Female characters in Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, and Macbeth

William Shakespeare is generally considered an avant-garde writer with progressive ideas about gender. Because of the era in which he wrote, the women in his plays generally had to be wives, servants, or a woman of some type of ill repute. But an examination of the female characters of three of his major tragedies shows that though these women may have been secondary to the men in their lives, they were still complex, round characters and deserving of as much attention and analysis as their male counterparts.

Hamlet is likely Shakespeare’s most famous tragedy. And though the play is named for the Prince of Denmark, there are two female characters in the play that factor largely into the plot and without whom the play would be significantly less compelling. The first is Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother. She is certainly not an admirable character; marrying her brother-in-law so quickly after the (rather convenient) death of her husband, the King. While the majority of Hamlet’s vengeful rage is directed towards Claudius, it’s clear that he disappointed in his mother’s behavior but he doesn’t seem ready to process what her involvement in his father’s death might say about her, his family, and his very existence.

The other major female character in Hamlet is Ophelia, Hamlet’s love interest. While she might not seem terribly intelligent initially (who in their right mind would get involved with Hamlet?), she is an emotionally complex woman and when confronted with immense pain (Hamlet’s gone completely nuts, her dad was stabbed through a curtain by said completely nuts Hamlet), she uses what little agency she has left to drown herself. Suicide doesn’t generally seem like a feminist act, but she has so little control over most other aspects of her life, she does have the choice to live or die.

In Romeo and Juliet, Juliet is generally considered to be impulsive for agreeing to marry someone she barely knows, and foolish to agree to a plot that will eventually end in the tragic death of herself and her lover, but she is not the only woman in that play. Likely the most compelling female character in Romeo and Juliet is not the title character, but rather Juliet’s nurse. In a prominent wealthy family like the Capulets, it’s likely that the nurse had the largest role in the raising of Juliet of anyone in the family, and in the scenes before the extravagant party where Juliet and Romeo first meet her influence on Juliet is displayed. She is also extremely loyal to Juliet, and helps to preserve her secret romance with Romeo.

It’s possible the most famous and villainized female character in all of Shakespeare’s tragedies is Lady Macbeth. She’s tempestuous, complicated, and almost as terrifying as the three actual witches in the play. While it’s easy to argue that she’s just another Shakespearian shrew, Lady Macbeth can certainly not be called weak or marginalized, and that’s saying something. Regarding the actual witches in the play, they are absolutely crucial to the plot of Macbeth, and are absolute experts at manipulating the play’s title character.