Hamlet

Hamlet Why Hamlet Berates Ophelia Hamlet (see estrangement #5 above) sees in his mother a manifestation of the premise that an unthinking woman, guided by her emotions, might through her actions inflict great stress upon men. At the same time, such a woman might unknowingly make it very difficult for such men to deal with that stress. The enormity of the stress that Gertrude puts upon Hamlet makes Hamlet develop a substantial resentment towards her. Since to Hamlet, Gertrude embodies the weaknesses of women in general, Hamlet's resentment towards Gertrude is also projected against women in general. Ordinarily, Hamlet would not greatly resent women, but since in this case they have cornered him into an extremely stressful situation, he becomes exasperated. In his state of stress, the petty resentments he might have previously harbored towards woman for their "mercurial" emotional nature turns into a full-fledged resentment or hatred. This explains why Hamlet berates Ophelia to the point of driving her insan! e and towards her untimely death. Ophelia serves as a punching bag, representing women in general, which Hamlet attacks as an outlet for his general resentment of women. He also attacks her as an outlet in general for hamlet, claudius, mask, one, thus, claudius', hamlet's, ophelia, love, psychological, play, kill, insanity, obsession, gertrude, theme, might, madness, since, mother, killing, against, person, however, himself, guilt, estrangement, scene, premises, characters, way, themes, suspicion, stress, real