‘Frailty, Thy Name is Woman’ – How Frail are Women in the World of Shakespeare?

Abstract

This paper attempts to understand a remarkable point whether we can argue, quoting Hamlet’s remark ‘frailty, thy names woman’, that Shakespeare is a misogynist. With that end in view it analyses the situations which lead Hamlet to hold a special kind of prejudice against women. Hence, it examines the justification of his misogynistic remarks in the play. Here the chief concern is whether it is Shakespeare’s viewpoint or the view of his character Hamlet; and whether it is deep-rooted, well-thought one or momentary one. Some women characters in several other plays of Shakespeare have been studied, in an endeavor to compare their roles, and to see whether they all show weakness, or some of them surpass the male characters around them in their respective plays. The focus has always been simply on the point whether women are generally frail in the world of Shakespeare. The paper concludes that Hamlet’s view does not represent the general view of women in Shakespearean literature; rather it is a sweeping generalization of the misogyny of a young man who has, somehow, been betrayed by women in his life.