She is portrayed as submissive because “Gertrude may at times appear entirely subservient to
She's affectionate, impulsive, and strong-willed. Although Gertrude has many good qualities, she's not conspicuously intelligent.
The Gertrude who does emerge clearly in Hamlet is a woman defined by her desire for station and affection, as well as by her tendency to use men to fulfill her instinct for self-preservation—which, of course, makes her extremely dependent upon the men in her life.
Furthermore, Gertrude is shown as submissive within the play in which she is given a command by Claudius and simply replies, “I shall obey” (3.1. 37) rather than defying his commands.
As the mother of a grieving son, Gertrude should have been more sensitive to Hamlet's feelings. Instead, less than two months after King Hamlet's death, Gertrude remarries Claudius, her dead husband's own brother.” Gertrude is portrayed as a loving mother, but not necessarily the most outwardly thinking.
Gertrude is thoughtful and sensitive in her attempts to intervene. She is not simply an unwitting victim of her circumstance, as some critics would have it.
She has a suspicion which is confirmed by the panic in Claudius' line "Gertrude, do not drink." She would figure out that there's poison in the cup and drink it anyway. She's discovered his treachery and doesn't want to be a part of it.
It follows Gertrude from her wedding to King Hamlet, through an affair with Claudius, and its murderous results, until the very beginning of the play.
Even though Hamlet lashes out at her with all the rage he can muster, Gertrude remains faithful to him, protecting him fron the King. And, although her love for Claudius is wrong by moral standards, she is now his queen, and remains loyal to him.
Claudius manipulated Hamlet by convincing Laertes to duel him a poisoned battle. He provided a poisoned cup with which Gertrude drank to her death. Claudius manipulated Gertrude to death, and with loving manipulation to her son. Hamlet felt depressed and lonely, at times wanting to give up and not fight the battle.
Gertrude's motivation for removing Hamlet from the line of inheritance could be a desire for the position of queen regnant instead of the potentially less-powerful post as queen mother if her son ascended the throne immediately after her first husband's death.
He justifies his admittedly hasty marriage to Gertrude, the widowed queen, by saying that the marriage had been done in the best interest of Denmark and with the approval of the courtiers.
Gertrude, still shaken from Hamlet's furious condemnation of her, agrees to keep his secret.
Gertrude is Hamlet's mother and Queen of Denmark. She was married to the murdered King Hamlet (represented by the Ghost in the play) and has subsequently wed Claudius, his brother. Her close relationships to the central male characters mean that she is a key figure within the narrative.
Gertrude, then, is one of the play's most complex characters, and one whose motives and truest nature are often obscured. For instance, when Hamlet confronts Gertrude about her choices, she admits that looking inward at her own choices—and considering the idea that her new husband murdered her old one—is too painful.
Although her guilt or innocence in this matter is arguable, her culpability of many other deaths is also a subject worth investigating. Queen Gertrude is a woman observably guilty of poor judgment and weak character. Her decisions, based largely on desire, lead to her death and the casualty of others as well.
In Sigmund Freud's concept, which Shakespeare was familiar with, it is proposed in Hamlet that he and his mother kiss because Hamlet no longer wants to allow his mother to sleep with Claudius.
Hamlet's obsession with his mother's sexuality seems to be the chief way that he relates to Gertrude, whose character is so opaque and difficult to judge that Hamlet and the audience are forced to come to their own conclusions about her.
Gertrude betrays Hamlet and the late King Hamlet by marrying Claudius. Hamlet, being still depressed about his father's death was further upset and felt betrayed by his mother when she quickly married Claudius.
The intimate mother-son relationship is revealed in the film primarily through the kisses that Hamlet and Gertrude exchange. This occurs once at the beginning of the film in a semi-close-up camera shot when the queen asks her son to stay at Elsinore.
Gertrude and Claudius marry each other while Hamlet is still grieving the death of his father. Even though he does not know the new king is the murderer, Hamlet is explicitly against the marriage for some reason, and he keeps accusing his mother of lust until she regrets her decision.
After her first husband is murdered, the new king decides to take her as his bride. Even if she was emotionally opposed to the pairing, Gertrude, a woman and royal only by marriage, would have almost no authority to reject the marriage to Claudius. Yet Hamlet still places the blame entirely upon Gertrude.
Maclise portrays an innocent Gertrude who apparently has no inkling of Claudius's guilt or even of the murder itself.
In the play, the Player Queen believes it would be betrayal to marry someone else. However, in real life, Queen Gertrude at once marries Claudius and this shows that she didn't love him and that she had a dependency on men because they would keep her safe.