Gertude's Depression In Hamlet

When someone we care about leaves our lives or passes away, we tend to be depressed and to think about how you miss them. Countless days of denial and disbelief, many people get stuck in the ‘Grief’ stage and find it very hard to focus on anything else but to think about their lost one. Gertude however, found a way to cope with this depression by almost instantly marrying her brother-in-law. But Hamlet is nothing but furious with his mother and is stuck on never forgiving her.

Throughout the play, Hamlet is still going through the early stages of depression since the death of his father, but his mother does not seem affected by it in the least. Gertude, however had lowered her fidelity because of the loss of her husband. She thought that

“Seems, madam! Nay, it is; I know not seems. 'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother, Nor customary suits of solemn black, Nor windy suspiration of forc'd breath, No, nor the fruitful river in the eye, Nor the dejected haviour of the visage, Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief, That can denote me truly. These, indeed, seem; For they are actions that a man might play; But I have that within which passes show- These but the trappings and the suits of woe. . . . It is no accident that this speech sets in motion Hamlet's preoccupation with seeming and being, including the whole train of images of acting which is crystallized in the play within the play” (Arthur Kirsch, Hamlet’s Grief, 19). As Hamlet sets the speech in “The Murder of Gonzago” he not only tries to reach Claudius, but he also wants his mother to feel some slight guilt in getting married so fast after the death of her late husband. “Such love would need be reason in my breast” (3.2.2). When Gertude made a vow to King Hamlet to be with only him, Hamlet saw that as never marrying anyone else even if King Hamlet were to pass away. Hamlet’s view of his mother has not changed as because of that, he feels as his mother should never marry again and only feel grief over her late