Resumo de Essay On Why Hamlet Treats Gertrude The Way He Does

    Hamlet wants to achieve two goals with respect to Gertrude. One is to
express his anger against her, which he harbors for essentially the
same reasons that he had it for Ophelia. Two is to somehow induce her
to stop loving Claudius. This latter development would eliminate the
possibility that Hamlet might feel estrangement from motherly love in
attempting to kill or from succeeding in killing Claudius. After all,
in killing Claudius, Hamlet would not be killing the man his beloved
mother loves. Gertrude would also not condemn Hamlet for killing or
attempting to kill Claudius if she did not love Claudius. Thus, Hamlet
would have the psychological freedom he would need to kill Claudius and
thus relieve him of his obsession Hamlet meets goal one by treating
Gertrude angrily, as his feigned insanity permits him to do. However,
goal two is decidedly more difficult. One means of achieving it would
be for Hamlet to kill his mother or make her go insane, which he has
the license to do thanks to his feigned insanity. Thus, she would stop
loving Claudius.

    However, he cannot do so because he harbors a basic psychological
inhibition against destroying his own mother. Also, he needs his
mother''s love much more than he needs Ophelia''s love. While Ophelia''s
love is self-actualizing since it is a lover''s love, Gertrude''s love is
much more self-actualizing and essential for him since it is that of
his mother. (The evidence for this arbitrary reliance on his mother''s
love comes from his father and Claudius both professing of their
powerful need for Gertrude''s love and approval. Hamlet, being their
blood relative, will likely feel the same). To destroy his mother would
be to attack his own identity. Thus, since Hamlet cannot induce his
mother to stop loving Claudius by killing her or driving her insane, as
he did with Ophelia, he must somehow bring about this stoppage while
leaving her alive and sane. He attempts to do this by confronting his
mother with the premises of Claudius'' crime, in the hopes that she will
somehow think about them, realize that
Claudius is guilty, and thus stop loving Cladius, all without thinking that Hamlet believes these premises on the inside.

    Ordinarily, Hamlet would not do this because in confronting her with
these premises he would be obliging her to choose between he and
Claudius, a decision that would be psychologically disastrous for
Hamlet if she chose against him. However, since Hamlet confronts her
with these premises in a state of feigned insanity, she has no reason
to believe that the rational Hamlet believes them on the inside. Thus,
she will not be obliged to make that difficult choice because the
circumstances that would cause that obligation, namely her realization
that the rational Hamlet believes in them and that she knows that he
knows that she knows he believes in them, don''t exist, thanks to
Hamlet''s feigned insanity. Ultimately, even this attempt fails.
Gertrude fails to respond to these premises with recognition of them
and a subsequent conclusion that she no longer loves Claudius. What
happens next?

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