Carolen G Heilbrun Analysis

Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude, plays a vital role throughout the play of Hamlet. In Carolyn G. Heilbrun’s essay she argues that Gertrude was the main character that holds everyone together. She has a tie to all of the main characters, Hamlet’s mother, a widow of the first king, and eventually she married the current king, her brother in law. Throughout the play her motives are often questioned while she plays one of the most important parts of the play. It is argues in Heilbrun’s essay that Gertrude is dull and shallow. At times in the play this may be true but there are also times where she can be a loving and compassionate mother and role model. It can be argued that she is truly a good person at heart but she may have the wrong interests at times.

Shortly after that we find out that Gertrude is going to marry the dead king’s brother Claudius. From this we have to decide if “Gertrude was a party to the late king’s murder” (Heilbrun). I strongly agree with the fact Gertrude had no part in killing the king because she seemed very surprised with the idea that the old king was killed when she says “As kill a King!” (III. iv. 33). The way she says this statement allows us to believe that this is a completely foreign idea to her. In the play she also realizes, along with everyone else, that her recent marriage may seem rushed. She emphasizes this when she says “his father’s death and our o’er-hasty marriage (with Claudius)” (II. Ii. 57) may be the reason that Hamlet is going mad. She never really gives a reason why it is so rushed but I agree with Heilbrun when she says that it was lust or the need for sexual passion that drove her from the arms of the dead king to Claudius. She admits that “(if I) turn’st mine eyes into my very soul… I see black and grained spots” (III. iv. 89-90), meaning that she is not a perfect human being and it was lust that has drove her to