The Agency and Eventual Punishment of the Femme Fatale in Shakespeare's Hamlet and The Merchant of Venice

The portrayal of women in William Shakespeare's Hamlet and The Merchant of Venice depicts women as a type of character who has the potential to possess strength and agency, but in the end ends up falling back in to the role of submissive partner to the main character of each play. Ophelia, in Hamlet, is punished for her attempt at agency by her death, while Portia, who is able to gain more agency than Ophelia, and is placed back in to the role of the forgiving "teacher" by the end of Merchant of Venice with her return to Bassanio. Both women, by the end of the plays, are placed back in to the role of being controlled by the logic of the plot, removing anxiety from the male characters of the text as well as from the reader.

Ophelia is cautioned about falling in love with Hamlet in Act I scene iii by her brother Laertes, and this serves as the first foreshadowing event in the courtship of Hamlet and Ophelia as well as eventual demise of Ophelia. This scene serves one more very significant purpose; to create the atmosphere that Ophelia is controlled by the men around her. When Laertes basically orders her to stay away from Hamlet he is, essentially, giving her a rule to break. If she breaks a rule mandated by a male authority figure she then must, within the logic of the story, be punished and this is carried out by her eventual death.

Portia is in a different situation in The Merchant of Venice, but she is still presented with the ability to display agency and be punished for it. The moment in the text that Portia resolves to dress as a man and assumes the power that the guise would carry with it she is guilty of defying societal ideals and beliefs, which would warrant her punishment by the plot. This is why she is placed with Antonio in the end, and has forgiven him of his deceptions. By placing her back with a man who has betrayed her trust we are given the message that in the end Portia has to abandon her ideals in order for the story to end in the most expected and socially "correct" way.

The most unsettling aspect to the portrayal of these women is how Shakespeare presents then as powerful, but in the end sets them up to become femme fatales and "lesions." I do not claim to know Shakespeare's exact intention in doing this to these female characters but my speculation is that societal conventions placed a certain amount of pressure on writers of drama to portray women as a lesser gender, stripping them of any and all power they may have. Shakespeare may have given each of the women agency in order to comment on this social ideal, but in the end had to conform to the wishes of society.
When Ophelia witnesses what she believes is Hamlet's spiral in to madness she can only account for it by believing that she is the cause of his state.

Carroll Camden states: "To complete the disillusionment, Hamlet uses offensive language to her, language that no sensitive girl could endure with equanimity." (Camden 249) which talks about Act III scene i in which Hamlet confronts Ophelia stating his affections for her. At this point in the play Ophelia is extremely confused as to what Hamlet's true intentions for her are. She has reason to believe that her father and brother were telling the truth when they told her that Hamlet was only interested in using her for sexual purposes, but in Act III Ophelia is shown Hamlet's actual intentions and affections. Ophelia is then made to look like a fool for having ever entertained the thought that Hamlet may be insincere, and it is this moment that I believe sets up Ophelia's demise. This is the point in the play where there is a noticeable change in action, and the scene acts almost as a catalyst for the death of Polonius.

Portia's downfall begins in Act III scene i when she resolves to go and help Antonio in his trial against Shylock. Although she is going to help Antonio on behalf of her husband, she is still the one who is placed in the position of power. Portia becomes the only one who can help Antonio; therefore she is given the agency to help him. Portia then proceeds to break the social conventions of gender by dressing as a man and attending the court. By putting on a man's clothing Portia was allotted a certain amount of power that could only be granted to men, she was able to speak freely in the court, as well as give her opinions without being brushed off as a "hysterical" woman.

Through this process of cross-dressing Portia "…Objectifies herself and thereby suppresses her own agency in bestowing herself upon Bassanio." (Newman 25) making herself less powerful and subsequently beginning to place the power and control back in to the hands of Bassanio. By guising herself as a man in order to be able to help "save" Antonio from having to surrender a pound of flesh to Shylock she must turn herself in to an object. Not only does Portia do this, but she also lies to the people around her in order to do so by telling then that she will be traveling to a monetary for a couple of days. She becomes dishonest in the process of trying to help save Antonio, and begins the process of disintegration of her own ideals.
The next step in the downfall of Ophelia came when she received word that her father had been killed by Hamlet. It is at this point in the play where we see her being to get punished for her actions through the plot. Ophelia's father had to die in order to produce an extremely tragic situation for her character. When a woman, such as Ophelia, blatantly disobeys orders given to her by her brother, there must be places in the plot that begin to put her back in to a submissive and less powerful position, and the death of her father not only does this but it also sets her up for her own death.

The distress that Ophelia displays after learning of the death of her father may not be completely due to the fact that she is grieving for his death, but it is possible that she is also upset over the entire situation of her relationship with Hamlet. Camden states: "We can allow the statement that Ophelia's words and actions spring from deep grief, but not all from the death of Polonius." (Camden 252) which talks about how we must pay closer attention to all of the motivations in Ophelia's madness, we must not look only at the surface and assume that she grieves only for the death of her father but also for the death of her love with Hamlet.

It becomes ironic, at this point in the play, that the very love that she was forbid to have with Hamlet becomes one of the driving forces of her madness. Her demise had been foreshadowed from the moment her brother and father warned her of Hamlet's intentions, but it becomes a deadly piece of advice by the end of the play. This forbidden love causes such affliction to Ophelia that she ends up killing herself, and therefore being ultimately punished by the original "sin" of disobeying her orders.
Portia's eventual position of submission in her marriage begins when she asks for the ring from Bassanio in exchange for her help at the trial. Although she is willingly setting up Bassanio to betray the promise he had made to her, she is testing whether or not he will actually do it to see his true character.

The idea that she has given the ring to Bassanio and then Bassanio gives it to who he thinks is a lawyer sets up what the ring truly represents, "Gift-giving is significant…because it establishes and expresses social bonds between the partners of an exchange." (Newman 20). The underlying ideals that the ring comes to represents within the story are trust, betrayal, and punishment, not only committed by Bassanio but more so by Portia.

While Portia is given to us as a strong female character in the play, we must ask ourselves what the motivations for this representation are on the part of Shakespeare. Historically, during the time of this play's conception, women were not allotted the ability to be proactive and take on the same ability to control that men were allotted. For a woman, especially in drama, to assume the guise of a man and then fool others in to believing that she has the power a man has represents a major taboo on the part of Shakespeare. I have concluded that this liberty was given to Portia in order to point out the social injustices that were occurring during the time this play was written.

But, it must be noted also that even in the beginning of the play Portia is plagued by the control of her dead father, "…will of a living daughter…curb'd by the will of a dead father." (Shakespeare Act I Sc. ii Lines 24-25). Portia is set up from the beginning to find a way to gain power, and is consequently also set up to be put back in to her place in the end.

During the time that Shakespeare was writing these two plays there was a theme of cross-dressing that became prevalent within his works. Portia, who cross-dresses as a young lawyer, does so in order to participate in the somewhat magical practice of assuming a gender, and this was an interesting topic to the audience. While today it can be argued that the cross-dressing is significant because it represents the transfer of power with the transfer of appeared gender, it was most likely more amusing in a comedic sense if anything to the audience of the 1590's. While Ophelia does not cross-dress in Hamlet, she does maneuver herself around the mandate of the authoritative male figures in her life. By choosing to pursue a relationship, or even to pursue feelings for Hamlet, she is blatantly disregarding what would have been considered a direct order from her brother and father.

At the end of The Merchant of Venice Portia confronts Bassanio about her ring which he has given up to the "lawyer" at Antonio's trial. She uses a typically "feminine" tactic of deceit to try and guilt him in to admission of what he has done with the ring. This use of typically "feminine" ways to get Bassanio to reveal that he has given up the ring is a major disappointment considering all of the efforts that were just put forth on Portia's part to try and gain some "masculine" power. The deception here in the end of the play signifies that Portia has not actually gained any power, that she is in fact right back in the position of being controlled by the male authoritative figure in her life.

She will forgive Bassanio for giving the ring away, never admit it was her who was the lawyer, and eventually fall back to in the position of submissive female within their relationship.
Ophelia's final tragic moments are closer to the actual definition of what a femme fatale is supposed to do as a convention because she dies in Hamlet as opposed to Portia who lives in Merchant. Ophelia's character must be punished by the story due to the fact that she blatantly went against the will of the patriarchal structure she lived in.

The greater question that these plays present is: What kind of critique is Shakespeare making about 16th century England through his depiction of sexuality? It could be argued that "…patriarchy is deeply 'homo-sexual' as it erects the masculine as the one and only norm." (Smelik 58). If this is true then Shakespeare is using the male control of Portia and Ophelia in these two plays to represent a greater societal affliction, not only one where women are disempowered, but one in which homo-sexuality finds it roots. By Portia dressing as a man to assume power it is inadvertently making the statement that Bassanio is truly attracted to the power of a man.

On the other end of the spectrum it could be said that Ophelia is the polar opposite of this idea of underlying homo-sexual desires of society due to the fact that she does not assume the identity of a man, but that she does try and assume the masculine power of decision making by pursuing Hamlet against her father and brother's wishes. This would make Ophelia in a candidate for this theory as well, even though she would remain to be a weaker example than Portia.

By associating Portia and Ophelia with the feminist theory of the "femme fatale" a new meaning is given to the idea of gender power within the play, "The female spectator can thus identify with and draw pleasure from the powerful femme fatale…" (Smelik 61). Using this theory one can draw the conclusion that through the reading of these two plays a female audience can gain power for themselves through witnessing the power of the women in the stories. The female audience can also maneuver itself around the constraints of gender and can ultimately gain as much of a feeling of agency as the character does. The main problem with this theory remains to be that by nature the femme fatale has to be "fatale."

While a female audience can relate and even draw strength from a femme fatale character, they will be ultimately disappointed and shamed through the demise of the character. If a woman reader feels as if she is gaining power through Ophelia, she will be torn down just as Ophelia is by her death for her attempt at agency.

While both women represent a tragic female character within each of the plays, I feel that each has distinctive qualities that make her case different than the other. They both do, however, share the same ideal of "femme fatale" due to their attempt to assimilate the power that the male is allotted within 16th century writing. Through deviant decision-making and cross-dressing the two "heroines" are able to test the boundaries of the patriarchal structure of society and literature. While some may look at Ophelia and Portia and see a clear "loser" and "winner" I do not think it is that easily read. I feel that both Portia and Ophelia are "losers" to the game of gender power, and in the end they both end up exactly where the patriarchal structure of the story wants them to be: Ophelia is dead, and Portia is pushed into the role of forgiving wife who will be one again dominated by the male figure in her life.

If I were to declare one of the two women better-off in their circumstance I would say that Ophelia ended up with a better circumstance than Portia. While Portia is now set up to live the rest of her life catering and caring for Bassanio, Ophelia has completely escaped the slavery of the society that she lives in by her death. Even though she is dead, which to many may seem like…well a bummer…I feel that she is at an advantage due to the fact that she will never have the opportunity to be dominated by any male figure and will not have to tolerate having to try and gain power through manipulation any longer.

WORKS CITED

Bernink, Mieke and Pam Cook. The Cinema Book. Anneke Smelik. "Feminist Film Theory." London: British Film Institute, 1999, pp 353-365
Camden, Carroll. "On Ophelia's Madness" Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 15, No. 2. (Spring, 1964), pp. 247-255.
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=00373222%28196421%2915%3A2%3C247%3AOOM%3E2.0.CO%3B2-W
Newman, Karen. "Portia's Ring: Unruly Women and Structures of Exchange in The Merchant of Venice" Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 38, No. 1. (Spring, 1987), pp. 19-33.
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=00373222%28198721%2938%3A1%3C19%3APRUWAS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-K
Shakespeare, William. The Merchant of Venice. Washington Square Press. 1 January, 2004.