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Hamlet's mental illness
Hamlet and mental health
Hamlet's mental illness
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The Projection of Hamlet’s Emotions Through Adult Sexuality
In William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the question of sexuality and the role of women becomes a substantial component in analyzing Hamlet’s character and behavior. The motif of misogyny occurs intermittently throughout the play shown largely through Hamlet's relationships with both Gertrude and Ophelia. Clearly hurt by Gertrude’s marriage to Claudius so soon after his father’s death Hamlet becomes cynical of women and surmises that they are all immoral creatures. He develops a particular obsession with female sexuality and incestuous relations. Hamlet forms a connection between women and immorality, thus using his his mother’s incestous actions as a basis to surmise that all women are deemed unworthy and morally corrupt. By forming this archetype to suit all the women in his life, Hamlet allows himself a means to project his anger onto others. Therefore Hamlet’s preoccupation with adult sexualty and incest is not only the cause of his sadness and nausea, but is also a means to project his emotions and express the disgust and grief that has been caused by the women of the play and their betrayals.
When once Hamlet identified himself through his royal blood and the distinguished members of his family, the union of his mother and uncle has left him without status. Hamlet's sense of worth, manliness, and identity are equally undone through the union of Claudius and Gertrude. His body, his status, and his very being have become polluted through his mother’s marriage to his father’s brother, “Fie on ’t, ah fie! 'Tis an unweeded garden/That grows to seed. Things rank and gross in nature” (1.2.134-6). Hamlet uses the line as a metaphor for his world being a garden. As his world is...
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...med him, causing him to bitterly reject both women after realizing the incestuous betrayals. Claudius asks “If ’t be the affliction of his love or no/That thus he suffers for” and as both themes of sexuality and betrayal intersect, we see in grand part the emotional state of Hamlet (3.1.37-8). It is love that he suffers for, but it is not for the love he had but the emotions behind loving a person. His emotions have been betrayed, not once but twice. These hypersexual creatures, have in his eyes become the source of nausea, grief, and anger. His very being rejects the idea of feminine sexuality and incest so fervently that he cannot focus on anything outside of the two themes, other than death. Consequently, his emotions caused by the union of Gertrude and Claudius caused a flow of emotions so strong that they clouded his judgement, his mind, and even his future.
“It has been generally believed that males stand as opposed to females physically, intellectually, and emotionally. Man is supposed to be strong, courageous, rational and sexually aggressive; while woman is weak, timid, emotional, and sexually passive.” (Guo 2009) The aforementioned beliefs sprout from the deceptively repetitive statistics that male is the dominant gender. However, the audience of “Hamlet” encounters the similar idea of inept femininity through Hamlet’s struggle to accept his indecisiveness, that causes the delay of his father’s revenge, an action in which he has “cause, and will, and strength, and means,/ To do’t. Examples gross as earth exhort” (Hoy 1992). In the renowned soliloquy “to be or not to be”, Hamlet explicitly designated his excessive thinking as the seed to his inaction:
Thesis: Hamlet’s idea of love becomes perverted due to Gertrude’s actions, which causes him to project his distorted romantic ideals onto Ophelia.
In "Man and Wife Is One Flesh": Hamlet and the Confrontation with the Maternal Body, Janet Adelman argues that the motivating force behind the plot action in Hamlet is the collapse of boundaries between relationships of individuals, sexes, and divisions of public (state) and private (love) life. The primary cause of the breakdown results from the bodily contamination spread through overt sexuality, specifically maternal sexuality. Janet Adelman asserts her feminism into the sexist view of psychoanalysis to define the contamination as that power of women that men fear.
In life, one goes through different experiences which makes and shapes us into the person who we become. Whether something as little as a "hello" by a crush or a death in a family, they contribute to the difference, as they are all equal in importance. In the play Hamlet by William Shakespeare, the protagonist Hamlet struggles throughout his life as he is in search of his true identity. The Webster's dictionary, under the second definition, defines identity as "The set of behavioral or personal characteristics by which an individual is recognizable as a member of a group." As life only moves forward for Hamlet, he struggles to find his place in life, nonetheless to revenge the murder of his father.
In the play, Hamlet is described as an intelligent, emotional, and grief-stricken protagonist but he is consumed by his own thoughts which make him a highly-indecisive individual; Hamlet’s inability to act on his father’s murder, his mother’s hasty remarriage, and his uncle assuming of the throne are all evidence that Hamlet does not know what is going on in his own life. Perhaps Hamlet wants to place the blame on someone else after he wreaks vengeance on King Claudius, or capture the attention of certain characters so that he may find out exactly what has gone “rotten in Denmark” (Act 1, Scene 5, Line 90). Throughout the play Hamlet is deeply hurt by his mother’s decision to remarry his uncle. As Hamlet says, “Frailty thy name is woman”, her actions cause Hamlet to curse women all together (Act 1, Scene 2, Line 146).
He feels that he is like a garden full of weeds, in which the weeds represent his father’s death and the Queen and King’s marriage which he can no longer tend to fix, leaving Hamlet to feel trapped and think about suicide. Although Hamlet does not kill himself, later on in the play, he kills many other characters also proceeding with his loss of innocence. For example, Hamlet confirms his loss of innocence when he discovers that the letters sent from Claudius given to Rosencranz and Guildenstern, are to deliver a death sentence for Hamlet in England. Hamlet realizes this and switches the letters, ordering the death of Rosencranz and Guildenstern. By sending the two men to death, Hamlet lost his innocence has he has committed a morally wrong
Always in Shakespeare reading we learn many different themes. The play “Hamlet” by William Shakespeare is a classic published in 1603. The story goes through Hamlet’s everyday thoughts of life, love, people and other ideologies. Hamlet story teaches us throughout the story that he hates King Claudius with a ceaseless passion because he poisoned his brother in order to marry the queen and take the crown. Hamlet is the prince and his mother’s marriage to Claudius causes him to have a deep rooted hatred towards women which pushes him to hate sex. As a result, we see how deeply Hamlet values inner truth and his hatred for deceit. After learning Hamlet’s philosophy of life we see that he would not fit in modern American society. Therefore, Hamlet
Oddly, it appears that Gertrude possess more significance to Hamlet than one first anticipates. Her swift call to matrimony leads Hamlet into a spiraling quarry of depression and grieving. This mirrors the Oedipus complex. Gertrude sexually commits herself to Claudius causing Hamlet to feel a sense of jealousy and disappointment. In retaliation, he expresses his repressed desire of love through his unruly comments. He even goes as far as to say that the love is incestuous. Furthermore, in Act 3 scene 4, Hamlet confronts his mother directly in a closet. Addressing concern over her sexual actions, he exclaims “In the rank sweat of an enseamèd bed, / Stewed in corruption, honeying and making love / Over the nasty sty” (III.iv.104-106). Not only does this quote show that Hamlet disapproves his mother’s marriage, but also that he believes Claudius is a wicked criminal. Aligning with the Oedipus complex, Hamlet strangely obsesses over his mother’s love life while viewing his uncle in
Hamlet is one of the most controversial characters from all of the Shakespeare’s play. His character is strong and complicated, but his jealousy is what conduces him to hate women. He sees them as weak, frail, and untrustworthy. He treats Ophelia, the women he loves, unfair and with cruelty. Similarly, he blames his mother for marrying her dead husband’s brother, who is now the King of Denmark. Hamlet’s treatment for women stems from his mother’s impulsive marriage to his uncle who he hates and Ophelia choosing her father’s advice over him.
Shakespeare repeatedly tackles sexuality within The Tragedy of Hamlet. Sexuality is important when establishing the reasons for Hamlet’s desires, mood swings, and his constant struggle with gender identity because sexuality is in the center of it all. For example, highlighted in act 3.4 Hamlet argues with his mother, Gertrude, over the content of the performance that Hamlet directed. Hamlet outright accuses his mother of being a whore and of being deceitful for marry her husband’s brother. However, Hamlet’s angry is much more deeply rooted because his acting out against Gertrude is not simply because of her betrayal and incest-like sexual desires, it is more or so because now he has to question himself and his
In William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, women are oversexualized, and are given no role other than to be the item of a man’s desire. The promiscuity of the only two women in the play, Gertrude and Ophelia, detracts from their power and integrity, and allows Hamlet a certain amount of control over them. Gertrude’s sexual lifestyle is often mentioned by her son, Hamlet, and Hamlet uses his knowledge of Gertrude’s sexuality as a means to criticize her. Ophelia’s sexuality initially appears to be controlled by Laertes and Polonius, and Hamlet takes advantage of the naive image that she is required to keep. However, in her later madness, Ophelia taints this image by revealing that her innocence is feigned. By exposing the sexual natures of both Gertrude and Ophelia, Hamlet strips these women of any influence they may have had, and damages their once-honourable names.
Hamlet is petrified into inaction by the quickness of events that transpires at the beginning of the play. His uncle Claudius has killed his father, and his mother in less than a month has married the same man who committed this heinous murder thus beginning an incestuous relationship. Hamlet addressed his discord with this speed and nature of this relationship, “A little more than kin, and less than kind”...
In the beginning of the story, Hamlet’s character was struggling with the sudden marriage of his mother, Gertrude, to his uncle, Claudius, a month after his father is death. For a young man, it’s hard to believe that he understood why his mother quickly married Claudius especially since, Claudius is his uncle. Later he learned that his father’s ghost was sighted. Intuitively, he knew there had to be some kind of “foul play.” At this point, Hamlet is a university student; his morals and way of thinking are defined by books and what was taught to him. This is seen when he speaks about the flaws of men, setting a bad reputation for all, and the man’s flaws causing their “downfall.”(a.1, sc.4, l.)
Hamlet’s attachment to his mother was quickly made evident within the first act of the famous tragedy. Hamlet, who sulks around wearing black clothing to mourn the death of his father, first speaks in the play to insult his stepfather. He voices his distaste at his new relationship with his uncle by criticizing that they are, “A little more than kin and less than kind” (I.ii.65). He believes that it is unnatural for his uncle to also be his father, and eagerly jumps at an opportunity to offend Claudius. However, Hamlet acts entirely different towards his mother, despite his poor attitude....
In Shakespeare’s dramatic works there is no room for the heroic or the strong woman, and therefore many of his plays can be perceived as being antifeminist. Often he portrays women as weak, mad, sexual, and as even witches. Hamlet is no exception. The only women in the play, Ophelia and Queen Gertrude, are given confined and limited roles. These roles are from a male-dominated viewpoint and only add focus to the male characters instead of incorporating the insight and the impact of the women as well.