Thursday, February 20, 2020

Discuss Hamlet's relationship with Gertrude Research Paper

Discuss Hamlet's relationship with Gertrude - Research Paper Example She does not consider her mother to be weak in the physical state but in the emotional state (In Leavenworth, 1960, 34).   Hamlet developed a different opinion of romance and love after her mother accepted to marry his uncle shortly, â€Å"two months dead† (138). Gertrude makes Hamlet change his earlier belief that those in love need to hang on one another despite the prevailing challenges. He therefore believes that the action of Gertrude was a betrayal not just to his father but to the whole institution of marriage and love in general (Crowl, 2014, 138-139).   She had shown a lot of affection towards his late father which is evident in the statement, "Why, she would hang on him As if increase of appetite had grown By what it fed on" but she seems to have quickly forgotten that and was now deeply in love with Claudius. He regards her mother’s action as sign of poor judgment and an act of sheer cowardice (Howard, 2007, 67). The fact that she quickly gives in to the advances if Claudius is an indication that she never loved Hamlet’s father after all which angers Hamlet and increase her hatred towards her. Her action seems to confirm his suspicion that Gertrude and Claudius were having an affair before the death of his father and he suspects that they might have contributed to his untimely death. Hamlet makes a comparison of his mother moving from his late father to Claudius as one moving from the loving arms of the gods to the animals, "So excellent a king; that was, to this, Hyperion to a satyr" (Shakespeare, Act 1, scene 2). He is quick to judge his mother as being very foolish and uncaring. On her part, Gertrude considers her action as being innocent and not based on any form of malice or insincere motive and wonders how she has been misunderstood by her son. The story shows some evidence that Gertrude got into a

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