Family Dysfunction in Hamlet
As I read to the end of Act IV of Hamlet (and maybe kept reading a bit farther, shh!), I found myself growing more and more wary of the way relations between family members are portrayed. No matter which character I look at, there seems to be some disturbing aspect of his or her familial relationships.
The first (and strangely least disturbing) of the relationships we learn about over the course of the play is the relationship between father and son. So far three sons have seen their fathers killed: Hamlet, Fortinbras, and Laertes. Each of the sons is out for revenge on his father’s killer. However, I’ll focus on Hamlet here because his relationships with his father figures are the most striking. Hamlet’s desire for revenge against his father’s murderer is particularly disturbing because it means he’s after the blood of his own uncle, Claudius. This is made even worse when you keep in mind Claudius’s words to Hamlet in Act I: “We pray you throw to earth/This unprevailing woe, and think of us/As of a father” (1.2.106-8). After killing Hamlet’s father, Claudius essentially asks Hamlet to think of him as a father instead. Adding that to the discussion we had in class about Claudius possibly being Hamlet’s biological father, the relationship between them is thoroughly perverse.
Turning toward the female side of the families, things get a bit more complicated and possibly even more sinister. There don’t seem to be as many murder plots abounding in regards to the women of the play, but there’s quite a bit of questionable sexuality. Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother, has apparently committed incest by marrying her dead husband’s brother. Hamlet explains that “even she . . . Married with mine uncle,/My father’s brother, but no more like my father/Than I to Hercules/within a month . . . O most wicked speed, to post/ With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!” (1.2.149-57). Even if Gertrude and Claudius aren’t related by blood, it seems that there is a reason the brother of your spouse is called a brother-in-law. But that’s not quite as creepy as Hamlet’s apparent Oedipus complex in regard to his mother Gertrude. Hamlet seems unduly preoccupied with his mother’s sex life, and while the point we made in class about his being worried about possible competition for the throne make sense, I still get the feeling that Hamlet’s main concerns aren’t really about political gain. Just look at Hamlet’s confrontation with Gertrude in her bedroom.
Lastly, I think that Ophelia’s relationships with her family are also suspicious. She is very dependent on the male members of her family, and something about that strikes me as odd. Again, it probably wasn’t that unusual for women to rely on the men in their family during this time period, but it seems like more than that. Ophelia falls into a sort of babbling, delusional state when her father Polonius is killed, and when Claudius mentions that Ophelia is brooding about her father’s death in Act IV, Ophelia suddenly breaks into a song about “I a maid at your window/To be your Valentine” (4.5.49-50). I’m not sure what to make of this, and I’m also uncertain about Ophelia’s relationship with her brother Laertes. Laertes only weeps for her death in Act IV, which is all we were supposed to read, but in Act V he jumps in Ophelia’s grave and holds her dead body, asking that the gravediggers “Hold off the earth a while,/Till I have caught her once more in mine arms” (5.1.233-34). I don’t know how close the bonds between siblings are supposed to be, but this seems excessive.
Then again, all the familial relationships in the play seem strange to me. Anyone else have any thoughts on this, or was it just my imagination?
3 comments:
The familial relationships in Hamlet are very strange, but I think when situated in the patriarchal, disentangled world of the play they make more sense. First, Fortinbras' father was not murdered: he was killed in a battle with old King Hamlet, a battle he agreed to, which means that his death was legal and natural. His death, then, is distinctive from the other fathers' deaths in the play in that it exists within the world of order. Ironically, this means that Fortinbras' loss of inheritance is legal (while Hamlet's is not) but it is Fortinbras who is able to challenge that and not Hamlet.
Claudius does tell Hamlet to think of him as a father, but we cannot trust what he says because he is the villain of the play. If he wants Hamlet to think of him as a father, then he should also think of Hamlet as a son. Yet he has no qualms about killing him. I think everything Claudius does in public is an act. He is not the rightful king, so he is playing at being king, and since he is not Hamlet's rightful father, he is playing at being father. I don't think Claudius is Hamlet's biological father (because then that would mean Gertrude is an adulteress); Hamlet only neurotically suspects this could be a possibility.
Finally, I have never been able to take Freud seriously, so the logic of the "Oedipus Complex" has always eluded me. I've yet to read act V, but perhaps a reason why Laertes seems so distraught is that he has absolutely no family left, and with the death of Ophelia the possibility of a continuation o his family line is gone. Maybe Laertes' despair is supposed to illustrate how ravaged Denmark itself is after all this death and devastation (the mark of a tragedy.)
I'd like to focus my reponse to your post on your opinion of Ophelia. I agree that she seems to have a very dependent relationship with Laertes and Polonius, a dependency that is only magnified by her intense reaction to Polonius' death. It is interesting to note that so many of Shakespeare's young female characters are closely tied with the men in their families and less so with the women. Helena and Hermia are both discussed in terms of their fathers. Olivia and Viola are both without a father and a brother. Hero, Beatrice, Celia, Rosalind, Katherine, Bianca - all discussed in terms of having fathers. It's not to say that these women don't interact with women, because they obviously interact with each other, but why is it that they are all devoid of a mother figure? Alas, a question I will have to save for Bill himself!
I pretty much want to second Martha's comment, she beat me to it. Where are the mother figures? We have learned that women weren't nearly as important as men in these times. To help put this into context think of it this way- Women were given the right to vote in 1920. 1920!! They haven't even had the right to vote for 100 years yet, I cant imagine the hardships they had to endure when this play was written. I feel like they were more like objects to most men. The play would a very different feel to it if the women characters and the mothers were more present.
It just hit me now too that men were the actors in the play. I believe this came up in class but I think that's a reason we don't often see motherly figures, because there was no one for the role.
All of that aside I also agree with Therese in that Ophelia has a weird relationship with the men around her. She kind of comes off to me as a kooky character.
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