Quote Analysis

Reflecting on how quickly his mother remarried, Hamlet generalizes from her behavior to all women.

By making 'woman' the name of frailty rather than the other way around, Hamlet uses metonymy to collapse individual failing into gender-wide essence—one person's action becomes the defining trait of a whole category. The exclamatory syntax and direct address ('thy name') give the line the force of a discovery, as if Hamlet has uncovered a universal truth rather than voiced a bitter overgeneralization.

Support a thesis that Hamlet's misogyny stems from his need to make sense of his mother's remarriage—by turning her choice into a law of female nature, he avoids the more painful possibility that she acted freely.