Filial Relations in Shakespeare’s Hamlet

She married. O, most wicked Speed, to post
With such dexterity to Incestuous sheets!
It is not, my heart, for I
Must hold my tongue. -(1.2.160), Hamlet

Shakespeare’s treatment of Hamlet’s filial relations brings forth some of the deepest anxieties that every human mind is haunted by. Questions such as: What obligations do we leave to those who follow after us? What do we care about what has been laid upon us by the dead? or “To be or not to be” (3.1.60) arise. Hamlet learns of this terrible burden when he witnesses his father’s ghost in Act one, and from there the play takes on the form of a true tragedy. Hamlet’s own actions and thoughts will lead to a series of inevitable catastrophes. The juxtaposition made here is between fate and free will. Fate connects with familial burdens and its duties, while free will relates to Hamlet’s inner desires to attain psychological balance. Hamlet is a grown son, a university-educated son, whom everyone would expect to be the avenger, except that no one knows that there’s been a murder. This leads to his inner torment.

It is hard to discern whether Hamlet is a good character or a bad one, as his internal filial sentiment portrays him in a bad light. He raises his voice against his mother, insults and alienates his lover, and directly or indirectly becomes responsible for many deaths during the course of the play. Hamlet’s first words in the play, “A little more than kin, and less than kind” (1.2.65), relate to his withering assessments of his relationship with his new king/father. He never accepted Claudius as his father, even when the new king tried to call him his son, for which Hamlet ironically retorts, “Not so, my lord; I am too; much I’ the sun” (1.2.65). He considers his own father as “Hyperion” (a Greek god) and Claudius as the “satyr,” a woodland horse-like creature that is engaged in debauchery and revelry. He uses his procrastination and the pretense of being mad as his defense mechanism to ponder upon the murder, despite knowing the inevitable. To be filial or not, that is the question. He vacillates from sensibility and procrastinates from thought, and in the process, loses the power of action in the energy of resolve. Here, Aristotle’s idea about how a tragedy should invoke both pity and fear in its audience is also recognized.

Shakespeare gives this tinge of murder/redemption to Hamlet because, sometime around the composition of the play, Pico della Mirandola argued in his work Oration on The Dignity of Man that man was God’s greatest creation, in His image, and able to choose his own nature. But for Hamlet, is he to listen to his father’s ghost, or choose according to his free will? The ghost of his father forces him to “Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder” (1.5.30), but his balanced free will tells him, “Murder most foul, as in the best it is; But this most foul, strange and unnatural” (1.5.30). One cannot be too logical in this world and continue to carry on his social functions and duties. Laertes, likewise, in order to take his father’s revenge, starts plotting against Hamlet instantaneously (unlike Hamlet). His decision was indeed from a Christian point of view, as the Old Testament says that the avenger of the blood shall himself slay the murderer (NUM. xxxv.19). Laertes is even forced by Ophelia’s madness to fulfill his filial duty, as he receives rosemary from Ophelia, as a token of remembrance and love for his father. Harold Skulsky, in his essay Revenge, Honor and Conscience in Hamlet, substantiates that there is always the possibility of being prompted to revenge, not by anarchic hatred, but by fidelity to a code of honor, indifferent to the emotional excesses of the aggrieved party.

Hamlet’s peculiar way of perceiving his mother and his deep frustration with Claudius relate him to an Oedipal figure. His disgust with his mother marrying less than two months after his father’s death is one of the main subjects of his agonized reflections in the course of the play. The Freudian theory perceives that the correct explanation of Hamlet’s behavior may be found in the peculiar nature of Hamlet’s task, as he himself is unaware of his inner conflict. Marshall W. Stern pointed out this unawareness in Shakespeare himself, as Hamlet was written soon after the death of his father. Hamlet’s case is exactly similar to the concept that D. H. Lawrence gives in his novel Sons and Lovers, in which men fail to fall in love with other women due to fixation on their mothers. On the other hand, Claudius, too, might represent Hamlet’s innermost desires to sleep with his mother. However, Gertrude has redeeming qualities, as she is deeply concerned for her son’s depression and madness and arrives at the truth with introspection. Hamlet shows no interest in having children, which may be out of his contempt for womenkind and more so because, within his mental prison of guilt, he considers himself a sinner. He asks Ophelia, “Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?” It seems that he wantonly does not want to carry on the burden of filial relations into the future. Unlike Hamlet, who feigns his madness, Ophelia becomes mad, torn between her brothers’ and father’s advice. How can she marry the love of her life if he killed her father?

Another important thing to be noted is why Shakespeare lets his main character be so affected by his filial relations. This is precisely what Elizabethan England struggled with regarding a true line of succession and a trusting family of monarchs. The Elizabethan period is referred to as a period of political uncertainty, which stemmed from the state of the old Queen (as a monarch is considered a direct representation of his/her land). However, the task imposed by the ghost has been painfully accomplished. Hamlet, the most filial man, in discerning the fine line between human frailty and corruption, clarifies for all lesser men the heroic and tragic implications of the ‘tasks’ necessity, which is exactly what Shakespeare wants to portray.

Bibliography

1. Hamada, Shihoko. “Kôjin and Hamlet: The Madness of Hamlet, Ophelia, and Ichiro.” Comparative Literature Studies, vol. 33, no. 1, 1996, pp. 59–68. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40247038. Accessed 11 Jul. 2022.

2. Anthonisen, Nils L., and Niels L. Anthonisen. “The Ghost in Hamlet.” American Imago, vol. 22, no. 4, 1965, pp. 232–49. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/26302185. Accessed 11 Jul. 2022.

3. Benson, Barbara, et al. “The Theme of Family in Hamlet and The Sound and the Fury.” The Examined Life: Family, Community, Work in American Literature, edited by Karen Lohr and Jane Shook, Appalachian State University, 1989, pp. 19–23. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1xp3mfj.7. Accessed 11 Jul. 2022.

4. Davis, Tenney L. “The Sanity of Hamlet.” The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 18, no. 23, 1921, pp. 629–34. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2939352. Accessed 11 Jul. 2022.

5. Skulsky, Harold. “Revenge, Honor, and Conscience in ‘Hamlet.’” PMLA, vol. 85, no. 1, 1970, pp. 78–87. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/1261433. Accessed 14 Jul. 2022.