'Hamlet' and a Feminist Argument

The traditional canonical texts of Western literature are seen by the feminist movement to define who has the power to speak in Western culture and who does not. The authors of the Canon are predominantly men, and their voice is considered by many to be domineering, largely exclusive, and biased in favor of a male point of view. We will focus here on this complaint in terms of the following: the existing Canon and its defenders or promoters, the feminist objection to it, and a reasoned resolution of the opposing views from some notable feminist literary critics. We will do this in relation to Shakespeare's Hamlet, arguably the most psychologically pervasive work within the Canon.

Undoubtedly, a prominent and very vocal promoter (actually, quite a defensive promoter) of the Western Canon of literature is Harold Bloom. In his national bestseller, The Western Canon—The Books and School of the Ages, Bloom defines the Canon (from Homer to present), and passionately encourages its safeguarding. He also spells out who, he believes, are its critics and enemies. These people he generally groups and labels as the "School of Resentment," which includes promoters of Feminist works. His contention is that this 'School' is intentionally, for its own peculiar reasons, striving to invade the world of academia with a curriculum (a "politicized curriculum") that is sub-standard to the traditional, largely canonical programs of the past (Bloom, Book of Readings 265b). His defense rests on the aesthetic value of the Canon, and the focus of his complaint is that, among the professions of literary teachers, critics, analysts, reviewers and authors too, there is an increasingly noticeable "flight from the aesthetic" brought on by an unfortunate attempt "to assuage displaced guilt" (ibid). The cry of the academic Feminists, Marxists, Afrocentrists, New Historicists and liberal-left assayers of literature (who include those who influence and control school curricula) is that Bloom and his sympathizers are "racists and sexists", that they are excluding the under-represented, and that they "oppose... adventure and new interpretations" (Bloom—Readings 265a, 266a).

To Bloom, the apogee of all canonical authors is Shakespeare, and one of the few of his works that Bloom lauds particularly in Western Canon is Hamlet (267, 272b). Hamlet is, of course, praised by a myriad of the best critics, including Susanne L. Wofford. In a chapter of her editor's notes entitled "A Critical History of Hamlet," she intimates the magnitude of this one play in its cultural impact upon Britain and the United States over the last four centuries (Wofford 181). She includes, with a view to impartiality, several critical essays on the work, essays that represent theories of several of those groups of the above cited "School of Resentment." One treatise in particular is a strong and reasoned feminist view to which we will later refer. Through the various analyses selected by Wofford, one recognizes that Hamlet in toto does give voice to the aestheticism upon which Bloom rests his contentions about the Canon.

Ironically, the Feminist complaint, that the Canon is "generally not from the point of view of a woman" and that woman's voice is virtually "ignored" in much of it, is validated in the highly praised Hamlet (Cantar). The irony continues in that a play such as this, which supposedly fathoms the human psyche, does not reveal much at all about the two major female characters. They act either as a theatrical balance to the male characters or as a sounding board for their fine speeches and actions. Little does Bloom justify his defence of the Canon in this regard, but rather he fuels the Feminist claim of sexism when he observes: "Queen Gertrude, recently the recipient of several Feminist defenses, requires no apologies. She is evidently a woman of exuberant sexuality, who inspired uxurious (sic) passion first in King Hamlet and later in King Claudius" (Bloom 351). If this is the best that Bloom can offer in suggesting the substance of Gertrude's character, it would serve us well to examine further some of the complaints of the feminists regarding the female voice in Shakespeare.