Gertrude

joanna bujes joanna.bujes at ebay.sun.com
Thu Dec 19 15:46:23 PST 2002


At 01:50 PM 12/19/2002 -0500, you wrote:
>He'd
>rather be a student in Wittemberg. That IS in the
>text. jks

Right. But that would still not solve the disconnect between a feeling consciousness and action...which the play turns around.

A comparison with Macbeth is helpful: what Macbeth does is acknowledged to have broken the natural order, and when he dies that order is restored: his mode of ambition and his too-eager interpretation of the witches prophesy is his problem, not that of his society as a whole. In Hamlet, as I said before, there is no natural order to revert to.

As for Gertrude, I do think we are meant to find her lacking; her actions/character are implicitly contrasted with Ophelia's who actually dies as a result of her double bind -- between her love for Hamlet and her due obedience to her father.

Joanna



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