Gertrude’s relevance in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet is threefold: she is the mother of the hero, the widow of the Ghost, and the wife of Claudius, the current King of Denmark. Still, her hasty and even incestuous marriage portrays her character in a negative way despite the fact that she played no role in the killing of Hamlet’s father, the previous king of Denmark who also happens to be the Ghost of the tale. Carolyn Heilbrun’s The Character of Hamlet’s Mother argues against the view of the woman as “shallow” simply because of her lustful ways (205).
Foremost, Gertrude can see the essence of every situation that she encounters and responds to different situations with wisdom and speed (Heilbrun 203). For instance, when Polonius’ tells Claudius that he knows why Hamlet is upset, the Queen promptly responds by pointing out that it must be his father’s death and her “[overhasty] marriage” (Shakespeare II.ii.56-57). Additionally, when she takes the poisoned drink at the scene of her death, Heilbrun notes that she does not waste time on “vituperation” but warns Hamlet about the same (204). In that sense, it is evident that Gertrude is not a stupid woman and the fact that she continues a life of sexual of experience after the death of her first husband provides no grounds on which one could claim she is “incapable of any [continuous] rational process” (Heilbrun201).
PARADISE LOST: The Theme of Death in Paradise Lost
John Milton’s Paradise Lost revolves around the concepts of death and sin and their connection to Adam and Eve; however, how the two themes operate is a different story. On one hand, man’s disobedience brought death to the world and as a result, the work’s central doctrine is that death is the inevitable outcome of sin.
John Erskine’s The Theme of Death in Paradise Lost concurs with the given claim but goes on to insist that death is “peculiarly Satan’s gift to man” (573). After all, when Satan entered paradise, his plan was to “[devise] death “for the living by driving the first man and woman to sin (Milton IV.197). Now, the death that comes after Satan’s antics cannot be similar to the one that follows Adam’s sin because unlike the man, there is no evidence that Satan would cease to exist. Hence, Erskine insists on there being four different degrees of death: understanding of the evils that lead to death, spiritual death, the dying of the soul and the body, and finally, the everlasting torment for the wicked (574-575). Meanwhile, there are two kinds of sin in the Milton’s text: that which is common to all men and the one that appears to be subject to individuals. In other words, as Erskine explains, Adam and Eve initially represented humanity before the fall; afterward, they appear as two separate individuals who suffer because of a sin they individually committed (576).
Conclusively, Erskine holds that the distinct representations of sin and death in Milton’s Paradise Lost do not have to reconcile because they emerged from different points of Adam and Eve’s stay in the Garden (581).
Works Cited
Erskine, John. "The Theme of Death in Paradise Lost." PMLA 32.4 (1917): 573-582. JSTOR. Web. <http://www.jstor.org>.
Heilbrun, Carolyn. "The Character of Hamlet's Mother." Shakespeare Quartely 8.2 (1957): 201-206. JSTOR. Web. <http://www.jstor.org>.
Milton, John. "Paradise Lost." The Norton Anthology of Western Literature. Ed. Sarah Lawall, Lee Patterson, Patricia Meyer Spacks, William G. Thalmann and Heather James. 8th. Vol. I. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2014. 2555-2631. Print.
Shakespeare, William. "Hamlet, Prince of Denmark." The Norton Anthology of Western Literature. Ed. Sarah Lawall, Lee Patterson, Patricia Meyer Spacks, William G. Thalmann and Heather James. 9. Vol. 1. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2014. 2409-2500. Print.
