Hamlet Women Misogyny and Gender Roles Quotes

‘Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet,
To give these mourning duties to your father:
…but to persever
In obstinate condolement is a course
Of impious stubbornness; ’tis unmanly grief;
It shows a will most incorrect to heaven,
A heart unfortified, a mind impatient,
An understanding simple and unschool’d.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 2. Claudius mockingly labels Hamlet’s excessive grief for his father as “unmanly.” It goes against God’s wishes and demonstrates a soft heart and uneducated mind, he tells the prince.

Then if he says he loves you,
It fits your wisdom so far to believe it
As he in his particular act and place
May give his saying deed; which is no further
Than the main voice of Denmark goes withal.
Then weigh what loss your honour may sustain,
If with too credent ear you list his songs,
Or lose your heart, or your chaste treasure open
To his unmaster’d importunity.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 3. Laertes warns Ophelia that she will stain her reputation if she gives up her virginity to Hamlet. When he speaks of opening her “chase treasure,” this is a metaphor for losing her prized and precious virginity. Ophelia’s brother is being misogynistic here as he puts the burden of shame on her and not Hamlet if she surrenders to Hamlet’s persistent seductions.

I shall the effect of this good lesson keep
As watchman to my heart. But, good my brother,
Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,
Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven;
Whiles, like a puffed and reckless libertine,
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,
And recks not his own rede.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 3. We first meet Ophelia in this scene. Laertes has been warning her not to trust Hamlet’s romantic declarations. Using a metaphor, Ophelia promises to keep Laertes’ lesson “as watchman to my heart.” But she also deftly turns her brother’s religious advice back on him. For he is about to depart for study in Paris, a city full of moral temptations for a young man. Ophelia tells him not to preach like a hypocritical pastor, showing her the “thorny way to heaven” while himself treading the “primrose path” of pleasures. After warning her to keep her chastity, she tells him not to be a “puffed and reckless libertine.”

OPHELIA: I do not know, my lord, what I should think.
POLONIUS: Marry, I’ll teach you: think yourself a baby
That you have ta’en these tenders for true pay,
Which are not sterling.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 3. In his attempts to control Ophelia and her relationship with Hamlet, Polonius ridicules his daughter. Using two metaphors, he compares her to a infant he has to teach and describes Hamlet’s “tenders” or expressions of affections as “not sterling” – not true silver coins. He tells Ophelia to put a higher value on herself when it comes to Hamlet or she will make her father look a fool. Polonius thinks he is being clever by punning in response to Ophelia’s use of “tenders” when she speaks of Hamlet’s letters of affection to her. On being confronted by her father’s bullying and the patriarchal misogyny of her brother Laertes, Ophelia feels that she lacks her own voice and even the ability to think.

Do not believe his vows; they are brokers,
Not of that dye which their investments show,
But mere implorators of unholy suits,
Breathing like sanctified and pious bawds,
The better to beguile.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 3. Using a complex metaphor and personification, Polonius urges his daughter not to take Hamlet’s professions of love seriously, because his words and pledges cannot be trusted. Polonius likens the prince’s vows to brokers acting on his behalf. He says that they may be dressed in good clothes and pretending to be holy. But the reality is that they are pimps (“bawds”), pleading their unholy case (“suits”), in order to deceive and charm Ophelia, Polonius claims. He is telling her that Hamlet just wants her for sex.

O most pernicious woman!
O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!
My tables, – meet it is I set it down,
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain:
At least I’m sure it may be so in Denmark.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5. Hamlet is enraged after the Ghost’s revelation that his father was murdered by his own brother Claudius, who took the crown and Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother, as his Queen. He describes his mother as wicked, and Claudius as a smiling villain. Hamlet’s comment of how one can smile and be a villain is a perfect example of how people can be two-faced and hypocritical and hide their true nature from the world.

My lord, as I was sewing in my closet,
Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all unbraced;
No hat upon his head; his stockings foul’d,
Ungarter’d, and down-gyved to his ancle;
Pale as his shirt; his knees knocking each other;
And with a look so piteous in purport
As if he had been loosed out of hell
To speak of horrors, – he comes before me.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 1. Ophelia is frightened when Hamlet suddenly entered her room in a disheveled condition. She doesn’t know what to do and expresses concern about Hamlet’s strange behavior to her father Polonius. Her reliance on Polonius reinforces the idea that she is dependant on male figures and does not have the ability to think for herself. Polonius tells her Hamlet is mad with love.

With devotion’s visage
And pious action we do sugar o’er
The devil himself.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1. Polonius tells Ophelia that we use the appearance of religious devotion and piety to mask the evil within ourselves. He is giving a prayer book to Ophelia to read, demanding that she pretend to read it for an encounter with Hamlet. Claudius has sent for Hamlet, who will “accidentally” run into Ophelia. The plan is for Polonius and Claudius to hide behind a tapestry to spy on Hamlet, hoping to learn if his strange behavior is because he is sick with love. Polonius is at his hypocritical and deceitful best here, playing the misogynist who cynically uses his daughter for his own ends to ingratiate himself with the King. This is after earlier ordering Ophelia to end her relationship with Hamlet.

Are you honest?…
Are you fair?…
For the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty from what it is to be a bawd…
I did love you once.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1. Hamlet to Ophelia, asking her if she is pure and beautiful. He says that the power of beauty is more likely to change a good girl into a whore, and adds that he used to love her. He is very insulting to Ophelia’s chastity. This is an example of dramatic irony, as Hamlet is really venting his anger towards his mother Gertrude, being disgusted by the process of love and marriage, and believing that beauty corrupts virtue. The cruel and cynical outburst to Ophelia is misdirected here, she is being used by all the men in the scene, her father Polonius, Claudius and by Hamlet to vent his frustrations towards his mother.

Her speech is nothing,
Yet the unshaped use of it doth move
The hearers to collection. They yawn at it
And botch the words up fit to their own thoughts,
Which, as her winks and nods and gestures yield them,
Indeed would make one think there might be thought,
Though nothing sure, yet much unhappily.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 4, Scene 5. A gentlemen reports to Queen Gertrude and Horatio on Ophelia’s descent into madness and her lack of clarity and mental coherence. Controlled by men, let down by men, Ophelia is completely mentally shattered after the death of her controlling father Polonius and her rejection by Hamlet.

Quoth she, Before you tumbled me
You promised me to wed.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 4, Scene 5. In Ophelia’s song, during her mad phase, a man promises to marry a woman and then leaves her after bedding her. Many believe she is speaking about herself and Hamlet. Her madness allows her to give voice to her feelings and to sing about men who exploit young women – like her. Literary critic Carol Thomas Neely sees Ophelia’s madness to be "her liberation from silence, obedience, and constraint or her absolute victimization by patriarchal oppression."

Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia,
And therefore I forbid my tears; but yet
It is our trick, nature her custom holds,
Let shame say what it will: when these are gone,
The woman will be out. – Adieu, my lord:
I have a speech of fire, that fain would blaze,
But that this folly drowns it.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 4, Scene 7. Gertrude has just told Laertes that Ophelia has drowned. Laertes cannot hold back his tears for the sister he loved. He has lost his father and now his sister. This turns out to be the breaking point for Laertes and sets him firmly on a revenge quest against Hamlet. Crying is not a manly thing to Laertes, he says that after he stops crying "the woman will be out."
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