A material feminist approach to William Shakespeare's Hamlet

The purpose of this thesis is to bring the material, specifically the materiality of the human body and the natural world, to the forefront of feminist theory and practice with a special focus on William Shakespeare's renowned play Hamlet. Drawing on material feminist literary criticism as the principle guiding paradigm and contributing to the previous Shakespearean scholarship, this thesis will explore the manner in which Ophelia, in Hamlet, offers fresh insights into the reconsideration of many dichotomous categorizations, including culture/nature, man/woman, and human/nonhuman. In this regard, this study considers the materiality of the body as an active force with a special emphasis on lived experience, corporeal practice, and biological substance. Drawing mainly upon materialist feminism, coalescing around postmodern and poststructural theories, this study critically investigates whether the correlation between materiality, body, nature, and woman in Hamlet is a cultural construction. Therefore, this study indicates that Shakespeare's representation of Ophelia's entanglement with the natural world in Hamlet can offer a sense of fluidity between dichotomous categorizations, including culture/nature, man/woman, and human/nonhuman, considered and interpreted as a set of meaning-making practices.