The Mother and The Murderer
Gertrude and Claudius by John Updike
Pages: 214 Genre: literary fiction/retelling
Rating: 3.5 Star
What was life like for Gertrude and Claudius before the events of Hamlet take place? This story begins with Gertrude, daughter of King Rorik, who is 17 and promised to King Hamlet. It details her early marriage, the birth of her son, and her looming affair with her husband's travel-loving younger brother who has been vying for her affections for decades.
It took me a good bit to get into this book, but I did grow to enjoy it. There were times that I found it quite tedious, but on the whole I liked the story. I do think that you must like the original play as a prerequisite to this book, though; it stands strongly as a prequel but not very well on its own.
Personally, I can never seem to form a solid opinion about Gertrude. She's a conflicting character because so much of her personality and motives are kept from the audience. I liked reading a book that attempts to not only explain but understand her. She's a woman living in an awful time for it, a mother who both loves and fears her son, and a wife twice over seen as property of the state. Despite her wrongdoings, this book had me feeling more sympathetic to her than normal. I liked that this prequel was about to embrace her wrongdoings while also acknowledging the circumstances that led to them. It wasn't a book to justify Gertrude, nor was it one to condemn her. And I really appreciated that.
Claudius is ... also here. He's not bad, exactly, he's just exactly what you'd expect. Of course, we know a bit more about him from the play, so maybe the issue is that Updike had less room for creative liberties. While we can debate what all Gertrude knew or was up to before the events of the play, we know that if there was a murder and/or an affair, Claudius was involved. He's ambitious and ruthless, and that's what we see here. Again, it's not a bad characterization, it's just not particularly shocking.
If anything, I was more interested than King Hamlet than Claudius, despite the latter's titular role in the novel. Because we only ever meet the ghost in the play (and who knows what's really going on there), there's a lot of gaps to fill on who he is. I liked the way this book handled him, and while I know it wasn't about him, I wish we could have seen more. I like seeing him — generally through Gertrude's eyes — in comparison to his brother, and I thought this book had some interesting thoughts on that.
Hamlet himself isn't very present in this book, which both is and isn't surprising. It's a prequel and not his story, but he is Gertrude's only child that is conspicuously absent throughout his entire life. You get what's advertised, though, so I can't complain too much. It's also not a particularly revolutionary depiction of Hamlet. He's smart, cold, selfish, and vaguely crazy. Also very into theater and dramatics. No one is surprised. I would've been interested in seeing more of his early interactions with his mother, because they do have a fairly odd relationship in the play, but again, I'm not going to be upset that the book called "Gertrude and Claudius" didn't go in depth into someone who is not either Gertrude or Claudius.
Polonius' family got some interesting moments of insight as well. Laertes is still largely absent, and Ophelia is the young girl being taken advantage of by Hamlet (as I've said, nothing particularly revolutionary for the younger generation), but Polonius was built out a lot more. I liked his relationship with Gertrude. I also thought this book did a good job setting up his connection to Claudius and his interest in Ophelia's relationship with Hamlet.
The book itself wasn't bad. I'm not familiar with Updike in a general sense, so I wouldn't know if this book was typical for him or if it was him trying to sound vaguely Shakespearean/older with the language, but it was certainly a choice. Sometimes I found the writing beautiful and immersive, but sometimes I found it grating and trying too hard.
There's also a whole thing with their names. The book is separated into three sections, and Updike moves progressively to the names we know from the play being used in Chapter 3. Unfortunately I've already returned the book, so I can't give more details than that, but I didn't hate this. It was kind of fun to go through Chapter 1 trying to connect the name to the character from the play. I also thought it suited the themes of changing traditions and culture. In a meta sense, it also made sense that they change as they get brought closer to the characters we know. The part of this that I found weird was that the narrative tried to justify the names changing only sometimes (for example, they would explain why Polonius took up a new name with a change in the throne, but not Prince Hamlet, for whom that same reasoning would be necessary and make no sense). I would've preferred this to be a writing decision rather than a half-baked plot inclusion, but I didn't hate the choice itself. I could see some readers finding it strange, though.
As you can maybe tell from my review (or if you know me and how I feel about Hamlet the play), I enjoyed this book mostly because of the insights it brought to the characters. I don't know that I would've enjoyed it as its own narrative. I don't think you have to be as obsessed with Hamlet as I am, but I do think you need to have some fondness and awareness of the original in order to fully enjoy this book.
Luckily, I am both fond and aware, so this was not a problem for me. I liked Gertrude getting to have her moment (even if she still didn't entirely win me over), and I thought this was a good characterization of Elsinore in the before-times.
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