Ould Gamlet Love - Essay Example

Essay, English Topic: Hamlet and Gender True love goes on multiplying with the passage of time; true love is sublime. True love doesn’t even expect to be loved back. True love is not conditional. True love is silent yet it is the sweetest sound on earth. Vocal declarations about love are not the indicators to gauge the depth of love. Since love is a soft emotion, a tough individual like Hamlet cannot be the claimant to the throne of true love; he loves as a matter of convenience, but not truly. He loved Ophelia when it suited his interests. Bargaining for love is equivalent to trade. It is difficult to give a clean chit to Hamlet by analyzing the various phases of his relationship and professed love to Ophelia. Funeral oration (the incident at the grave of Ophelia) cannot be the true index of love. Heart is the real domain of love and not the logic and reasoning of the head. The more intense is the reasoning, more doubts it creates about genuinely. A lover is not like the lawyer trying to argue a false case. For example, the content and language of his letter to Ophelia that Polonius reads before the king and queen doesn’t sound creditworthy. Hamlet’s love looks like the flight of imagination, the dew of the morning that will melt facing the truth of sunshine. The warning by her brother Laertes that Hamlet’s love is a passing phase seems correct. If it is true love, should it change often as it happens in the case of Hamlet? True love is not situational. Will an individual feign madness to bitterly hurt his love? That situation could be the necessity of Shakespeare to give intelligent twist to the plot of the drama. But Hamlet doesn’t do justice to the cause of true love. Yet, he gives proof about his love in the above letter by claiming, “ To the celestial and my soul's idol, the most beautified Ophelia ... Doubt thou the stars are fire, doubt that the sun doth move, doubt truth to be a liar, but never doubt I love." (II, 2) But this looks like the calculated overflow of the feelings. In the later part of the play his love diminishes and the reason given is that the brother and father of Ophelia are studying his moves for his objective to oppose the fructification of love. In such a situation an individual needs to be more firm. The opposition from the side of a girl in the situation like the one in which Ophelia was placed was but normal. When firm display of love was required, Hamlet backtracked. Professing love, when the going is good is not the indication of true love. Adverse circumstances are the testing times. Hamlet’s bitter speech in a harsh tone when he states, “Get thee to a nunnery!” and then accusing Ophelia, and all women, of the crimes of his mother guilty of, go against his professed love. Can an individual who truly loves, can hurl accusations, insult and berate to the extent which Hamlet does? One, who is against the entire women-folk, cannot love a girl from the bottom of one’s heart. He should have found ways and means to keep the lines of communication with her. Even in the graveyard incident mentioned above, silence on the part of Hamlet on that occasion would have said much about his love than the virulent words defending his love. His contradictory pronouncements of "I did love you once" (III.i.114) and "I loved you not" (III.i.117) do nothing more than further verify Hamlet's lack of control over his own mind, which establishes one of his innate flaws. Hamlet’s misadventures in love are due to his psychological problems. His women characters are like the barometers to indicate how women were treated during the Elizabethan era. Women had no private emotional world of their own, as they were unimportant to men. Take the example of Polonius who was the domineering father who decisively interferes in the emotional world of his daughter and she is not allowed to talk to the man she loves. He argues: “Marry, well bethought 'Tis told me he hath very oft of late Given private time to you, and you yourself Have of your audience been most free and bounteous If it be so as so 'tis put on me- And that in way of caution- I must tell you, You do not understand yourself so clearly As it behooves my daughter and your honor. What is between you? Give me up the truth.” (I.iii.46) Hamlet is discourteous to his mother and puts on an air of superiority while addressing her"…frailty, thy name is woman!" (I.ii.28) Thus, ill-treatment of women is the dominant theme in Hamlet. Hamlet is an exception as for gender roles and some of the roles women have been depicted as emotionally and mentally tough and strong. In a heinous act Claudius murders own brother to placate his “shameful lust” (I.v.45) for Gertrude. Thus Hamlet is depicted as a feeble character. In contrast, Ophelia is depicted as “chaste as ice, pure as snow" (III.i.133). Gertrude has been depicted as an honest, caring mother Hamlet’s journey of life becomes like the rudderless boat in a turbulent sea. His every step is the step towards fulfilling his vendetta. The modern psychoanalytical approaches have created more problems than to solve the basic issue/proper understanding of Hamlet’s personality. He was so self-destructive due to personal tragedies that he encountered. “How (weary), stale, flat, and unprofitable Seems to me all the uses of this world (I, ii, 11.133-134)” Hamlet’s disposition towards Ophelia is unexplainable by the yardstick of reasoning and must take him to the portals of an expert psychologist. She is his former lover. His cruelty and verbal slang towards her are beyond the comprehension of a mind that wishes to know the reason. He taunts her with vicious attack on her character. She makes sincere efforts to understand him, but Hamlet hits back at her with a foul tongue. In the entire play, Ophelia is the most delicate personality, and Hamlet does not spare her. He goes to the extent of “accidentally” killing her father, driving her onward to suicide. Why Hamlet acted thus? Only two persons know the truth. Hamlet and Shakespeare! Hamlet’s most trusted friends will find it difficult to defend him for this satanic action! Hamlet compares Gertrude to a beast in his very first scene “O God, a beast that wants a discourse of reason Would have mourned longer... O, most wicked speed to post With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!” (I.ii.50-1, 156-7) And from the first his encounters with Ophelia are spattered with hostility and disgust: “I have heard of your paintings, well enough. God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another. You jig and amble, and you lisp; you nickname God' creatures and make your wantonness your ignorance.” (III.i.143-7) In the closet scene with Gertrude, Hamlet's loathing comes to its climate. “ ... Nay, but to live In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed Stewed in corruption, honeying and making love Over the nasty sty....” (III.iv.92-95) Hamlet does not reconcile with any women, including Ophelia, till the end of the play. His outbursts indicate more an act of aggression against Laertes than his genuine effort for reconciliation with Ophelia at peace in her grave! Two issues impacted the relationship between Hamlet and Ophelia over which both of them had no control: Hamlet’s psychological state and the political exigencies during the period in which Shakespeare authored the play. Work Cited Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Dover Thrift Editions; 1992, Print. Read More