Profile: The Women of Hamlet

Hamlet, while accurate from an Elizabethan social category standpoint, is not acceptable from a modern feminist perspective, specifically in how the male females treat the female characters. The two main female roles, Ophelia and Gertrude, are given ambiguous roles and interpretations, Ophelia especially. There is much debate about whether either of them, or both of them, can be considered ‘feminist’. However, how the males in the play – Hamlet, Claudius, Laertes and Polonius – act towards them is unmistakable.   

Ophelia, daughter of Polonius, sister of Laertes, and significant other of Hamlet, is controlled by all of them men in her life. Her few instances of free choice are to choose which male to listen to (when they all lecture her) and her choice to go mad and drown herself. Both Polonius and Laertes do the very Elizabethan action of dissuading her from all interactions with the outside world. She’s forbidden to be with Hamlet, unless she’s being used as a ploy in one of Claudius and Polonius’s plots. She can’t express herself, or her love, especially sexually (“From this time, be somewhat scanter of your maiden presence” – Polonius, 1.2.121). When she attempts to, or at least attempts to say no, she’s told to go to a either a brothel or a convent by her supposed boyfriend (Get thee to a nunnery 3.1.114) – in either place she’d be trapped with no freedom of expression. Ophelia, who we assume has never had a mother/lost her mother early on, struggles with her identity, and her men don’t make it any easier.

Gertrude struggles with similar control issues and in many instances with her son, who she should attempt to exhibit some control over. She is mocked by Hamlet for remarrying so quickly, and never gives him any sort of explanation why (that we know of) in his highly quoted “Frailty, thy name is woman,” rant. She also lets him tell her she’s too old to have emotion and feel love, and just like Ophelia, have her sex life controlled. I, for one, know my mother would never put up with such disrespect from my brother had he actd like Hamlet.

In addition to her son’s mistreatment, her new husband, Claudius isn’t much better. He acts very dismissive of her, until his half-hearted attempt to stop her from drinking poison, even though she has been his key to the throne. She dies alone, after cheering on her son.

Both Ophelia and Gertrude experience tragic deaths, both because of Hamlet who they loved dearly. Ophelia was driven mad and to suicide by Hamlet’s madness and his mad act of killing her father, while Gertrude was poisoned by Hamlet’s success. Hamlet might have accomplished his goal of avenging his father, but he destroyed the rest of his family along the way.

Cia♀, 

Charlie 

For additional, more qualified, feminist criticism of Hamlet, look here and here 

Challenge #11: Child vs. Career

****Warning: House of Cards season 2 spoilers****

          It's fairly recent struggle that most women have to face as they grow up: to have kids or to pursue excellence in a career? Now, that statement makes it sound like the two are mutually exclusive, which is not necessarily true. However, numerous articles have been written about how balancing the two is incredibly difficult, such as here and here. I can write from personal experience - my mom is a single mother, who travels for work and is often gone 3-4 days out of the week. There are times when her work schedule and my debate schedule conflict, and we can go weeks without seeing each other. It's hard, and I have vivid memories as child of her missing soccer games and school performances. 

It’s undeniable that the traditional American family has shifted since the 1950s. The wildly popular Modern Family only serves as proof, along with census data. Women are having children later, we’re having fewer children, and we’re having them out of wedlock – be that be as single mothers, in domestic partnerships, or other circumstances. But what has been consistent is the pressure to still have them. Sure, women might get some side glances if they have grey hair while toting along a five year old, but people will still want to know his/her name and squeeze his cheeks.

But what about those women who choose careers? Are they automatically branded as selfish or unlovable? Too uptight to get married or to settle down? Another modern tv show, Netflix’s House of cards, exposed the criticism women face. It shows the female lead, Claire Underwood, being forced repeatedly [watch the video in the link] to justify her and her husband’s decision to not have kids. The reporter wouldn’t take the answer most women give, that Claire wanted to devote her life to public service and didn’t feel like she could split her time effectively (the classic decision to choose career over kids), as sufficient or worthy. She goes on to press Claire if her relationship with her husband was real, or if she’s infertile. It was truly uncomfortable to watch.

There is a real stigma against women who don’t have children, even though it’s becoming more and more common. 1 in 5 American women in their early forties don’t have kids [link]. At 17, that worries me. I can’t begin to imagine being married within 5 or 6 years, yet alone having children. Many of my friends feel the same. I’ve planned more about my future when it comes to college, grad school, my career path and where I want to live than I have about what color my bridesmaids will wear or what to name my firstborn. Does this make me defective? Some will probably tell me yes.

There’s also a stigma against women who choose to try and do both, as proven by the 2012 controversy over Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer when she was pregnant.  So, where does that leave women with aspirations other than motherhood? Dealing with, as Helen Mirren said, ‘boring old men.’

Cia♀,
Charlie 

Challenge #10: Women and Politics

To be honest, I'm really sick of my ovaries being the butt of political jokes. However, I don't think I'm those jokes are going to stop anytime soon. It's February 2014 - the 41st anniversary of Roe vs. Wade just passed, and America is gearing up for the good-old mid-term election (and primaries!). The cast of candidates is nothing if not entertaining - Clay Aiken, openly gay American Idol runner-up, is competing in a heavily conservative North Carolina district - and with the GOP looking to strengthen its majority in the Senate and Democrats looking to cling to the lead in the Senate, I can sense a return of 2012's 'war on women'. See cartoon below. 

applicable political cartoon 

The GOP knows it, too. They’ve held ‘training camps’ for incumbent, male candidates who will have to defeat female Democrats in November. They’re especially necessary, considering even after the 2012 election, politicians have made awful, ignorant comments - most recently Mike Huckabee at the RNC’s winter meeting. (Props to my friend Julia for showing me his comments in the Oracle, our school newspaper, article). Huckabee accused the government of providing women with the birth control pill, which is necessary to ‘control their libido’.

Gag me. Most male politicians (Democrats included) could learn a lot for the Oracle article. The GOP leadership shouldn’t be teaching their candidates how to politely interact with women - they should be making re-take a basic sex ed class, and learn how the states the represent actually define buzzwords like rape and abortion rules. I agree that they have a right to their opinion - but they should be able to explain the facts behind the female reproductive system before they should be able to make a legal ruling on ‘when life begins’.

Another sad aspect of the media’s focus on these comments is that they’re not all that important when it comes to voting. Sure, the media’s able to taint a candidates image, but even for women voters, issues like the economy mattered more than abortion and social issues when they cast their ballot - only when men went to the very extreme end of the spectrum, and publicly, did it really matter.

What does this all add up to? I don’t want the 2014 midterms - and the 2016 presidential election to be another ‘war on women’. However, it might be inevitable, especially if the GOP favorite Paul Ryan is the nominee, and the Democrats nominate Hillary or another women.  The same Paul Ryan who doesn’t think I, as a child born from IVF, should exist. Examples like this from Ryan’s past would be easy targets for opposition research.

However, women can try and make the issues they care about matter, because women are increasingly the determining factor in elections. We have higher voter turnout rates than men, which means our votes count. Let’s make sure that they do.  

Cia♀,
Charlie

Profile: Angela Merkel

She's been named the most powerful woman in the world by Forbes multiple times. She's led the 4th largest economy in the world for 8 years, and is beginning a third four-year term (never mind that fact that she's the first women to ever hold her position). She is Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany.

My interest in Merkel began at the beginning of this school year. There's a tradition that Academy (a cross-school program I'm a part of) seniors are assigned countries when we start in August. As part of our current events class, we have to follow the country and report on major events. I was given the Federal Republic of Germany. When I started, my knowledge of Germany was limited to World War I & II, and I knew almost nothing about the present German state or Merkel as its leader.   

In the months since I'm chronicled everything from Merkel's impressive reelection to her pelvic break (ouch!). It's been interesting to see how a country and the media reacts to Merkel as the country's leader, as someone from the United States which has yet to have a female behind the big chair in the Oval Office. I've determined that the Germans are far more accepting of Merkel than Americans are to the closest thing we have to Merkel, Hillary Clinton.

Merkel is able to go about her business without much discussion about her pantsuits or haircut, unlike Hillary. Granted, I haven't read much about Merkel's original campaign for Chancellor in 2004, so I don't know if those were originally covered heavily by major news corporation and have just tapered off over the last 8 years, or didn't exist in the first place. However, this isn't a post about Hillary. Although there's definitely one in the making.

'Mum' Merkel, as she's been nicknamed, has had a rocky road as a female politician. She's liked by most people in her country, and has been seen as a stabilizing, reasonable, focused ‘motherly’ force (she also has a PhD quantum chemistry!). However, she  has been criticized as being too strict with Germay's austerity policy towards struggling European Union countries, and domestically, she takes very slow steps to solve problems.

What still makes her so well liked, and so contrary to the United States, is her ability to compromise. She’s compromised with most of her opposition parties, and sometimes on the foreign front in small increments. She compromised to create the ‘Grand Coalition’ of the CDU and SDU parties that begins in the legislative branch of Germany’s government this year, instead of keeping the political process hostage in negotiations over the coalition. She’s going to work with David Cameron, Prime Minister of the UK, to ensure his country doesn’t leave the EU. All of these actions are in the best interests of the German people, the German government, and Europe as a whole.

Were Merkel to take these actions in America, it’d be seen as ‘appeasement’ to the enemy, and a display of weakness. In Germany, it’s viewed as responsibility, and that shows how much leaders like Obama and John Boehner can learn from her actions. Or, they could just keep wiretapping her phone….

Cia♀, 

Charlie