Stereotypes In Hamlet

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GENDER STEREOTYPES LEADS TO PRETENSE Is it true that authors from Shakespeare’s time and authors in our time still stereotype gender roles into their assigned gender? The norm of gender role has been around for as long as we remember, but as time progresses and people evolved, that is starting to change. During Shakespeare’s time, women don’t and won’t speak up for themselves and obeyed every order men gave to them. Men was also given the upper hand, as most men was treating women disrespectfully, with women not having the social justice they deserved. Both men and women has their own acceptable behaviours as men are perceived to be the masculine, dominant and violent being, and women being the fragile, innocent and submissive beings. And it…show more content…
In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, we can understand how this was men’s habit during his time. As seen when Queen Gertrude offered Hamlet to sit next to her, he refused and responded with, “No thanks, my good mother. There’s a nicer piece of work right here.” (3.2.100), this one sentence provides us with two ways of how men was disrespectful towards women. The first reason was how Hamlet was putting his mother in the same level as how he see women in general, because he said “a nicer piece of work”, which means that he saying that his mother is also a “piece of work” but not as good as Ophelia. This is very disrespectful as women are seen and refer to as merely a sexual object, and nothing more. The second reason is similar to the first, because he was referring to Ophelia as a “nicer piece of work”, which pretty much says that he doesn’t see them as a human being with feelings, but as nothing more than an object that he can play with. Hamlet then continued with, “My lady, should I lie in your lap?” (3.2.104), this is very inappropriate as “lying” on one’s lap was not something you say to a woman that you are not in a relationship with, as this is perceived as something sexual. This proves how men don’t treat women respectfully, and that gender role is developed by acts of pretense, because in this scene, we can see how Hamlet was acting to be insane by being disrespectful to Ophelia, which foreshadows Shakespeare’s true feeling towards men, which was that their disrespectfulness to women is an insane

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