Hamlet

"" (Levy) Both characters succumb to carnal attraction and a baser emotion of lust. Hamlet invokes these and other sins as he describes his family. Though Hamlet entwines nobility with his role as hero he also condemns his own anger and vengeance along with his mother's lust and his uncle's gluttony. His inertness could also be described as slight indolence thus increasing his own deadly sins and therefore foreshadowing his untimely and tragic end. "The play probes into the relation between reason and emotion [revealing] a confounding and deepening of relevant Christian-humanist doctrine."" (Levy) Hamlet's vanity betrays him in his conversations with Ophelia. Her purity in manner seems ultimately the best for his disposition yet he thrusts her away. Hamlet exhibits yet another deadly sin of pride in his deed accomplished as he begs his story be told. Christian principles mandate that a widow should not marry her husband's brother else she lay in shame in his bed. Hamlet upholds this value as he makes pointed remarks during his play within a play. He comments that his father has been dead for two hours when in fact it had been two months. "Stanley Cavell advances the provocative thesis that Claudius is both father and mother in Hamlet's dumb-show, because it substitutes Claudius as a veil for Hamlet's mother."" (Stone) It confirms his bitterness toward his mother's actions and makes concrete the evidence that the female is viewed as a weaker sex.
             It is therefore not inconceivable that women are portrayed as inferior and their traits are conveyed upon the masculine characters to distinguish fault in the men. Stone suggests "the view of androgyny is imbued with the pious and nostalgic aim of recapturing the paradisiacal union of male and female components before the fall into separate and divisive sexes."" The Christian paradise that was Eden exemplified the penultimate form of man as one with woman.