Feminism and Hamlet
http://www.hamlethaven.com/feminism.html
‘Portraits of Ophelia’
http://elsinore.ucsc.edu/women/womenPortraits.html
“Hamlet, Claudius and Polonius are taken as having an independent existence.
Most often, this is not the case with Ophelia. She is most frequently analysed in
relationship to Hamlet, and her motivation seems dominated by the characters
with whom she interacts until she spins free in her madness. “
“ A central obstacle to affirming Ophelia's existence as an independent character
is that she appears to have no past. With Hamlet, we know through exposition of
his father, his childhood and his education, and we see him in relationship to old
friends. However, we have none of these cues to give us a sense of Ophelia's
past.”
Freudian critic, Jacques Lacan
“What is the point of the character Ophelia? Ophelia is obviously essential. She is
linked forever, for centuries, to the figure of Hamlet. “
Elaine Showalter – ‘Represent Ophelia: Women, Madness, and the
Responsibilities of Feminist Criticism’
“For most critics of Shakespeare, Ophelia has been an insignificant minor
character in the play, touching in her weakness and madness but chiefly
interesting, of course, in what she tells us about Hamlet... “
‘Hamlet: A Feminist Argument’
http://classiclit.about.com/od/hamlet/a/aa_hamletfem_2.htm
“Hamlet says to her: "That's a fair thought to lie between maids' legs" (3.2.111).
This seems like a tawdry kind of joke for a 'noble' prince to share with a young
woman of the court; however, Hamlet is not reticent to speak it, and Ophelia
herself seems not at all offended upon hearing it. But then, the author is male in a
male-dominant culture, and is representing the dialogue from his point of view,
not necessarily from the way a cultured woman would think or feel about such
humour.”
Gabrielle Dane – ‘Reading Ophelia’s Madness.’
“While the conflicting messages from male/masculine sources damage Ophelia’s
psychological identity, their sudden absence provokes her mental destruction.
Optimistically, Ophelia’s madness offers the capability of speech, the opportunity
to discover individual identity, and the power to verbally undermine authority”.
“A thorough analysis of Ophelia’s mad ramblings (and their mutual levels of
meaning) provides a singular exposé of society, of the turbulent reality beneath
its surface veneer of calm.”
Akiko Kusunoki - “‘Oh most pernicious woman”: Gertrude in the
Light of Ideas on Remarriage in Early Seventeenth-Century
England.’
“Contending that Shakespeare’s original audience would have viewed the Queen
as “a potent figure in her flouting of patriarchal dictates through her remarriage.”
“Gertrude’s remarriage “demonstrates an interesting possibility of female
agency” that contributes to the undermining of residual cultural values in the
play. Religious and literary sources of the Elizabethan period reflect “dominant
sentiments against a widow’s remarriage,” but historical research shows the
social reality that upper class widows often remarried.”
James Stone - ‘Androgynous ‘Union’ and the Woman in Hamlet.’
This article explores “the various ways androgyny, the collapse of sexual
difference, is represented,” as “union that erases the ambiguously gendered
divisions between mind and body, deeds and words, duty and affect, gives rise to
a catastrophic crisis of nondifference.”
Ophelia (1889) – John William Waterhouse