Feminist Theory Applied to Hamlet - 2809 Words

Representing Ophelia: Women, Madness, and the Responsibilities of Feminist Criticism Elaine Showalter Though she is neglected in criticism, Ophelia is probably the most frequently illustrated and cited of Shakespeare’s heroines. Her visibility as a subject in literature, popular culture, and painting, from Redon who paints her drowning, to Bob Dylan, who places her on Desolation Row, to Cannon Mills, which has named a flowery sheet pattern after her, is in inverse relation to her invisibility in Shakespearean critical texts. Why has she been such a potent and obsessive figure in our cultural mythology? Insofar as Hamlet names Ophelia as â€Å"woman† and â€Å"frailty,† substituting an ideological view of femininity for a personal one, is she indeed†¦show more content†¦According to David Leverenz, in an important essay called â€Å"The Woman in Hamlet.† Hamlet’s disgust at the feminine passivity in himself is translated into violent revulsi on against women, and into his brutal behaviour towards Ophelia. Ophelia’s suicide, Leverenz argues, then becomes â€Å"a microcosm of the male world’s banishment of the female, because ‘woman’ represents everything denied by reasonable men.† To liberate Ophelia from the text, or to make her its tragic center, is to re-appropriate her for our own ends; to dissolve her into a female symbolism of absence is to endorse our own marginality; to make her Hamlet’s anima is to reduce her to a metaphor of male experience. I would like to propose instead that Ophelia does have a story of her own that feminist criticism can tell; it is neither her life story, nor her love story, nor Lacan’s story, but rather the history of her representation. This essay tries to bring together some of the categories of French feminist thought about the â€Å"feminine† with the empirical energies of American historical and critical research; to yoke French theory and Yankee knowhow. Tracing the iconography of Ophelia in English and French painting, photography, psychiatry, and literature, as well as in theatrical production, I will be showing first of all the representational bonds between female insanity and female sexuality. Secondly, IShow MoreRelatedThemes of Misogyny in Shakespeares Hamlet1019 Words   |  4 PagesHamlet: Quotation Analysis on Misogyny Quotation Analysis â€Å"But two months dead-nay, not so much, no two. 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Contact Information- Email id- prakritigupta1988@gmail.com Premium 5150 Words 21 Pages * Read MoreHistory of Transgender9448 Words   |  38 Pagesages (around 1500) when the social unit of the hamlet was replaced by the social unit of the nuclear family, with one man and one woman, who knew who their own children were. This may sound strange, but in the social unit of the medieval hamlet, common people did not marry, sexuality and love were less romanticized, women and men could have more then one sexual partner, and no one really knew for sure who the father of a particular child was. The hamlet had to care for it. Also, women could do allRead More Characterization, Identities, and the Supernatural in Otranto2209 Words   |  9 PagesSupernatural A cursory first reading of Horace Walpoles Otranto might yield an impression that its characters are thoroughly superficial, shallow, and flat, almost to the point of being laughably so. 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On the contrary, if a woman is addressed as a â€Å"professional†, it’sRead MoreCleanth Brookss Essay Irony as a Principle of Structure9125 Words   |  37 Pagescultural and critical theory library Open source archive of ebooks, texts, videos, documentary films and podcasts Pages * Home * List of major critical theorists * What is Critical theory ? * What is Frankfurt School ? * Support Critical Theory Library * Contact This Blog This Blog  Ã‚  Ã‚   |    | ------------------------------------------------- Top of Form Bottom of Form    Home  » texts  » History amp; Class Consciousness: Preface by Georg Lukà ¡cs (1923) Thursday, February 3, 2011Read MoreWhy Is Institutional Racism so Important to Our Understanding of Racial Inequalities in Britain Today?4297 Words   |  18 Pagesevidence to suggest that the inequalities ethnic minorities face are multi layered. This lead studies on to consider an equally serious problem, sometimes called indirect discrimination within institutions. This could be found in selection criteria when applied equally to everyone but there they are such that they disproportionately effect people form certain groups (Mason, 2003). For example indirect racism can take place within organisations in dress requirements for certain jobs, which are imposed onRead MoreTrobriand Islanders-Malinowski and Weiner10855 Words   |  44 Pagesher brother: â€Å"a woman continues the line and man represents it† (1929, 24). Weiners book, Women of Value, Men of Renown, is of course the product of a sexual politics rather different to that of Malinowskis time. It is a selfconscious product of feminist anthropology, and is indeed an ethnography offering â€Å"one of the most compelling reappraisals from a female viewpoint† (M. Strathern 1981, 671). It demonstrates not only the thesis of womens invisibility to male observers but how much this matters