Hamlet (Vol. 44) | Valerie Traub (essay date 1988)
Valerie Traub (essay date 1988)
SOURCE: "Jewels, Statues, and Corpses: Containment of Female Erotic Power in Shakespeare's Plays," in Shakespeare Studies: An Annual Gathering of Research, Criticism, and Reviews, Vol. XX, 1988, pp. 217-22.
[In the following excerpt, Traub discusses the erotic nature of male anxiety regarding women in Hamlet, asserting that this anxiety is only relieved through the death of the woman, as in the case of Ophelia, or through the woman's discarding of her sexuality in favor of chastity, as Hamlet instructs Gertrude to do.]
In Hamlet, Gertrude's adultery and incest—the uncontrollability, in short, of her sexuality—are, in Hamlet's mind, projected outward to encompass the potential of such contamination in all liaisons between men and women. Gertrude's adultery turns all women into prostitutes and all men into potential cuckolds.12 Hamlet's entire world is contracted into "an unweeded...
[The entire page is 2956 words long]
Navigate
