GERTRUDE AND DIDO – TRAUMATIZED FEMALE CHARACTERS IN SHAKESPEARE’S AND MARLOWE’S PLAYS

Natalija Stevanović

doi:10.46630/phm.12.2020.32

Abstract

The focus of this paper is on the analysis of two female characters from Shakespeare’s and Marlowe’s plays within the context of trauma studies. Queen Gertrude from William Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1609) and Queen Dido from Christopher Marlowe’s Dido, Queen of Carthage (1594), can be taken as two examples of how women were portrayed within the context of the Renaissance writing in the Elizabethan England. The traumas that they share and the experiences that both of them had to endure bring us closer to understanding the overall traumas and conditions for women in Elizabethan England. The framework of trauma studies, relying on the research by Cathy Caruth (1996), Shoshana Felman, Dori Laub (1992) and others, offers a background upon which these two female characters are analyzed. Hopefully, this paper offers an insight into the minds of these two traumatized, female characters.

Highlights

The focus of this paper is on the analysis of two female characters from Shakespeare’s and Marlowe’s plays within the context of trauma studies
Queen Gertrude from William Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1609) and Queen Dido from Christopher Marlowe’s Dido, Queen of Carthage (1594), can be taken as two examples of how women were portrayed within the context of the Renaissance writing in the Elizabethan England
In Shoshana Felman’s and Dori Laub’s book Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History (1992), there is a particular approach to investigating trauma; in this case, they are trying to explain the nature of memory and the function of witnessing a traumatic act, with a focus on the Holocaust, as one of the most traumatic events in the modern society

Summary

Trauma Studies – Overview

The rise of interest in mental traumas can be traced back to Sigmund Freud and his study in the late 1800s, which focuses on studying mental health, acknowledging that mental health is as important as physical health. In her book Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History (1996), Caruth elaborates her explanation of the importance of studying trauma by building her claims upon Sigmund Freud’s oeuvre She conveys Freud’s words when she says that sometimes catastrophic events repeat themselves, and they seem not to be initiated by “[...] the individual’s own acts, but rather appear as the possession of some people by a sort of fate, a series of painful events to which they are subjected, and which seem to be entirely outside their wish or control” (CARUTH 1996: 2).

Trauma in the Context of the Renaissance Writing in the Elizabethan England

Gertrude

Comparison

Conclusion