It seems that before his discussion with his father's ghost, Hamlet must have been close to his mother and loved her. He had been in a relationship with Ophelia and loved her also. However, after Hamlet discovers his mother's role in his father's murder, along with her quick marriage to his uncle, he loses his trust in women. He feels betrayed! Hamlet is the epitome of what could happen when a son loses all trust and faith in a murderous and adulterous mother. That distrust in her affects the other relationship he had with Ophelia
The Roles of Women in Hamlet during Elizabethan Era In Conclusion Women were dominated by and inferior to men By Carisa Wilwert Regarded as "the weaker sex",
Gender and Identity in Hamlet: A Modern Interpretation of Ophelia
BY HEATHER BROWN
In A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf addresses the topic "Women and Fiction," offering her own reading of history from a woman's perspective by emphasizing women's lack of tradition in a historically male-dominated society.
David Garrick in Hamlet, I, 4
A stain glass window representation of Polonius.
English: Mignon Nevada as "Ophelia", glass negativ...Woolf's essay sets up a juxtaposition between males and females which is particularly helpful in framing the reader's understanding of relationships in literature prior to Woolf's time. Woolf's modern reading of history allows the reader to interpret Shakespeare's Ophelia not as a source of admiration for her assertion of identity but, rather, as a source of sympathy for her loss of identity after the removal of male dominance.
Through her essay, Woolf attempts to account for the effect of the past upon female writers as well as female fictional characters, concluding that the woman's position in history-- seen only in relation to men--is problematic because of the hierarchy implicit in the relationship. She begins preparing her essay by "[...] thinking of the safety and prosperity of the one sex and...