5:13 AM
@EddieKal A question such as "How are Elizabethan attitudes to women reflected in Hamlet?" is a valid question, though far too broad for this site; one could write a book.
To single out one aspect of Elizabethan attitudes to women and ask "Does Hamlet reflect Elizabethan misogyny?" is bassackwards.
One reads literature to find out what the text says—not to find evidence for a predetermined conclusion.
Actually I'm not even sure I'd use the word "reflect" because that sounds like the text is a passive entity, merely reflecting rather than actively participating in the discourse of its times.
I agree the endeavor to "historically and culturally situate Shakespeare" is worthwhile. But that involves seeing Hamlet not as a reflection of preëxisting attitudes but as actually participating in the Elizabethan discourse around women.
And historically situating Hamlet in this way is not compatible with a prejudgment that Elizabethan society is misogynist. One can certainly argue for that conclusion—that Elizabethan society is indeed misogynist, and Hamlet participates in that. But to frame the question as "Is this misogynist?" means one is coming in with an agenda.
It's prejudicial. And it assumes a very old-fashioned view of literature: one where literary texts are considered good insofar as they uphold values one sees as moral (in this case, anti-misogyny) and bad insofar as they violate those values.
And it goes against the very endeavor we say we're undertaking: to situate the text culturally and historically.
As an aside, "situate the text culturally and historically" does not have to be restricted to the Elizabethan period. Hamlet has cultural capital now. Probably more than it did in Shakespeare's day, when it wasn't even the only Hamlet floating around (see: Ur-Hamlet; Antonio's Revenge; The Spanish Tragedy).
Let's take your questions one by one:
1. Why do we study literature to understand society? Do we? If my goal is to understand 16th C. England,
Hamlet seems like an odd starting point. A more useful way to look at it is to ask:
How can studying literature help us to understand society in historically specific ways? Great, now we're firmly in
New Historicist or cultural materialist territory.
But one tenet of those schools is that there isn't a distinction between the literary and the non-literary.
So question 2 is a bit off-kilter too:
*2. How is literature a reflection of society?* It's not. It isn't something that stands apart from society like a mirror, passively reflecting. It is embedded in, undercuts, and furthers various historically, culturally, and materially specific discourses.
3. What's the use of literature when there's extant sociological studies on a similar topic? Sociological studies are secondary sources. Always a good idea to go back to primary sources. Of course those wouldn't just be literature.
4. What is literature good for? What is anything good for? It exists. But not in the sense of "always has been there." Shakespeare's contemporaries wouldn't have thought of Hamlet as literature in the sense we think of it as literature. Studying what counts as literature and what doesn't is itself interesting. As I mentioned, many contemporary approaches to literary studies don't make a distinction between literary and non-literary texts.
5. In such a play as _Hamlet_ by such an author as Shakespeare, do we learn more about Denmark or England? I'll grant we wouldn't go to Hamlet to learn about Denmark. But if we want to learn about Elizabethan England, and our question is, "Was Elizabethan England misogynist?" then on the one hand, the answer is obvious (well, of course). On the other hand, that is a very blunt instrument with which to approach reading a text.
""Let me show the various ways in which this text reflects or combats Elizabethan misogyny!" is just ... not, to my mind, an interesting take on the text. The conclusion is always: "This is a good text because it combats Elizabethan misogyny!" or "This is a bad text because it upholds Elizabethan misogyny!"
6. Is Shakespeare ahistorical? No.
But he's not merely Elizabethan either. We're talking about him now, in the 21st century, in ways that will no doubt seem quaint or misguided to any reader who stumbles upon this chat transcript in 2120. Or even 2070.
To summarize: if we want to recover what Hamlet meant in Elizabethan England, then going in with an ahistoric concept like "misogyny" doesn't cut it. If we want to say that "misogyny" is a valid term to apply to Elizabethan discourses about women, then we have to be very specific about what we mean by "misogyny" in that context. To assume it's a given, and that Hamlet reflects it, is ahistoric and reductive.
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He is a yellow-furred rabbit, hence his name [Dandelion].
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...
