Parental Pressure In Hamlet

Words: 1857
Pages: 8
Open Document
Pressure Points
Just a about a year ago, Kaitlyn Jenner announced to the world that she changed genders. This received a great deal of media coverage, and Jenner was honored with the Arthur Ashe Award for courage. This shows how society today is only beginning to accept the LGBTQ community. Shakespeare’s time was completely unaccepting of anything except heterosexuals. That time period had a strong patriarchal society, even stronger than the one that exists today. This creates conflicts for the two main characters in the play. Hamlet struggles with finding his identity, while Ophelia struggles with gender inequality in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Although Hamlet and Ophelia both experience parental pressure, this is ultimately what causes both of them to question their gender identity and die from it.
Hamlet suffers with parental pressure placed upon him by his father’s ghost. Shakespeare establishes Old Hamlet as a character, not just a ghost. According to a Literature Resource Center article titled “Prince of Self-pity”, the ghost in Hamlet is not the same as Shakespeare’s other plays, such as Macbeth. In that play, only one character could interact with the ghost. However in Hamlet, Horatio and other bodyguards saw the ghost too. Horatio is …show more content…
Speaking with Horatio, Hamlet finally decides to put everything on the line and duel against Laertes. He assures that “[he is] constant to [his] purposes” (5.2 214), so he shows his willingness to fight Laertes even though the odds are not in his favor. Furthermore, Hamlet claims that indecisiveness to fight “is such a kind of / gaingiving as would perhaps trouble a woman” (5.2 229-230). He is clearly thinking about these womanly characteristics that others put on him. Because of that, he throws it away and becomes reckless in his decisions. Hamlet agrees to a duel that he is bound to lose, and in the end it is that duel that took his life along with many
Show More

Related Documents: Parental Pressure In Hamlet

A Hero's Journey: A Literary Analysis

Analysis of these texts reveals that only one story has characters that fit the hero archetype. True heroes are those who are able to overcome the pressures of their society and environment in order to do the “right thing”. A true hero is distinguished by his or her ability to do the “right thing” through self-sacrifice In Reeve’s Mortal Engines, three youth, Katherine, Thomas, and Hester each independently…

Words 1933 - Pages 8

History Of Educational Policy

AS Sociology Education Policies History of Educational Policy EDUCATION ACTS, REFORMS AND POLICIES The way education is structured has changed several times since the 1870 Forster Act. These changes are essentially tied in with political ideologies of various governments of the time. Education has been a concern for all political parties, upon which election campaigns are often based, as was seen in the 1997 and 2001 General Election…

Words 8100 - Pages 33