Gender Roles in Shakespeare’s Hamlet

Abstract

The voices of Shakespeare’s women call across the ages for women to express their thoughts, emotions, intelligence and spirit. These voices are voices of a wide range of intellectual, emotional and psychological dimensions of women and womanhood, which in this age of gender awareness, call today’s women to use their different tones and assert their points of view. These voices are as contemporary today as they were in the times of Shakespeare. Within theatrical context, the importance of female characters is like the ebb and flow of an ocean; sometimes pushed to the margin and sometimes brought into the centre. The paper is an exploratory survey of Hamlet’s relationship with Gertrude and Ophelia, the two important female characters of Hamlet using the theoretical tools of psychoanalysis s and feminism.