Gender Roles In Shakespeare's Hamlet

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Hamlet is one of the best-known plays of English writer William Shakespeare. In this tragedy, the author mentioned a number of key issues, which are still actual in contemporary society. One of these topics is gender roles. It may indeed be true to say that during the whole play there is an inequality between male and female. Shakespeare emphasizes this, using imageries of decay and disease, animals and hunting, pretense, and unweeded gardens, that give readers bright representation of this unfair treatment concerning women. A poems of Canadian poet Margaret Atwood are full of imageries, and it can develop this theme. In that time, gender inequality used to be a trivial phenomenon, which occurred even between family members. In the play, this issue appears first in 1.3 when Laertes is leaving to France. Polonius gives an advice to him: Look thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue, Nor any unproportioned thought his act. Be thou familiar but by no means vulgar. Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,…show more content…
It is evident, that advice, given for Ophelia and Laertes are different. These double-stereotypes are bright examples of the unequal attitude to men and women. Advice for Laertes sounds like a real “advice” but the speech of Polonius to his daughter sounds like an order. Ophelia is not happy about decision of her father and it became obvious, leaning on her brief uncertain answers: “He hath, my lord, of late made many tenders / Of his affection to me.”(1.3.99-100); “I do not know, my lord, what I should think.”(1.3.104-05) Ophelia has no options and she has to obey. In the poem String Tail Margaret Atwood is writing about the woman, who is doing her best to make another person happy, even if she does not enjoy
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