Shakespeare's Negative Attitude towards Women in Hamlet

Abstract

In the history of English literature, William Shakespeare is remarked as the giant of the Renaissance and history of the world dramas. The greatest dramatist Shakespeare was really better at portraying the female characters than the other dramatists in that period. When creating Hamlet, Shakespeare indeed tried his best to reflect the life truly, but the period when he lived in and the personal sexual identity creates under the influence of that period decided his view of male power. It is just the times in which females were realized narrowly and the fact that Shakespeare was a masculine gender that the female images in Hamlet suffered a lot, and they have been represented as one kind of slaves in the history since they did not have any choice to do for their own shake. In the play Hamlet Gertrude and Ophelia are the two significant women characters in which the attitude of the dramatist explores. The central female character Gertrude married Claudius (murderer) second time after only two months later of king‟s death, she cannot win the heart of his first husband King Hamlet as well as the heart of second husband Claudius, even she is hated by her own son prince Hamlet. The study is a comprehensive analysis on the tragedy of Shakespeare‟s Hamlet focusing on deconstructive Feminism. The main hypothesis of the study is that women in Hamlet are represented as less important and negative labels and it has reinforced and toughened the patriarchy and patriarchal principles.

Keywords

• shakespeare
• negative attitude towards women