Sexism In Hamlet

A way to show that back then women were shown as one dimensional figures is found in the hand out Mr Hatfield passed out, called “Hamlet is Sexist”. It said “If they take all the lines that Ophelia are in, in the play, it would be a short play of abuse”. (second page 4th paragraph) Also in the book Hamlet , Hamlet has a big plan to get his uncle to crack under pressure by making a play to replicate the murder. As the play goes on, Hamlet is sitting next to Ophelia and at first is treating her kindly but as he thinks about his mother and what she has done, and when he remember how much he dislikes women, he starts treating Ophelia badly “Ay, truly, for the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the force of honesty can translate beauty into his likeness. This was sometime a paradox I choose to write about how in Hamlet By William Shakespeare, how Ophelia and Gertrude are symbolized as one dimensional characters vs female characters in books today. I say this because today's authors would have a female character the hero as the main character, so the story is mainly about them. In Shakespeare's time you would never see a female as the main focus and as a powerful character. You will always see a man with all …show more content…
Back then, women were shown to be the pure, beautiful and perfect characters and were always made to sound that the only good thing that might happen to them was to find a husband. He writes Ophelia to be the helpless, beautiful face that always need rescuing. If it's not rescuing women need, then they are symbolized as a witch or whores/ sex objects such as Gertrude. Very rarely women are shown as power hungry manipulators such as Lady Macbeth from Macbeth and a little bit Gertrude because little as we know she did spend so little time finding and marrying her dead husband's brother just to keep her spot in on the