In William Shakespeare's Hamlet, there are many mixed and contrasting views of women. Hamlet sees Ophelia as a temptress he cannot trust and sees Gertrude, as the root of his feelings toward all women, as not loyal and only interested in power. His views begin with Gertrude and while his father was still alive, he envied her marriage with him. The mother is always the person that a man's feelings toward all women root from. If the mother is loyal and sweet and proves she's a respectable woman, then the man shall view all women that way and treat them as he treats his mother. That's why people always say that you should watch how a man treats his mother because that’s how he will treat you. After the tragic death of his father, Hamlet witnesses Gertrude remarrying before the grave was even cold. That really messed up how he saw his mother. Those feelings deepened when Claudius and Gertrude tried to make him call Claudius "father". Those feelings stemmed out to how he viewed his love, Ophelia. After Gertrude remarried, Hamlet's faith in women depleted. He saw Ophelia as only doing her father's bidding by trying to marry him for the attention. He quickly separated himself from her by telling her he'd gone mad. One of the big questions in Hamlet is "Was Hamlet ever in love with Ophelia or was he just using her?" In my opinion--because a lot of Hamlet is left up to interpretation--is that he was in love with her but due to the acts of Gertrude and then his changing opinion about women, he lost that love. In truth, I believe that Hamlet truly respected women and loved his mother and Ophelia. It all roots back to Gertrude and her acts of deceit toward Hamlet's dead father. Also, the fact that the ghost of the King telling Hamlet that Claudius killed him was not a fact to win him over to the marriage of Claudius and Gertrude because that meant Gertrude married the very man that killed her beloved husband and his father. I think that after Gertrude remarried, Hamlet's views of the sanctity of marriage were blurred. He viewed their marriage as amazing and the ideal but then again after the marriage to his uncle, he probably thought Ophelia would do the same to him. Everything roots back to his mother and how he looks at her for his thought of women.
Your post makes me wonder whether Hamlet idealized his parents' marriage to a fault. I was fairly shocked when my parents divorced, because their marriage seemed so strong, but it didn't really color my relationships. Then again, uncle didn't kill my father to marry my mother. But still. Given Hamlet's education level, you'd think he'd have a more complex reaction than rejecting all women as like his mother.
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