Gertrude Character Analysis Essay

Woman, the new center of tragedy? Gertrude, the place of power Gertrude is a particularly complex character. In order to clarify its meaning, it is possible to start again from the scenography: if the ground is in earth (or rather, in gravel, which evoke the ballast of the railway tracks), it is because Gertrude is the land less In the sense of nourishing land (the ballast is not fertile) that of territory. Because Elsinore is Gertrude. It alone incarnates the place of power. This raises the question of what is the meaning of this place given to Gertrude by Barker. The choice of Gertrude as the main character, to the detriment of Hamlet, can be read as an almost feminist reversal of the sexual stereotype: one wonders whether Barker's wife is conceived as …show more content…
At the same time, she calls the dying king "my little one," betraying the power she had over him. Similarly, when she says "my state" when speaking of her pregnancy, one can hear the word "State" as the place of power ... The character of Isola is also a figure of feminine power; Witness the scene where Claudius is torn between the two powers, which at the same time oppose and combine to constrain him, the two women of his life: his mother and his mistress (scene 5). B See if students remember the meaning of the word "eponymous" seen in the "Before" and ask them to look for other eponymous pieces bearing the names of women. Note that there are many in the seventeenth century (Phèdre, Bérénice, Athalie ...), and very little in the twentieth, if not the reprints of these same characters from mythology or history (Électre de Giraudoux, Antigone d ' Anouilh, Penthesilea of Kleist, Joan of Arc at the stake of Claudel ... or Judith or the separated body of Barker). Look for feminine eponymous characters, among contemporaries, that are original (eg Mother Courage, by Bertolt Brecht, Molly Sweeney, Brian