Editing Hamlet (section)

=== Gertrude ===
'''Queen Gertrude''', Hamlet’s mother, is a more ambiguous figure through the autistic lens, but she exemplifies an allistic mindset that inadvertently clashes with Hamlet’s neurodivergent one. Gertrude appears to be a neurotypical character driven by social and emotional pragmatism. Her quick remarriage to Claudius following her former husband’s death is a point of deep contention for Hamlet, who interprets it as a shocking betrayal and a sign of moral shallowness (“a beast that wants discourse of reason would have mourned longer!” he scathingly remarks). From Gertrude’s perspective, however, the decision may have been guided by the practical need to maintain stability in the kingdom and her own desire for protection and affection. This fundamental disconnect—Hamlet’s monotropic loyalty to his father’s memory versus Gertrude’s adaptive moving on—illustrates how an autistic and a neurotypical person might diverge in processing grief and change. Gertrude’s grief for King Hamlet appears short-lived and largely performative; she shifts to her new role as Claudius’s wife with an ease that Hamlet finds incomprehensible and reprehensible. In autistic terms, one could say Gertrude embodies the '''“go along to get along”''' social mentality, prioritizing harmony and normalcy, whereas Hamlet embodies the '''“truth at any cost”''' mentality.

Gertrude often struggles to understand her son’s behavior. She interprets Hamlet’s continued mourning and strange antics as “thy father much offended” or as a personal rejection of her happiness. In the closet (bedroom) confrontation scene, Gertrude is genuinely shocked by Hamlet’s fury and accusations. She lacks the insight into Hamlet’s inner world—she does not grasp how profoundly her marriage and the state of moral corruption in Denmark have wounded him. This lack of attunement can be seen as a typical parent-child miscommunication exacerbated by neurological differences: Hamlet speaks in emotional extremes and abstract, symbolic language (forcing her to look at pictures of his late father and Claudius to compare “Hyperion to a satyr”), while Gertrude responds in more concrete, confused terms (“What have I done, that thou darest wag thy tongue in noise so rude against me?”). She cannot “read” Hamlet’s motivations until he spells them out, and even then, the ghost must implore Hamlet to “speak to her” and not just rail. When Hamlet finally moderates his tone and appeals to her better nature—imploring her not to return to Claudius’s bed and to repent—Gertrude appears moved and promises to keep his counsel. This suggests that with direct, unmasked communication, she is capable of empathy; however, it took an extreme moment for that understanding to spark.

Gertrude’s character also highlights how she, as a neurotypical woman of her time, relies on ''social heuristics'' to navigate life. She values appearances (“All that lives must die, passing through nature to eternity,” she gently tells Hamlet, as a way to normalize death), and she seems to yearn for everyone to just get along. She tries to broker peace in the conflict between Hamlet and Claudius, hoping that the tension is just due to Hamlet’s “distemper” or love-sickness. In doing so, she underestimates the depth of Hamlet’s convictions. This could be viewed as a lack of '''Theory of Mind in the opposite direction''': if Hamlet has trouble understanding neurotypical frivolity, Gertrude has trouble fathoming Hamlet’s neurodivergent intensity.

Throughout the play, Gertrude is depicted as warm but somewhat cognitively closed off from the deeper significance of events. Notably, she does not participate in any schemes or deceptions of her own (aside from being instructed to talk to Hamlet in the closet scene as a kind of intervention). She is more acted upon than acting, and her tragedy is being caught between her son and her husband. In the autistic reframing, Gertrude can be seen as a loving mother who simply doesn’t have the frame of reference to grasp her son’s atypical needs and behaviors. She wants him to be happy (“Why seems it so particular with thee?” she asks about his grief) and can only conceive of solutions that worked in her neurotypical experience (time, new relationships, dropping the subject of the past). Sadly, those solutions are the opposite of what Hamlet requires (which would be acknowledgment of his pain, justice, and honesty).

Gertrude’s death—accidentally drinking the poison meant for Hamlet—occurs as a result of her ''not knowing'' the deadly machinations at play. In a sense, her allistic trust and obliviousness in that moment (she simply toasts her son, not recognizing her husband’s alarm) is what kills her. She does not read the subtext of Claudius’s dismay in time. This irony fits into the neurodivergent reading subtly: the very person Hamlet wanted to enlighten (to see truth) dies due to continuing to operate on superficial appearances. Her final act is one of care (drinking to Hamlet’s success) and her final line is reporting her own poisoning, indirectly indicting Claudius. In that sense, Gertrude at the end becomes aligned with Hamlet—victimized by Claudius’s treachery. We might say that too late, she becomes aware of the dark truth of the situation, but the realization costs her life. The gulf of understanding between mother and son is closed only in the catastrophe of the climax.