Part 40: Ophelia, Gertrude, and the Purgatory of Scholarship
Women were not admitted to study at Oxford until 1920, and did not get the vote in England until 1918. (In other words, women have only had the vote in the UK for 100 years, out of four centuries of Shakespeare; and the vote is only one of many possible indicators of male bias.)
It is easy to imagine average male literary critics writing off Ophelia’s many lines in Act 4, scene 5, as simply mad ravings, rather than finding any method in her madness; easy to imagine them missing how she acts like a court fool [1], or like Hamlet’s promised, handfast wife and queen regent in his absence [2]; easy to consider how they may have written off Gertrude’s comment about the “envious sliver” of willow that breaks, not as pointing to the envy of Claudius toward his brother for his throne and wife, but as mere poetic description [3].
Easy to imagine that centuries of male critics might, on average, believe Gertrude incapable of suspecting poison in the cup [4] in 5.2, much less likely to drink from it so as to test it for poison and help her son [5].
Ophelia and Gertrude witnessed Hamlet’s “Mousetrap,” as did Claudius, with the enactment of a poisoner later seducing the widow of his victim. Some male critics may have assumed that for Ophelia and Gertrude to have political suspicions would be to ask too much of their pretty female heads [6].
We might think that, merely because many literary critics have transcended patriarchal sensibilities, all Shakespeare scholarship has been thoroughly cured of an old madness.
In fact, it may be more accurate to say that just as Hamlet was haunted by the ghost of his father from purgatory, in many quarters, Shakespeare criticism, teaching, and performance is still haunted by the ghosts of old male biases [7].
The work of purgatory—purging errors and limitations of the past, sins and shortsightedness of fathers, mothers, critics and literature teachers—is best not delayed until an afterlife.
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NOTES: All references to Hamlet are to the Folger Shakespeare Library online version: https://shakespeare.folger.edu/shakespeares-works/hamlet/entire-play/
[1] See previous blog post:
Part 9: Ophelia, "mad rogue" court fool - August 08, 2023,
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2023/08/part-9-ophelia-mad-rogue-court-fool.html
[2] See the following blog posts in which I mentioned how it might be considered a “handfast” (legitimate and binding) marriage, if Hamlet made to Ophelia “almost all the holy vows of heaven” (1.3.123):
Part 23: Queen Ophelia and the male gatekeepers defining her madness - November 14, 2023,
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2023/11/part-23-queen-ophelia-and-male.html
Also see
Part 24: Ophelia, Gertrude, and Shifting Narratives of Marital Betrayal via Cristina León Alfar - Nov. 20, 2023;
Part 25: Ophelia's Self-Catching Conscience in the Mirror of her Arts - November 28, 2023;
Part 26: Ophelia gives crowns instead of grasping & hoarding one - December 05, 2023
[3] See previous blog post:
Part 34: Why Gertrude personifies the envious sliver of willow (Interlude D.1) - March 06, 2024,
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2024/03/part-34-interlude-d1-why-gertrude.html
[4] See previous blog post:
Part 35: Why Gertrude likely suspects a poison cup (Interlude D.2) - March 11, 2024,
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2024/03/part-35-why-gertrude-likely-suspects.html
[5] See previous blog post:
Part 36: Gertrude builds a better mousetrap for Claudius (Interlude D.3) - March 19, 2024,
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2024/03/part-36-gertrude-builds-better.html
[6] See previous blog post:
Part 11: "Mad" Ophelia grasps "tricks i' th' world" and Denmark's corruption - August 22, 2023,
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2023/08/part-11-mad-ophelia-grasps-tricks-i-th.html
[7] See previous blog post:
Part 23: Queen Ophelia and the male gatekeepers defining her madness - November 14, 2023,
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2023/11/part-23-queen-ophelia-and-male.html
IMAGES
Left: WSPU leaders Annie Kenney (L) and Christabel Pankhurst, circa 1908. Photographer unknown.
Public domain via Wikipedia: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/92/Annie_Kenney_and_Christabel_Pankhurst_%28cropped%29.jpg
Middle (source):
Women's Social and Political Union poster showing a suffragette prisoner being force-fed. 1910, by Alfred Pearce (1855–1933), nom de plume "A Patriot."
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2a/Force-feeding_poster_%28suffragettes%29.jpg
Middle (connection to Hamlet text):
Note that in the play, the gravedigger seems to be speaking of the coroner’s inquest, which sat to hear the case of Ophelia’s death, but he mangles this in a very darkly humorous way, and it comes out “Crowner’s quest,” which he says “sat on her.” If a man’s death were ruled suicide, the crown would seize the land of the family, so the crown would benefit, and inquests that wished to ingratiate themselves to the crown might be biased to find suicide. But “sat on her” evokes images of the members of the inquest, sitting on the corpse of “pretty” Ophelia, with bawdy necrophilic implications. The image of the forced feeding of women’s suffragettes prisoners who were hunger striking seems a similar bodily violation, as with how they “sat on her.” See previous blog post:
Part 7: Ophelia's Gravedigger: They "sat on her" - July 25, 2023,
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2023/07/part-7-ophelias-gravedigger-they-sat-on.html
Right:
"Votes for Women", a penny defaced by Suffragettes, UK, minted by the Royal Mint, 1930 or later. One penny of Edward VII, obverse, copper, 1903. On display at the British Museum in London.
This coin is listed in the Standard Catalogue of British Coins under the ID 3990. Photo 22 July 2016, 15:53:49, by Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg). Permission under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:%22Votes_for_Women%22,_a_penny_defaced_by_Suffragettes,_UK,_1930_or_later._One_penny_of_Edward_VII,_obverse,_copper,_1903._On_display_at_the_British_Museum.jpg
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INDEX OF OPHELIA POSTS:
My 2023 series on Ophelia, and earlier Ophelia posts:
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2023/10/index-of-ophelia-posts-2023-series-and.html
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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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