Part 24: Ophelia, Gertrude, and Shifting Narratives of Marital Betrayal via Cristina León Alfar
Instead of reading Ophelia’s love for Hamlet as unwise, too “free” [1], and viewing Gertrude as adulterous [2], it is possible to read both characters very differently. We might be nudged in this direction by certain feminist readings, one being a book by Cristina León Alfar called Women and Shakespeare's Cuckoldry Plays: Shifting Narratives of Marital Betrayal [3]. Although the focus of her book is not Hamlet, many of her insights apply. Alfar’s focus involves six plays in which male claims of female adultery play a central role. These include Merry Wives of Windsor, Much Ado About Nothing, Othello, and The Winter’s Tale. Alfar carefully tracks a trend: Men (at times misled by men like Iago and Don John) make false claims of women’s infidelity, claiming wives or fiances have made them “cuckolds.” But these claims are fictions or lies based on male anxiety. Women, often with help of female allies, can shift these narratives, accusing the men of slander for their false claims. In ...