Gertrude's Blessings: Does it matter? Part 4

[This is a re-posting of a post that would not post on LinkedIn,
perhaps because of the word "Whore" in the original title - ?]

Does it matter that Hamlet says to his mother,
"when you are desirous to be blest, I’ll blessing beg of you" (3.4.192-3)?

Some Shakespeare critics think that Gertrude in Shakespeare’s Hamlet is damned, and that she stands for the Book of Revelation’s "Whore of Babylon," which to Catholics represented worldliness (Augustine’s City of Man, as compared to the City of God), and to Protestants a way of viewing a corrupt Catholic Church. [1]

This may be an example of critics "botch[ing] the words up fit to their own thoughts" as Horatio says (4.5.12).[2]

Is Gertrude really the "whore of Babylon," and doomed to hell? I don't think so:
- She keeps Hamlet's secret from Claudius, and shows compassion to Ophelia, though reluctant at first, at Horatio's urging (yes, Horatio urges her, more for political prudence perhaps than for plain and simple compassion, but her willingness is still significant).
- In Gertrude's account, Ophelia's drowning death was not suicide, but accidental, to be blamed on the breaking of an envious willow branch, and her clothing, heavy with "their drink," dragging her down while she sang "old lauds," "melodious," "incapable of her own distress." (4.7.190-210)
- Gertrude's version reports Ophelia as if oblivious to danger, perhaps at peace with her approaching death: "Let be."
- Gertrude sends a messenger to tell Hamlet to give Laertes "some gentle entertainment" before the duel, and Hamlet replies, "She well instructs me" (5.2.220-222). Would the Whore of Babylon give her son such good advice? Perhaps not? Or perhaps if she were merely Machiavellian in her intentions?
- After having obeyed Claudius’ request earlier in the play, that she leave him and Polonius to spy on Hamlet and Ophelia (3.1.41), in the final scene, she disobeys him when he tells her not to drink from the cup (5.2.318).

Some feminist critics have argued that Gertrude might not be as bad as other critics claim. (They are not unanimous in this; some, for example, find her "stupid." [3])

A recent article in Smithsonian Magazine may shed light: The article is titled, "Why So Many Mythological Monsters Are Female." [4] A sample:
~~
These villains, wrote classicist Debbie Felton in a 2013 essay, “all spoke to men’s fear of women’s destructive potential. The myths then, to a certain extent, fulfill a male fantasy of conquering and controlling the female.”

[...]Medusa […] Scylla […] Charybdis [....].

[...] What’s more, the tales’ female monsters reveal more about the patriarchal constraints placed on womanhood than they do about women themselves.
~~
Similarly, claiming Gertude is damned, the "Whore of Babylon," might say more about the patriarchal bias of (mostly male) critics, or their assumptions about Shakespeare's point of view, than it says about Gertrude herself.

For this reason, it matters that we pay attention when Hamlet says to his mother: "when you are desirous to be blest, I’ll blessing beg of you" (3.4.192-3). It’s in the text (both Quarto 2 and Folio 1, and thereafter)[5], and the “Whore of Babylon” tradition of (mostly male) critics may have gotten it wrong. [6]

~~~~~
NOTES:

[1] See Linda Kay Hoff, Hamlet's Choice, 1988, Edwin Mellen Press.

Also see David Kaula, "Hamlet and the Image of Both Churches" (pp. 241-255, Vol. 24, No. 2, Spring, 1984, Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900).
In that essay, Kaula equates Gertrude with the Whore of Babylon, the Catholic church, and other Protestant-leaning allegories.

This is problematic, because Gertrude is one who, like Claudius, doesn't mourn long, which other scholars (like Stephen Greenblatt, Hamlet in Purgatory) associate with the English church doing away with purgatory and monasteries where masses were said for the dead. So there is a cognitive dissonance if one asserts she is both the Whore of Babylon, associated with Catholicism and its internal corruption, and also typically Protestant in her abbreviated mourning.

Furthermore, Kaula is among those who note Gertrude wiping the face of Hamlet, like Veronica wiping the face of Christ on his way to crucifixion. It's hard for Gertrude to be both Whore of Babylon and Veronica. In that way, I think it is more accurate to say that the play might seem to both invite and resist easy allegories.

[2] All references to Hamlet are to the Folger Shakespeare Library online version:
https://shakespeare.folger.edu/shakespeares-works/hamlet/entire-play/

[3] "She is a stupid, straightforward woman of blunted sensibility." P. 218. Juliet A S Dusinberre, Shakespeare and the Nature of Women, Second Edition, 1996, Macmillan Press.

[4] "Why So Many Mythological Monsters Are Female." https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/meet-female-monsters-greek-mythology-medusa-sphinx-180977364/

[5] The statement is in both the Second Quarto and the First Folio, two of the better-known printed versions of the play.

Second Quarto:
https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/doc/Ham_Q2M/complete/index.html

First folio:
https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/doc/Ham_FM/complete/index.html

[6] See my three previous posts in this series:

INDEX to posts in this series:

https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2024/08/index-when-you-are-desirous-to-be-blest.html


See also my previous post, "Gertrude as Recipient & Source of Gifts: Labors of Gratitude & Regret in Hamlet, part 9": https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2019/10/gertrude-as-recipient-giver-of-gifts.html

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IMAGES:
“Whore of Babylon” Hortus deliciarum (before 1176-c. 1196) / 12th century.
http://vrcoll.fa.pitt.edu/stones-haa0240/Herrad/hortus.html
Herrad of Landsberg  (1125–1195)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Herrad_von_Landsberg_whore_babylon.jpg

Colored version of the Whore of Babylon illustration from Martin Luther's 1534 translation of the Bible. Taschen: http://www.taschen.com/pages/en/catalogue/classics/all/06739/facts.the_bible_in_pictures.htm
Workshop of Lucas Cranach.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Whore-babylon-luther-bible-1534.jpg

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Disclaimer: If and when I quote or paraphrase bible passages or mention religion in many of my blog posts, I do not intend to promote any religion over another, nor am I attempting to promote religious belief in general; only to explore how the Bible and religion influenced Shakespeare, his plays, and his age.
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Thanks for reading!
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My current project is a book tentatively titled Hamlet’s Bible, about biblical allusions and plot echoes in Hamlet.

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