Hamlet

            
             Hamlet (see estrangement #5 above) sees in his mother a manifestation of the premise that an unthinking woman, guided by her emotions, might through her actions inflict great stress upon men. At the same time, such a woman might unknowingly make it very difficult for such men to deal with that stress. The enormity of the stress that Gertrude puts upon Hamlet makes Hamlet develop a substantial resentment towards her. Since to Hamlet, Gertrude embodies the weaknesses of women in general, Hamlet's resentment towards Gertrude is also projected against women in general. Ordinarily, Hamlet would not greatly resent women, but since in this case they have cornered him into an extremely stressful situation, he becomes exasperated. In his state of stress, the petty resentments he might have previously harbored towards woman for their "mercurial" emotional nature turns into a full-fledged resentment or hatred. This explains why Hamlet berates Ophelia to the point of driving her insan!.
             e and towards her untimely death. Ophelia serves as a punching bag, representing women in general, which Hamlet attacks as an outlet for his general resentment of women. He also attacks her as an outlet in general for the tremendous stress his obsession causes within him. She is a convenient target because, being a woman who loves him, she does not fight back against Hamlet (in addition, Hamlet's insanity also prevents her from doing so). In addition, the straining of his love bond towards Ophelia, although a form of estrangement, helps to pre-empt the even greater psychological pain that he would endure if she were to turn against him from knowledge of his obsession. After all, if the love between them were weakened, the impact of that kind of love rejection followed by her support of Claudius would be lessened. And, of course, this behavior is an excellent means of creating the impression of insanity. Also, however, such rejection, by eliminating love from his consciousness, may harden his personality to the point where he is better able to hate Claudius and to exact revenge against him.