Custom Written Essays: Contrasting Gertrude and Ophelia of Shakespeare

Contrasting the Ladies in Hamlet  Ã‚        Ã‚  Ã‚   How can anyone view or read the Shakespearean tragedy of Hamlet without observing an obvious differentiation between the characters of the two female characters? And yet, not all critics agree on even the most salient features of this contrast.    Quite opposite the criminality of the king’s wife is the innocence of Ophelia – this view is generally expressed among Shakespearean critics. Jessie F. O’Donnell expresses the total innocence of the hero’s girlfriend in â€Å"Ophelia,† originally appearing in The American Shakespeare Magazine:    O broken lily! how shall one rightly treat of her loveliness, her gentleness and the awful pathos of her fate? Who shall dare to hint that she was not altogether faultless? One feels as if wantonly crushing some frail blossom in criticising so beautiful a creation, yet such is my thankless task. To my mind, Ophelia has been much over-rated by writers on this play of Hamlet, and when stripped of the glamor of Shakespeare’s magic verse and the lenient tenderness we give always to the dead . . .   she will be found a simple, shallow girl, pure and delicate as a snowflake [. . .] . (241)    Contradicting O’Donnell’s view is some evidence that Ophelia is not innocent in her relationship with the protagonist (West 107). Moral concerns are in the forefront of any discussion about dissimilarities between the queen and the lord chamberlain’s daughter. John Dover Wilson highlights moral differences in What Happens in Hamlet:    His [Hamlet’s] mother is a criminal, has been guilty of a sin which blots out the stars for him, makes life a bestial thing, and even infects his very blood. She has committed incest. Modern readers, living i... ...nd Notes on Shakspere and Other English Poets. London : George Bell and Sons, 1904. p. 342-368. http://ds.dial.pipex.com/thomas_larque/ham1-col.htm O’Donnell, Jessie F. â€Å"Ophelia.† The American Shakespeare Magazine, 3 (March 1897), 70-76. Rpt. in Women Reading Shakespeare 1660-1900. Ed. Ann Thompson and Sasha Roberts. New York: Manchester University Press, 1997. Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 1995. http://www.chemicool.com/Shakespeare/hamlet/full.html No line nos. West, Rebecca. â€Å"A Court and World Infected by the Disease of Corruption.† Readings on Hamlet. Ed. Don Nardo. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1999. Rpt. of The Court and the Castle. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1957. Wilson, John Dover. What Happens in Hamlet. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999.