Essay: A Feminist Analysis Of Gender Identity In Hamlet

A Feminist Analysis of Gender Identity in Hamlet and The Merchant of Venice
William Shakespeare’s diverse female characters started to revolutionize views of gender in the Renaissance, though women were not treated as equals to men until modern times because of the patriarchal views that were instilled in society. The feminist approach in this presentation works to disprove Shakespeare’s traditional critics. I use a feminist approach to prove that Shakespeare’s representation of gender is more flexible and progressive than more traditional critics recognize as I focus on The Merchant of Venice and Hamlet. I will refer as well to other comedies such as As You Like It and Twelfth Night in which cross-dressed females can be interpreted as
Rackin describes the debate regarding boy actors who played cross-dressed women characters. She maintains that boy actors were used to play women to accentuate their femininity. Stephen Greenblatt “used Thomas Laquer’s theory that all the actors on stage were male to theorize a masculine fantasy of a world without women.” However, Dusinberre correlates the boy actors used in Shakespeare’s plays with his androgyny as a playwright because these actors present “similarities between the sexes, the way in which boyishness itself formed an element of femininity.” Feminine boy actors were used to play cross-dressed women rather than adult men, undermining Thomas Laquer’s hyper-masculine theory of Shakespeare’s theatrical world. Shakespeare’s plays deconstruct Renaissance views of masculinity, since he uses female characters that cross-dress as men and are played by feminine boy
Kahn maintains, “the feud” in Romeo and Juliet provides a ‘psycho-sexual moratorium’ for sons, an activity in which men prove themselves men by phallic violence on behalf of their fathers, instead of by the courtship and sexual experimentation that would lead toward marriage and separation from the paternal house.” Kahn’s concept of the psycho-sexual moratorium is not only applicable to Romeo and Juliet, but also to Hamlet. Old King Hamlet’s ghost in Hamlet, is symbolic of the destructive nature of the patriarchy since he is the source that perpetuates murder and hatred of female sexuality as he guides Hamlet. Shakespeare characterizes Hamlet as psychologically the weakest character, since he is the origin of the communicable madness in the play. Hamlet’s behavior is applicable to the theory of the psycho-sexual moratorium for sons since he tries to prove himself a man by phallic violence on behalf of his father since his father tells him to avenge his death. He pursues Claudius to murder him rather than continuing a heterosexual relationship with Ophelia. Since Hamlet does not truly love Ophelia, he unjustly wanted Ophelia to have the burden of his conscience. In Act III scene II, Hamlet states “The fair Ophelia!-Nymph, in thy orisons be all my sins