The objectification of women in Shakespeare's Hamlet is shown through the misogynistic behaviour projected from Hamlet to his mother and Ophelia. This behaviour prevents women within the patriarchal confines of the Danish court from any sense of personal identity forming them to only hold roles as mother, wife and daughter. Both women are rigidly confined by these roles. Consequently, Gertrude functions in the play as a symbol of the masculine reduction of all women to sexualised objects, whereas Ophelia's loss of identity results in her madness.

The setting of Hamlet is in the late Elizabethan period; a time where patriarchy still mandated the order of society and thus already created barriers between men and women yet it was also a transitional stage where women's' roles and identities were questioned as well as the morals of revenge the purpose of life itself were questioned. Ultimately, the expectations of women...