Women

Question 1

Hamlet’s misogyny in Act 1, Scene 2

Answer 1

‘Frailty thy name is woman…a beast that wants discourse of reason’

Question 2

LAERTES to OPHELIA about her virginity in Act 1, Scene 3

Answer 2

‘your chaste treasure open to his unmastered importunity…danger of desire. The chariest maid is prodigal enough if she unmask her beauty to the moon. Virtue itself scapes not calumnious strokes. The canker galls…contagious blastments…’
- semantic field of / equating disease with sexual corruption to warn off loss of virginity (the original sin, thus abdicating male’s responsibility: BIBLE only women can sin - EVE), OPHELIA as submissive and docile (victim of larger actions of the court which are driven by men)

Question 3

Gertrude at Ophelia’s grave - loss

Answer 3

‘I hoped thou shouldn’t have been my Hamlet’s wife’
POIGNANT MOMENT OF LOSS - sympathetic tragedy, collateral damage of men, passive victim

Question 4

2.2
Hamlets pleas to POLONIUS to protect OPHELIA from men and political games; cyncism about MEN AND WOMEN

Answer 4

‘Let her not walk i’th’sun. Conception is a blessing, but as your daughter may conceive’

Question 5

POLONIUS using Ophelia

Answer 5

‘This [letter from Hamlet] in obedience hath my daughter shown me…I’ll loose my daughter to him’

Question 6

Ghost about C&G 1.5

Answer 6

‘Won to his shameful lust The will of my most seeming virtuous queen’

Question 7

Laertes to Ophelia bout virtue and Hamlet 1.3

Answer 7

‘your chaste treasure open to his unmastered importunity…danger of desire. The chariest maid is prodigal enough if she unmask her beauty to the moon. Virtue itself scapes not calumnious strokes. The canker galls…contagious blastments…’

Question 8

Hamlet to Ophelia 3.1

Answer 8

’get thee to a nunnery - why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?’
alluding to brothel, hamlets attack on the moral frailty exemplified in sex and reproduction, only in a convent will Ophelia be protected from her own desires

Question 9

Don’t trust men, hamlet to Ophelia 3.1

Answer 9

’we are arrant knaves all, believe none of us’

Question 10

Hamlet to Ophelia 3.1 misogyny

Answer 10

‘Wise men know well enough what monsters you make of them’

Question 11

Hamlet’s misogynistic teasing of Ophelia

Answer 11

OPHELIA: ‘i think nothing my lord’ HAMLET: ‘That’s a fair thought to lie between a maid’s legs’