The Problem with Women

But "Soft you now, / The fair Ophelia"

Hamlet's "To be or not to be speech" runs into Ophelia:

--Soft you now,
The fair Ophelia!--Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remembered.

What follows is the famous nunnery scene: Branagh clip with Kate Winslet as Ophelia

• once again opposite meanings fold in upon themselves
  • nunnery =
    • convent
    • whorehouse
• expressive of his own forced doubleness:
  • his ideal - remove her from a depraved world
  • his (and her) involvement in depravity

 

Ophelia's Madness:

• Scenes of Polonius (Bill Murray) with Ophelia (Julia Stiles) before she goes mad; clips from Ethan Hawke Hamlet (year 2000)
• Branagh clip of Ophelia's madness: Kate Winslet

Why does Ophelia go mad?

Why does her madness take the form of bawdy love songs (eg., pp. 104-105; 4.5.48-66)?

 

Ophelia Pictured:

Paintings of Ophelia have captured the full array of her qualities: innocent child, nymph, madwoman, sexually repressed, natural beauty:

• Paintings of Shakespeare's Ophelia
• Arthur Hughes: childlike Nymph O
• James Sant: childlike innocent O
• John Everett Millais: beautiful part of nature O
• Ernest Herbert: beautiful, sultry, and crazed O
• John W. Waterhouse (1): sexy, crazy O
• Lemaire's Ophelia Madeleine: really sexy, crazy O

 

Ophelia's Madness and Hamlet's Madness:

Ophelia's madness and Hamlet's "antic disposition" mirror each other in a number of ways:

1. both caused by grief over a dead father.
2. both utter meaningful nothings.
3. both consider or result in suicide.
4. both have sexual obsessions.

 

Ophelia's Madness versus Hamlet's Madness:

But the difference is that--for most of the time, at least--Hamlet's madness is feigned and for a purpose:

1. it is a way of functioning in a world where everyone works by indirections
2. it is a way of protecting his identity from everyone who is trying to penetrate to the heart of his mystery
3. it is a way to give expression to his own troubled sexuality and the mingled visions that he cannot keep separate (e.g., "nunnery")
4. it prevents him from actually going mad like Ophelia.

Thus Hamlet's madness protects and expresses his identity while Ophelia's reflects a crushed ego.

 

Harping on Mothers: Gertrude

One of Hamlet's obsessions, expressed through madness, is female sexuality, especially in relation to his mother.

These feelings explode in Hamlet's meeting with Gertrude in Act 3, scene 4, the Closet Scene:

Closet scene (3.4): Zeffirelli Film Clip with Mel Gibson as Hamlet and Glenn Close as Gertrude.

 

The Gibson Hamlet and (Too)Close Gertrude:

The Zeffirelli production draws on Freud's interpretation of the play.

• according to Freud, Hamlet cannot easily avenge his father's death because he has an Oedipus complex
• he wishes (or wished) to kill his father and to sleep with his mother
• he thus cannot bring himself to act against the man who has done what he himself wanted to do

To the extent that the Oedipus complex operates here, I would take it one step further:

• Claudius has become the stand-in father that Hamlet must remove to possess his mother
• Hamlet's killing of "Claudius" (actually the other father figure, Polonius) is "doable" in this scene because Hamlet's repressed love for his mother drives him to such distracted aggression.

But, of course, Hamlet kills the wrong father and his "real" father resurfaces.

 

Gertrude's Failed Vision:

Why doesn't Gertrude see the ghost?

 

The Woman Within:

Gertrude, like Ophelia, is also a projection of Hamlet's vision of himself.

• in attacking Gertrude's sexual perversion, Hamlet is attaching an aspect of himself: his strong feelings for her, which he has not yet come to terms with.
• as with Ophelia, Gertrude is the receptacle of Hamlet's double image of himself as ideal and depraved.
• this is why it is so important for him that she repent and change.

But the fact is that the women in his world cannot save Hamlet.

• The answer must come from within.