Women in Hamilton

How are women portrayed in the musical? What are some of their struggles and triumphs? Whose point of view in the play would you have been interested in learning more about? Why?

I would say the women are portrayed as obedient servants to their husbands. I say this because Angelica in her song “satisfied” told her story of why she didn’t marry Hamilton. She explained that “My only job is to marry rich” and “So I’m the oldest and the wittiest”, and as a result felt obligated to her duties as such. Since she was the oldest she knew she couldn’t be with Hamilton because he was poor. She also kept referring to her younger sister Eliza as “Helpless”, which made her seem really naive.

With that said I would say Anglica had the struggle between duty and love. She knew she couldn’t be with him but to at least keep him in her life she set him up with her sister. This can be torturous because she had to watch them be in love for her entire life. Eliza also had some struggles. One of them was losing her son but the other was reading Hamilton’s pamphlet on his infidelity. We see in her solo “Burn” that she was not only embarrassed but realized that he rather save his reputation than their relationship. She sang “You and your words obsessed with your legacy
Your sentences border on senseless
And you are paranoid in every paragraph
How they perceive you”, and here we get a sense of anger. The fact that he was so quick to tell the world he cheated but couldn’t even come to her I felt spoke volumes to her.

I would’ve loved going deeper into her point of view because I want to understand why she went back to him. I think for me, the fact that he cheated and was essentially the reason their son died, I don’t think I would’ve been able to forgive him. So I would’ve loved to go further into her thought process of forgiveness and taking back Hamilton.