Hamlet: Sexist Camp

Hamlet

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A Sexist Text

Denis Xhixhi

Mr. Jennings

4/25/14

AP English Literature

Hamlet - A Feminist Approach

“Feminism is the radical notion that women are people” (Cheris Kramarae and Paula Treichler). Feminism is the idea that men and women are created equal and so deserve political and economic equality. The ideology arose from females who thought unfair the treatment of women by society through general notions of women’s inferiority and man's superiority that had been around for ages before (Haslanger). Shakespeare’s Hamlet, a play dealing closely with themes of vengeance, contains many sexist portrayals of women.

Hamlet is a play written ages ago, in roughly the year 1600. In this time period a scientific revolution was occurring and women were mostly treated as inferior beings without capabilities of higher thought with reasons for such ideas being that they have smaller heads, which meant that they had smaller brains, and have wider hips, which to those back then meant that they should give birth to and rear children and also stay home and tend to the house, and so were treated more as property than actual people. long sentence may lose your audience The time period limited women greatly with limitations politically, economically, and even to acting as they were not allowed to take part in plays no matter the roles or even attend the plays themselves as part of the audience (Elizabethan England Life). Women were completely banned from theatres (Hamlet: A Feminist Argument).

The two major female roles in Hamlet are Ophelia, Hamlet’s love, and the Queen, Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother. Both of these characters represent women incredibly unfairly and portray the sexism that was abundant in the time period of Hamlet’s creation. The traits and positions that these female characters have and are in are flooded with sexist ideals ranging from the way they speak to the way they behave and even the way that they think.

Ophelia is Hamlet’s love and is...