SOURCE: “Explaining Woman's Frailty: Feminist Readings of Gertrude,” in Hamlet, edited by Peter J. Smith and Nigel Wood, Open University Press, 1996, pp. 83-107.

In the following essay, Ouditt examines three feminist studies of Gertrude (from Shakespeare's Hamlet) in order to demonstrate the various types of concerns which serve as the focus of feminist criticism, and to highlight the shortcomings of these approaches.

Introduction

What might feminism offer to Shakespeare studies? Or, to reorder the proposition slightly, what might Shakespeare offer to feminist studies? What kind of relationships exist between the archetypal symbol of English literary heritage and the textual wing of a political movement bent on stripping bare and eradicating the structural inequalities between the sexes?

In fact, the intersections are many and fruitful, and one might detect a gradual evolution in feminist approaches. Lisa Jardine describes her ‘growing tide of personal irritation’ at the ‘reverence’ of early...