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Was Hamlet a victim of Oedipus Complex: a peep into his psyche

Rishav Jamwal
Department of CSE
Baddi University,
Baddi, Himachal Pradesh
India

Abstract:
Even after centuries, Shakespeare’s Hamlet stands out to be one of the most exploratory and
avant garde play ever conferred to the reading world. Something uncanny was hitherto
operational in his unconscious even before the play opens. There are very few evidences that
support the argument that the cause of melancholia in his father’s death or his outrage at his
mother’s second marriage. Throughout the play, Hamlet’s consciousness was at war with his
own consciousness and thereby it becomes the central subject of the play rather than mourning
for the dead or avenging the living. There is no breakaway possible from the inference that the
cause of Hamlet’s soul-paralysing distress and distaste for life lies in some unconscious source of
contempt to his task to which he is certainly unaware of . What was operating in his unconscious
then? Was it some repressed desire? Was it sexual, psychological, emotional or intellectual? We
cannot say. The present paper is an attempt to dive into his psyche to draw a possible inference,
in support of Sigmund Freud’s argument, that Hamlet was a victim of mother fixation bond i.e.
Oedipus complex

Key words: Oedipus Complex, Unconscious, id, ego, revenge, sexual behaviour

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Minutae:
To the reader, both Hamlet himself and the play give the impression of having some uncanny
and anomalous association to their creator. What the association may originally have been we
shall probably never know. But it is hard to refrain from speculating. When we learn that D.H
Lawrence had a strong sexual element behind his relationship with his mother and a bitter and
poisoned relationship with his father and that the development of a mature sexual life for
Lawrence is hampered by his affection for his mother, the temptation is irresistible to believe that
the hero, of Sons and Lovers, Paul Morel, is an imaginative reincarnation of Lawrence himself.
Shakespeare’s son Hamlet died at the age of eleven, possibly not long before his father began to
be attracted by the Hamlet story. It was in 1601 that Shakespeare’s father died and his mother
lived till some seven years later, an event which might well have had the same effect that the
death of Hamlet’s father had with Hamlet. Was there any connection? We do not know. But the
name in its interchangeable forms, must have had strong emotional associations for Shakespeare
In addition to that, numerous indications are there that Shakespeare’s father used to carry a
dominating and authoritative disposition so apt to provoke rebellion, particularly in a first born
son. Rebellion? And for what? We will elaborate it in detail in the coming paragraphs of the
paper.
However all this may be, there is no doubt that Shakespeare, bestowed Hamlet with the best he
had acquired up to the time he conceived him. But here, oddly, we have a prerogative over
Shakespeare. The author of Hamlet, at the time when it was written, had not had the privilege of
reading Sigmund Freud, Ernest Jones, Goethe and other psychologists. But we have had it, and
can analyze Hamlet in their light. This does not mean that we import into Hamlet anything that is
not already there. A work of art must stand or fall by itself. It merely means that, with vision
sharpened by various psychoanalytical theories given by Freud and his contemporaries, we are
enabled to see in Hamlet what was already there but hidden from us-as a later dream does not
alter an earlier one but may render it intelligible because of a mutual relation.
“In some sense or other, as we have seen, Hamlet’s problem must have been Shakespeare’s. He
doubtless wrote the play in part to make the problem clear, just as Tolstoy wrote Anna
Karenina.”1
Ever since Hamlet was written, the question vexating reader’s mind has been “why didn’t
Hamlet kill Claudius when he had the chance? Apart from the task in question, we have no
reasons to doubt that Hamlet was resolute enough for decisive and conclusive actions as could be

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seen in the killing of Polonius and arranging for the death of Guildenstern and Rosencrantz.
Acrimonious and mordant derision which he shows towards his enemies, and even towards
Ophelia, his biting vilification over his mother’s sexuality and second marriage, his lack of
repentance after the death of Polonius, are not signs of a submissive, lenient and a benevolent
man.
The paralysis of doubt which has so frequently been ascribed to him never appeared in any of his
life situations but one. “If Hamlet is a man capable of action, and the task is one capable of
achievement, what then can be the reason that he does not execute it?”2 None of the critics have
adequately come up with a satisfactory answer. Forcefully propelled, we, as readers, to take the
position that there is some deep seated cause for Hamlet’s indecision and vacillation which has
not yet been penetrated and understood. A perspicuous picture of a man, resolute and thoughtful
enough for action, whose duty is apparent before him, eludes it at very opportunity and then
suffers in consequence the most intense remorse is all what readers left with .All his
justifications and pretexts in favour of his delay stand inconsequential and do not invite a
moment’s serious consideration and further they continually change from one time to another.
“One moment he pretends he is too cowardly to perform the deed or that his reason is paralysed
by bestial oblivion, at another he questions the truthfulness of the ghost, in another, when the
opportunity presents itself in its naked form, he thinks the time is unsuited- it would be better to
wait till the king was in some evil act and then to kill him and so on.”3 When a man makes his
procrastination wear the garb of numerous pretexts, it is safe to infer that, whether purposely or
not, he is concealing the truth.
The caboodle of situations as portrayed by Hamlet, his procrastination, his extensive
despondency, his woebegone orientation towards life and people around, his apprehension of
death, his iterating referral to bad dreams, his self accusations, and his vain attempts to find an
excuse for his contumacy; all this indisputably points to a tortured conscience, to some hidden
ground, a ground which he dare not or cannot avow to himself. We, therefore, have to seek for
some evidence that may serve to bring to the light of the day the hidden motive.
Sigmund Freud, a psychoanalytic researcher and father of modern psychology, was first to come
out with a conclusive and irrefutable evidence and attributed Hamlet’s procrastination to his
Oedipus complex. The sexual desires start erupting at the very infant stages of life and that a
young boy experiences the sexual pull towards his mother from the time of breastfeeding itself,
which causes the boy to see his father as an opponent or competitor for his mother’s love and

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concern. This sexual craving for his mother will eventually become part of the boy’s
subconscious when he becomes an adult, and Freud called it the Oedipal Complex after the
Greek myth about a man who unknowingly killed his father and married his mother. To be in a
situation to take a stance of undisputingly ascribing Hamlet’s delay to his Oedipal complex, let’s
get acquainted with Freud’s tripartite model of human mind.

Human mind is segregated between conscious and unconscious. Unconscious dominates the
majority of the duration and has a strong influence upon our action. Unconscious, being the
repertoire of all unexpressed desires and instincts eventually becomes such a depository of
hateful, shameful, sorrowful, unsocial, sinful and painful experiences that human being or human
conscious may feel ashamed to accept it. Unconscious may be seen as an umbrage self. The
umbrage self is the shadow of conscious mind and serve as the opposite of it. Human personality
is further divided into three parts: id, ego and superego and these three blend well to give birth to
human complex behaviors.
Id represents human urge irrespective of being logical or illogical, rational or irrational,
acceptable or unacceptable and requires immediate appeasement. Id is that part of personality
which is present in human beings since birth and resides in unconscious and becomes the store
house of all unexpressed emotions, desires and instinctive and primitive human behaviors. It is
guided by pleasure principle and it’s discontentedness results in depression and anxiety. Ego is
driven by reality principle. It is the part of your personality which you show to the world. Ego
comes out of id but in a refined and acceptable form and cinches that the impulses of the id be
expressed in a manner approved and tolerated in the conscious world. Super ego is directed by
morality .Being dominated by social rules, constraints and morality, it represents the shackle of
‘should’ for human beings. It is that idealized part of human personality which has been acquired
from parents and society. It suppresses all disagreeable and unreasonable urges of the id and
forces the ego to act upon moralistic standards rather than realistic principles. It will be now
easier to peep into the psyche of Hamlet to clarify the domination of Oedipal tendencies upon
him which has been housed by his unconscious.
The conflict under critical consideration rests in the last resort on sexual grounds was first given
by Sigmund Freud. “ He has shown that this instinct does not, as is generally supposed, differ
from other biological functions by suddenly leaping into being at the age of puberty in all its full
and developed activity, but that like other functions it undergoes a gradual evolution and only

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slowly attains the form in which we know it in the adult. In other words a child has to learn how
to love just as it has to learn how to run, although the former function is so much intricate and
delicate in its adjustment than the latter that the development of it is a correspondingly slower
and more involved process.”4 In the words of Freud, “the mother is the first seductress of her
boy.” The intensity and time of the early sexual acquisitions and manifestations vary from
individual to individual. When the influence exerted by the mother is excessive, it may employ a
gripping influence over the son’s later destiny. The working of the id, ego and super ego which
will constitute the son’s complex behavior through out his life depends upon the intensity of the
awakened passion between the mother and the son. In case of awakened passion subjected to
little repression, the abnormal attachment towards mother may prevail throughout life and makes
the son incapable to love any other woman. The mother-son bond may also embodies itself by
bestowing a strikingly tender feminine side to the son. In case of aroused emotion subjected to
intense repression and further associated with guilt and shame, the remembrance of it may be so
completely veiled that it becomes impossible for the son not only to enliven it but even to
experience any similar emotion of attraction for the opposite sex and in some cases, may lead to
homosexuality.
We are now in a position to draw an elaborated and clear inference about Hamlet’s problem.
Hamlet had a deep fondness for his mother and that too of more or less erotic quality. Gertrude’s
two character traits go to support this assumption; namely her sensual nature and her intense
affection for her son. Both the traits are equally manifested in the play.

King: …The Queen his mother

Lives almost by his looks5

Hamlet : O throw away the worser part of it

And live the purer with the other half
Goodnight. But go not to my uncle’s bed
Assume a virtue if you have it not6

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After the death of his father and mother’s second marriage, the long repressed desire to surrogate
his father’s place in his mother’s endearment got triggered and harbored by his unconscious as
he witnessed some one took the place exactly as he himself had once longed to do. To add to his
torment, this someone was his uncle. Hamlet’s two sinful urges; one to replace his father in his
mother’s affection and second to procure the first by a personal deed, infact by killing the father,
were both realized by his uncle. How could Hamlet kill someone who was the personification of
his own id, the part of Hamlet which had strong sexual urge for Gertrude ? The ghost of the dead
king, however, represents Hamlet’s superego but Hamlet’s id was gaining strength because of his
id personified getting successful. Hamlet of course abhors Claudius but it is the jealous
detestation of one evil-doer towards his successful fellow. Hamlet’s id was at it’s highest when
he was berating Gertrude for her sexual treachery. In ACT III, Scene IV, he was giving an
expression to his own sexual desires towards his mother.
Hamlet: Not this, by no means, that I bid you do:
Let the bloat king tempt you again to bed;
Pinch wanton on your cheek; call you his mouse;
And let him, for a pair of reechy kisses,
Or paddling in your neck with his damn'd fingers,
Make you to ravel all this matter out,
That I essentially am not in madness,
But mad in craft. 'Twere good you let him know; 7
Unconscious ravings and sexual id make him obsessed towards his mother and consequently he
languishes in his relationship with Ophelia. Hamlet has never shown any strong emotional,
sexual and stable attraction for Ophelia but for his mother. He has made his mother’s sexual
behavior a yardstick to judge Ophelia. The unhealthy psychological and emotional bond between
Hamlet and his mother harbored by their unconscious did not let Hamlet fall into any healthy
relationship with any other woman. Ophelia, for Hamlet, was never a lover but a target for
outpouring or out letting disgust and anger for his mother and that disgust and anger took the
form of abhorrence towards all women in general. Hamlet started regarding women as weak,
changeable, frail and unfaithful. In ACT 1, Scene II, he scorns his mother by saying:
Hamlet: Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him
As if increase of appetite had grown

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By what it fed on: and yet, within a month, —

Let me not think on't, — Frailty, thy name is woman! 8

In ACT V, Scene III, Hamlet finally killed Claudius. It was to the utter surprise of the readers
that what had finally propelled Hamlet to kill Claudius after so long. Hamlet finally killed
Claudius for the subject of strife was no more. Gertrude has now died. Hamlet now found no
inhibition to kill his personified id as his urge for his mother has also died with her.
Symbolically, after the death of Gertrude, Hamlet’s superego has gained control of his id, as he
didn’t have to repress anything inside and his strength has returned, thus enabling Hamlet to
avenge the ghost’s death.

Hamlet’s delay undoubtedly was the outcome of his id, he is unaware of, and this paper has
made all possible attempts to attribute his id to a universal, biological, normal, unavoidable
inheritance of human race i.e. Oedipus Complex.

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Works Cited
1. Goddard, Harold. “Hamlet: His own Falstaff.” William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Ed.
Harold Bloom. New York: VIVA Books Private Limited, 2008. 17
2. Jones, Earnest, The Oedipus – Complex as an Explanation of Hamlet’s mystery – A
study in motive, American Journal of Psychology, vol. 21, no.1, 1910, p.72-113
3. ibid
4. ibid
5. Shakespeare, William, The Complete works of William Shakespeare, Greddes and
Grosset, Scotland, 2001, p. 341
6. ibid
7. Ibid,p.344
8. Ibid, p.340

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