A Comparison Of Grief And The Social Mores Of Women

Projection of Grief and the Social Mores of Women

William Shakespeare’s Hamlet explores the causes and effects of various manifestations of grief in the socially restricted court of Elsinore. Expectations within such court-oriented society demand its members to conform to the societal roles set for them, which challenges characters such as Hamlet, Laertes, and Ophelia as they react to extreme loss. Each character faces a distinctive form of melancholy, categorized by Robert Burton as “disposition[al],” “habitual,” and “gentlewoman[ly]” (Burton, 177-179). The form of grief each character experiences provides unique insight into the societal roles they have failed to fulfill. Their individual grievances are disproportionately projected onto the

Robert Burton describes a “women’s melancholy” to be largely present in “noble virgins, [and] nice gentlewoman,” similar to Ophelia. According to Burton, unlike dispositional and habitual grief, feminine melancholy has a cure, of which “the surest remedy of all is to see them well placed and married to good husbands” (Burton 179). However, Ophelia loses her ability to obtain a prototypical life when Hamlet leaves her. She sings a song reminiscent of their relationship, in which Hamlet encourages a courtship and prospective marriage, but ultimately, he “let in a maid, that out a maid,” and never carried through with the relationship or sexual act (4.5.53). Ophelia’s song references her lost love “in such a way that puts emphasis on never being able to fill her role…as a wife and then mother” (Kerr). The inability to carry through the natural, and expected development of life into marriage, exacerbated by the death of Polonius, sends Ophelia into a madness aimed at undermining the patriarchal regime on which she formerly relied. Her inappropriate songs and suicide are a vehicle for rebellion as well as grief. By singing songs deemed by court society as inappropriate, and critiquing the court for their callous condolences after her father’s death, which “did not go/With true-love showers,” Ophelia confronts aspects of the societal code she feels have wronged her. As her final act of rebellion, Ophelia challenges the Christian belief system of the court by committing suicide, an extreme response to grief which reveals the extensive torment caused by societal expectations. Ophelia’s madness was a reaction to the strict social mores that tied her purpose to marriage, which was ultimately both unattainable, yet inescapable, offering her reprisal only in