Questioning Whether the Queen s to Blame: Forbidden Sexual Desires

Transcription

1 Questioning Whether the Queen s to Blame: Forbidden Sexual Desires In Shakespeare's Hamlet, one assumption made by Adelman is that female sexuality may be regarded negatively. Female sexuality in Hamlet is linked to Hamlet s view of his mother s sexuality. Gertrude s is the only fully sexualized female body in the play, and we experience her sexuality largely through the imagination of her son. Others may disagree with this assumption and think that the idea of female sexuality should not be seen as a threat to society, but rather a normal part of life. In other words, the idea of female sexuality should be seen as a common part of life because not only do men acquire sexual desire, but women do too. And women should not be penalized for this, because we should be treated as men s equals in expressing sexuality. Why shouldn't women have the same right as men to reveal their sexual preferences? In fact, I feel like female sexuality should be regarded positively in society and celebrated relatively more freely, equivalent to how males regard their sexuality. I feel like female sexuality should be more accepted in not only literary works, but also in society today. In addition, the female sexuality of certain characters in the play aids us in understanding further the Freudian psychological theories. Expressing female sexuality correlates with self-esteem, personality, values, and attitudes of the subconscious of the individual. Gertrude s sexuality is said to be a basic foundation of her identity formation, but I will argue against that belief. Dreams open the door to unconscious desires Freud suggested. According to Sigmund Freud, the plot of Sophocles Oedipus Rex also supplies a parallel to the plot of analysis: a patient s resistance to unconscious knowledge is like Oedipus s reluctance to learn his true identity (Freud, 915). Freud would suggest that dreams have been dealt directly with their manifest content as it is presented in our memory, and this ultimately helps us to learn our true identities. According to Freud, incest forms the core of his theory on unconscious desire and is 1

2 also specific form of a forbidden sexual desire. Freud believes in the unconscious desires or forbidden wishes that are often believed to be illicit by our dreams. Therefore, he takes interpretations of dreams (latent content) as a serious concept matter into determining our identity formation. Interpreting dreams seems to be a sneak peek into seeing one's unconscious desires, according to Freud. Freud also suggests that the dreams have to be interpreted by the dreamer themselves because only the dreamer knows the meaning behind their unconscious desires. They are the ones that experienced the memories first hand through personal experience. Being in love with one parent and hating the other is a common Freudian belief, called the Oedipus complex. For example, the Oedipus complex theory is where one longs to have a sexual relationship with the opposite sex parent. This theory was bred from Sophocles Oedipus Tyrannous, where Oedipus was warned by an oracle that he would kill his father and marry his mother. His parents and he both tried to avoid this prediction, but destiny is unavoidable and what was predicted ended up unfortunately happening. This incest concept may be conscience as a child, but as we mature, we tend to go through the process of repression of these thoughts of incest. In other words, we try every conscious effort to escape these thoughts because this type of belief is unacceptable in today s culture. The character of Gertrude in Hamlet is portrayed as a garden full of weeds by Adelman, which is her metaphor for Gertrude s sexuality portrayed negatively. But the character of Gertrude is really not Eve or in the Garden of Eden and does not share enough characteristics of Eve to be compared to her so much as to make a metaphor. Gertrude should have the opportunity to express her free will, pertaining to her potential to express her female sexuality. Why should her sexuality be a crime committed when it s only a natural reaction of the female body? As Lucianus carries the poison onstage in the Player s play, The Murder of Gonzalo, he addressed 2

3 it in terms that associate it unmistakingly with the weed of that first unweeded garden and paints the picture of female sexuality as a sin: Thou mixture rank, of midnight weeds collected, / With Hecates ban thrice blasted, thrice infected, / Thy natural magic and dire property / On wholesome life usurps immediately. ( ) The garden is full of weeds, similar to the first unweeded garden of Eden in that everything is growing wildly and sporadically. The seeds spread in the wind, bearing future offspring, like poison spreading through the veins. Hamlet is attempting to warn Gertrude to stop spreading "compost on the weeds" or to stop sleeping with Claudius because if she doesn t, it will make her sins (incest) even "ranker" than they already are. Hamlet's talk of "infection seems to allude to venereal disease. It's as though Hamlet thinks women are contagious. Even as we see him poison the Player King, the language the actor uses insists that the poison is not his but is Gertrude s, its usurpation on wholesome life derivative not from Claudius's political ambitions but from the rank weeds ( ) of Gertrude s body. Therefore, claiming that these rank weeds are like poison to Gertrude s body. Her sexuality is like poison, harming her body and the ones around her. Its mixture rank is sexuality itself and the weeds in the garden are seen as negative aspects of life just as female sexuality is shed in a negative light. Gertrude s body should not be compared to weeds, but rather blooming flowers of her female sexuality. I feel like my metaphor better portrays the sexual nature of Gertrude: able to transport her seeds of Polonius (pollenous) love like a queen honey bee throughout her kingdom of worker bees, pun intended. Therefore, sexuality should not be regarded as negatively, but rather as a positive way to feel delight, pleasure, and happiness. Gertrude s sexuality is not directly linked to Hamlet s identity formation. 3

4 Gertrude might just be sexually attracted to Claudius just as she had been with Hamlet s father. It s quite possible that she loves Claudius as well as young Hamlet, and is still grieving over her dead husband internally. It never states in Hamlet that she does not show internal or external signs of mourning over her dead husband, therefore we don t really know whether or not she is mourning for sure. There is also no tangible proof that Gertrude committed adultery before Hamlet s father died. In addition, Gertrude s self-esteem may be raised in marrying Claudius and having him as her companion. This reaction to remarry may be the result in wanting contact comfort that she lost when Hamlet s father died and that Hamlet was obviously not giving her. She just needed someone to communicate with, relate to, someone who would listen to her, and understand her thought processes. She may have just needed someone to confide in, and Hamlet s madness was evident evidence to her that he was not worthy of aiding her in this grieving process. I feel like Gertrude, regardless of what people would say and think of her, married Claudius to preserve her status and power after the fact that she discovered her husband died. These liberal attitude and values show that she takes on the responsibility of the Queen s role: to aide in helping rule the kingdom rightfully. She is therefore thinking about the others benefit, not just her own, and how they are relying on her to rule the kingdom with another king companion. She is productive, just takes her job seriously, and wants to serve their community justly. Gertrude doesn t want to leave them with an absent ruler, increasing the chance of societal chaos. Maybe she feels as though she needs a king-like companion to share the role of responsibility with or support in overcoming her first husband s death. Since her husband had died, she now has the right to remarry if she wishes to. Therefore, since her husband died, maybe Gertrude has lost a sense of herself, and is searching for that lost part of herself in a sexual relationship with Claudius. Gertrude s sexuality should not be directly linked to Hamlet s 4

5 identity formation, but rather concerning a part of Gertrude s identity formation and Claudius s. Gertrude has no criminal background history that we are aware of. Therefore, we have no reason to blame her for the murder of her husband or the cause of Hamlet s madness, much less blame her sexuality for it. Gertrude is kept ambiguously innocent as a character, but in the deep fantasy that structures the play s imagery, she plays out the role of the missing Eve: her body is the garden in which her husband dies, her sexuality the poisonous weeds that kill him, and poison the world--and self--for her son (Adelman, 274). If this isn t a slippery slope fallacy, then I don t know what it. This claim is such a hyperbole an over exaggeration of consequences of female sexuality. Just because Gertrude has sexual desires, does not mean that she used them as an evil weapon to kill her husband, poison the world, herself, or her son. Her sexual desires are not used as a weapon, but rather more likely used to celebrate life and love with Claudius. I don t think she directly set out to use her female sexuality to ruin the world. Gertrude s clean criminal history background provides some evidence that she would not misuse her female sexuality to hurt her son in any way or his identity formation. Hamlet's identity formation (ID) really depends on his parent's identity according to Freud. Identity formation is the ability to form a personality. Freud mainly focused on their sexual identity and how it relates to Hamlet. In Shakespeare s Hamlet, Hamlet sexually desires his mother, which happens to be a taboo practice and a form of incest in today s society. Not only that, but this is another literary example of the Oedipus complex. And just as these dreams, when dreamt by adults, are accompanied by feelings of repulsion, so too is the legend that must include horror and self-punishment (Freud, 922). But in Hamlet, this unconscious desire 5

6 remains repressed to an extent, because he does show evidence of madness through his eccentric speech and actions. Hamlet's character dives into his psychology and reveals more Freudian ideas, like the repression of memories. These repressed memories are regarding his parent's sexual tendencies, mainly focusing on his mother's. According to Freud, Hamlet delays his revenge for his father s death because his uncle has only carried out a murder that he himself wanted to accomplish (Freud, 916). And since he therefore desires his mother, he really is not romantically involved with Ophelia. Gertrude s sexuality is a separate entity from his unconscious desires. Along with certain psychological beliefs and theories, there come certain accepted assumptions. The mother's sexuality is assumed to be related to or cause certain perceptions about us and our fathers, according to Adelman. According to Freud, there is an unmistakable indication in the text of Sophocles tragedy itself that the legend of Oedipus sprang from some primeval dream-material which had its content the distressing distance of a child s relation to his parents owing to the first stirrings of sexuality (Freud, 921). But I disagree with this fallacy known as a slippery slope, and feel as though placing the blame for Hamlet s madness on his mother is ridiculous--how can Adelman blame Gertrude's sexuality for Hamlet's madness? Gertrude s sexuality cannot directly cause Hamlet s madness or Hamlet s father s death. There has to be some kind of third variable or extraneous variables involved. Another one of Adelman s assumptions is that identities are formed by dealing with sexual relationships psychologically. The common belief in this time period was that the identity of yourself is correlated to the parents self, and is therefore rather inescapable. I believe that identities are not only formed by dealing with sexual relationships psychologically. But I believe 6

7 that we have the free will to use our creativity to create our own self, our own identity formation with the help of family and friends. Therefore, Hamlet has the capability to build his own identity without concerning his mother s sexuality. Our own self is not predetermined by just our parents. Our identity formation is not predetermined, but rather subject to change based on the decisions we make: our past experiences we have experienced, and the people we meet. Our identity is not solely based on sexual relationships: our sexual relationships don t entirely define who we are. Though we may take into account one s forbidden sexual desires, other factors of our lives, besides our sex lives may interact with one another to form a substance that we call our own identity. 7

8 Web Cited Shakespeare, William, and Susanne Lindgren Wofford. Hamlet: Complete, Authoritative Text with Biographical and Historical Contexts, Critical History, and Essays from Five Contemporary Critical Perspectives. Boston: Bedford of St. Martin's, Print. Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent Leitch. New York: W. W. Norton Company, Inc, Print. Adelman, Janet. Man and Wife Is One Flesh : Hamlet and the Confrontation with the Maternal Body. A Psychoanalytic Perspective. Psychoanalytic Criticism. Shakespeare, William, and Susanne Lindgren Wofford. Hamlet: Complete, Authoritative Text with Biographical and Historical Contexts, Critical History, and Essays from Five Contemporary Critical Perspectives. Boston: Bedford of St. Martin's, Print. 8

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