Here's the latest on Hamlet. Enjoy...


Hamlet, what a guy. I’m having a really hard time figuring out what to say for this paper. What observations do I have to offer on Hamlet or Hamlet? Perhaps I should focus my energies more towards the criticisms. I read the articles that formerly annoyed me. I even read the business explaining what the different types of criticism were to better understand what I was reading. And, now making an informed opinion about the feminist essay and the psychoanalytic essay I have two observations: 1) Freud is fucking nuts and 2) the essays still annoy me (though slightly less). I use strong language in my description of Freud for a very specific purpose in describing just how strongly I find his ideas repugnant. The things of use he has to say weren’t even his original thoughts; he simply expounded on them, more often than not, in terrible ways.
Yes, it’s fun in a slightly juvenile way (which I am much more than slightly juvenile myself) to joke about incest and the son having unnatural urges towards the mother and all that. However, I am quite sure no one before dear old Sigmund Freud honestly thought that sons wished to kill their fathers so they could bang their mothers. It’s an inane thought! Does Hamlet have mother issues? Undoubtedly. Is it because he wants to literally or figuratively have sex with his mother? Please. Even I in my admitted immaturity am not that stupid. In case I have offended I will explain. I am certainly not attempting to insult you or any of my classmates.
Shakespeare was writing in a time when gender roles were very much not as they are today. His views on women as expounded by his plays (his personal views I cannot vouch for) are horrific and barbaric. There is no excuse or reason for it; you can write all the feminist criticism you want but you’re never going to find a better reason for the women being they way they are other than women’s rights, freedoms, or basic understanding of the female gender simply did not exist at that time. It doesn’t take an essay to figure that out. Throw in a heavy mix of guilt, embarrassment and oppression towards anything sexual is it any wonder men, women, parents and children interact the way they do? Our cultural completely repressed a healthy sexual development for the better part of two millennia. That’s not an oedipal complex that’s religion (or people) screwing people up. Hamlet does not want to have sex with his mother he wants to keep his mother from having sex because he is completely uneasy with his own sexuality, let alone that of his parents. Like every child in the world his reaction to the idea of his parent getting it on is “gross!” What is so hard to understand about that?
Freud is an idiot. I can’t say it any better. Not to mention he completely misunderstood the female urge to use a penis as being envy for one of our own. Why do put any weight on what this man says?!
Okay, moving on. The above speaks, more or less, to Adleman’s essay. As to Showalter I have to say she has given me nothing that sparks my thoughts on Ophelia or Ophelia’s relationship to the play. She doesn’t talk about the character she talks about what the character has meant to the culture of art and literature and the study of psychology. That’s all well and fine, but that doesn’t help me better understand the play. It doesn’t teach me anything and it certainly doesn’t make me think. These critics (and most all critics for that matter) seem to disregard that what we are reading are stories. Stories (this is excluding metafiction) must have a plot and certain things must progress as they do for said plot to make sense and be effective. That means that not every piece of the play can or should be extracted and examined on its own. It must be looked at in the context of the rest of the story. And some of it doesn’t mean anything—it’s just there to help the story move along. Am I exceptionally naïve in having this belief? Why? It’s the nature of any piece of writing so why isn’t it considered in criticism?
Ophelia, I believe, exists for a very specific purpose. She goes mad for a purpose. There is more than one purpose, perhaps, or more than one purpose could be argued certainly but you can’t look at her as a psychological study and expect to understand her position in the play. And you certainly can’t take Hamlet out of it’s time and attempt to look for reasons of Hamlet’s treatment of Ophelia in modern day feminism. It doesn’t work. He treats her like an ass because he is an ass and because he had no basic respect for women. He has no basic respect for himself and, therefore, cannot have respect for women but there’s no deep thought that needs to accompany that revelation. That’s not the part worth pondering anyway. What I want to know is what was Hamlet lacking as a human being and how did that lack affect Ophelia who obviously hoped to (or did I’m not sure) love him. What does Ophelia’s character have that I as a woman, if not a medieval woman, can relate to or learn from? Why does it matter that I read this play? What does it make a person feel? What does it hope to teach? What is the warning here in this tragedy?
I don’t care if Ophelia had schizophrenia. I don’t care if Hamlet couldn’t define himself because his father and Claudius kept falling into each other. How does his inability to separate the father figures affect his musings on life and the meaning of it all? Why is he so damn whiny? What’s the true story of Gertrude? Who is she, what does she like, why did she marry Claudius so quickly following the death of her husband? What can I as a reader learn or feel from that? Why does it matter that I read this story in the 21st century?
The Tempest and its implications for modern technology mattered because it helped us consider what we might be doing wrong all these years later. It makes us think about the danger of creating Calibans. Hamlet has extremely important lessons concerning growing up, becoming an adult, recognizing our place in the world and coming to peace with ourselves and where we come from, but everyone seems more interested in talking about the incestuous urges he has towards his mother and oedipal complexes. I think that’s a blatant misreading and a way for everyone to run away from the parts of the play that are truly worth studying. I think people are scared to really contemplate the questions Hamlet himself asks in the play. I think people would much rather think of an outlandish, unavoidable reason to be angry with their parents other than to face it. Who wants to accept responsibility for him or herself? There’s no fun in that.
This play is thick and while I hate the character Hamlet I do think the play is worth reading and studying. I think it’s worthwhile because it forces us to seriously consider or own inner natures. And I think we don’t study it that way because none of us wants to.