Shakespeares Hamlet - Comparison of Gertrude and Ophelia Essay

crossroads -- Comparison of Gertrude and Ophelia Gertrude and Ophelia occupy the leading roles for females in the Shakespearean drama Hamlet. As women they share many things in rough-cut attitudes from others, shallow or simple minds and outlooks, etc. This essay will withdraw into what they have in common. The protagonists negative attitude toward both(prenominal) women is an obvious starting point. John Dover Wilson explains in What Happens in Hamlet how the prince holds both of the women in disgust The difficulty is not that, having once love Ophelia, Hamlet ceases to do so. This is explained, as most critics have agreed, by his yields conduct which has put him quite out of love with making love and has poisoned his whole imagination. The exclamation Frailty thy name is woman in the depression soliloquy, we come to feel later, embraces Ophelia as well as Gertrude, while in the bedroom scene he as good as taxes his receive with destroying his capacity for affection, when he accuses her of such an act That blurs the grace and blush of modesty, Calls righteousness hypocrite, takes off the rose From the fir forehead of an innocent love And sets a blister there. Moreover, it is clear that in the tirades of the nunnery scene he is thinking near as much of his mother as of Ophelia. (101) Other critics agree that both women are recipients of Hamlets ill-will. In the Introduction to Twentieth carbon Interpretations of Hamlet, David Bevington enlightens the reader regarding the similarities between Gertrude and Ophelia as the hero sees them Yet to Hamlet, Ophelia is no dampen than another Gertrude both are tender of heart but grovelling to the will of importunate men, and so are forced into uncharacteristic vi... ... An prelude to Hamlet. Twentieth Century Interpretations of Hamlet. Ed. David Bevington. Englewood Cliffs, NJ Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1968. Rpt. from An Approach to Hamlet. Stanford, CT Stanford University Press, 1961. Pennington, Michael. Ophelia Madness Her solo Safe Haven. Readings on Hamlet. Ed. Don Nardo. San Diego Greenhaven Press, 1999. Rpt. from Hamlet A Users Guide. New York Limelight Editions, 1996. Pitt, Angela. Women in Shakespeares Tragedies. Readings on The Tragedies. Ed. Clarice Swisher. San Diego Greenhaven Press, 1996. Excerpted from Shakespeares Women. N.p. n.p., 1981. Shakespeare, William. The cataclysm of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 1995. http//www.chemicool.com/Shakespeare/hamlet/full.html Wilson, John Dover. What Happens in Hamlet. New York Cambridge University Press, 1999.