicine. Only allowed to work in domestic service. Could not vote Childbearing considered a great honor for women Single women suffered the most- they were accused of being witches and looked upon with suspicion. Single women could become nuns but after the Reformation, convents were closed.

Melancholy
Ophelias madness would clinically be characterized in Elizabethan times as female love melancholy Melancholy was fashionable among men at this time. It was associated with intellectual and imaginative genius. Yet among women, this was seen as an emotional disease.

Ophelias Three Stages

1. Feminine Stage Involves acceptance and acquiesence to the role society has assigned. 2. Feminist Stage Involves protest and doubts about societys patriarchalism. 3. Female Stage - "phase of self-discovery; freedom from dependency. A search for identity.
1. 2. 3. Ophelia accepts Poloniuss advice. She follows and obeys him and thinks of herself as someone who cannot make her own decision. After Laertes advice to her, Ophelia tells Laertes not to be a bad priest who cannot practice what he preaches. Her craziness gives her freedom from dependency.

Advice to Laertes:

Contrast of Poloniuss Advice Given to Laertes and Ophelia

Advice to Ophelia: Believe youre a foolish little baby Give yourself more respect or youll make me a fooleither means will give him a grandchild, or make him a laughingstock.

Dont be too quick to act on what you think Once youre in a fight, hold your own Clothes make the man so spend money on clothes

Once youve found trustworthy friends, hold on to them (Hes trusted to make his own decisions)
ABOVE ALL, Be true to yourself

Hamlets vows are traps for birds

Dont Mistake Hamlets vows as true love Dont waste your time with him ABOVE ALL, listen to Polonius

All Practical Advice

Polonius and Laertes

They are the two authority figures in her life Before, saw Hamlets love as innocent and holy She loves Hamlet Polonius and Laertes both warn her about his love. She begins to see that love may not be so innocent. When her own thoughts of Hamlets love are replaced by her fathers beliefs, she does not know what to believe. I do not know, my lord, what I should believe. When her brother and father present a harsh belief that Hamlet may not have good intentions, she realizes it is a frightening world. She seeks refuge in the domestic role that women have been assigned to for centuries and becomes passive, only obeying her father and brother.

Nunneries
Act 3, Hamlet says get thee to a nunnery. As Ophelia drowns, Gertrude describes her songs as religious hymns or old lauds. Her songs are like chants that are associated with nunneries. While pre-reformation women may have gone to nunneries to escape, this option is not available to Ophelia.

Owl was a Bakers Daughter

In one of her songs, she sings, they say the owl was a bakers daughter. The bakers daughter was transformed into an owl, when Christ asked for bread but she only gave a small piece. The bakers daughter being transformed into an owl is like Ophelia being transformed by madness. Like how the bakers daughter made the wrong decision, Ophelia also made the wrong decision that led to her madness and death. Ophelias decision that led to her madness and death was trying to obey her father and be a good potential wife to Hamlet.

Ophelia Complex
Ophelia complex, the phenomenologist Gaston Bachelard traces the symbolic connections between women, water, and death. Drowning, he suggests, becomes the truly feminine death in the dramas of literature and life, one which is a beautiful immersion and submersion in the female element. 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. A man contemplating this feminine suicide understand it by reaching for what is feminine in himself, like Laertes, by a temporary surrender to his oen fluidity that is, his tears; and he becomes a man again in becoming once more dry when his years are stopped.

Im drownin g

Flowers
Elizabethans would have recognized the flowers she clutched to herself when she drowned as definite phallic symbols, indicative of her repressed longings

Rosemary was often given as a token of remembrance between lovers, not merely in remembrance of the dead; Pansies the popular name for was ~love-in-idleness', so the ~thoughts' they were used to represent were often erotic ones. Fennel symbolized not only flattery but also fickleness in love, and was even associated by Robert Greene (in A Quip for an Upstart Courtier) with women's sexual desire in general. Because of the homed shape of its nectarines, Columbine became a symbol of cuckoldry for either sex; rue conventionally stood for sorrow and repentance, but was also thought to abate carnal lust. Daisy, emblem of Alcestis, symbolized self-sacrifice for love, but also represented dissembling love and the folly of believing such deceits;

The symbolism in her drowning is itself an emblem of the inner conflict which drove her to madness. She drowns in her fantastic garlands, woven of buttercups, daisies, nettles, and long purples, flowers that represent her innocence, pain, and sexuality, woven together here in madness as she had been unable to do in her life.

Ophelia is Zero

When Ophelia is mad, Gertrude says that Her speech is nothing, mere unshaped use. Ophelia's speech thus represents the horror of having nothing to say in the public terms defined by the court. Deprived of thought, sexuality, language, Ophelia's story becomes the Story of Othe zero, the empty circle or mystery of feminine difference, the cipher of female sexuality to be deciphered by feminist interpretation.

She thinks nothing says this to both Hamlet and Polonius.

Ophelias madness

Ophelia's virginal and vacant white is contrasted with Hamlet's scholar's garb, his suits of solemn black. Her flowers suggest the discordant double images of female sexuality as both innocent blossoming and whorish contamination; 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 each case.

Ophelias Relationships With Males

She is subservient and obedient

Hamlet has a misogynistic attitude towards women in general. He therefore pushes Ophelia away.

Act 2- the two authority figures in her life: her father and her brother supposedly give her advice, but really meant to frighten and insult her love for Hamlet, which led her to doubt herself, her trust in love, and Hamlets intentions Trying to submit to her father and to be a good potential wife for Hamlet has brought her nothing. Or rather, it has brought her shattering grief and madness. Her father warns her more abruptly: You do not understand yourself so clearly / As it behoves my daughter and your honour (I.iii.97-98). She is his child, his property, a vessel of procreation, no more but so Both her brother and her father warn her repeatedly to defend her honor, her virginity, which is the fragile basis for woman's respectability and personal value in patriarchal society

Gertrude and Ophelias Relationships with the male characters

Ophelia - Dependent on men to tell her how to behave virgin and daughter vs lover and whoreophelia is used by the men around her.polonius' daughter and spylaertes' sister who is under his control and will do what he askshamlets' lover: she will perform her wifely duties even though she is not betrothed
the differences: Gertrude is strong enough to manipulate the men around her but its the men around her that accidentally lead her to her demise. Ophelia is weak and her innocence and dependence on men destroy her also. the difference is the men in Ophelia's life love her but their love and repression cause her insanity and suicide. but in both cases these women are dependent on the m en in their lives who though provide them meaning in their life, cause their deaths as well

The Gertrude who does emerge clearly in Hamlet is a woman defined by her desire for station and affection, as well as by her tendency to use men to fulfill her instinct for self-preservation which, of course, makes her extremely dependent upon the men in her life. She is at her best in social situations when her natural grace and charm seem to indicate a rich, rounded personality. At times it seems that her grace and charm are her only characteristics, and her reliance on men appears to be her sole way of capitalizing on her abilities.

Sources

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