What an interesting question! For the purposes of this question, I will discuss Hamlet's relationship with his mother, Gertrude. This mother-son relationship connects to the themes of deceit and women's frailty in the play.
The benefits and hazards of Hamlet and Gertrude's relationship.
Hamlet has an interesting love-hate relationship with Gertrude. I think the main conflict between mother and son stems from Hamlet's analysis of Gertrude's seemingly hasty marriage to Claudius. Hamlet is suspicious about Gertrude's motives; he thinks that Gertrude has fostered an incestuous alliance with his father's likely murderer.
For her part, Gertrude loves her son, and she ostensibly marries Claudius to protect Hamlet's position in the kingdom. Gertrude feels that her marriage alliance will confer political and personal benefits to her son, benefits she has no power of securing otherwise. However, because of the sensual underpinnings of Gertrude and Claudius' relationship, Hamlet feels that he can trust neither his mother nor his new step-father. Deceit is a political tool that engenders conflict between mother and son. However, deceit is possibly the only weapon left to Gertrude, who lived in an era when women had little personal power and agency. She must execute a tight balancing act between Claudius and Hamlet in order to protect her station in life. Hamlet's relationship with his mother definitely highlights the themes of deceit and women's frailty in the play.
From what we can see, Claudius has hidden his culpability in his brother's death from Gertrude. Gertrude is also less than forthcoming about Hamlet's actions to Claudius. In Act 3 Scene 4, Hamlet openly accuses his mother of betraying and insulting his father (King Hamlet), of lying "in the rank sweat of an enseamèd bed,/ Stewed in corruption, honeying and making love.." to a murderer (Claudius). He insinuates that Gertrude was a full participant in his father's death and is guilty of great sin. Gertrude doesn't deny the "black and grainèd spots" in her soul, but she stops short of confessing to being an accomplice in King Hamlet's murder.
Hamlet further torments his mother by accusing her of lewdness. He asserts that a woman of her age is past her sexual prime. It's a very sexist statement, of course. Again, the theme of female sexuality is highlighted in the tension between Hamlet and Gertrude. Hamlet cannot conceive of his mother having any sort of sensual preferences at her age. He tries to mitigate his inner torment about such a possibility by resorting to a chauvinistic explanation:
You cannot call it love, for at your age
The heyday in the blood is tame, it’s humble,
And waits upon the judgment (Act 3, Scene 4).
The relationship between Hamlet and Gertrude is essentially poisoned because Hamlet is unable to forgive his mother for marrying Claudius. He attributes her hasty remarriage to the "frailty" of women, a popular stereotype during Shakespeare's time. Hamlet is supported in his diatribe by his father's ghost. The ghost appears to steady his son's hand in avenging his death. Earlier in the play, King Hamlet's ghost contrasted the pure love he shared with Gertrude against the adulterous love Gertrude now shares with Claudius. This plays into the popular stereotype about higher-classed women desiring the more primitive, virile men of the lower classes. King Hamlet's ghost definitely views Gertrude's alliance with Claudius in the light of this stereotype. Hamlet does his father one better: he orders his mother to stop sleeping with Claudius altogether:
Good night—but go not to mine uncle’s bed.
Assume a virtue if you have it not.
That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat,
Of habits devil, is angel yet in this:
That to the use of actions fair and good
He likewise gives a frock or livery
That aptly is put on. Refrain tonight,
And that shall lend a kind of easiness
To the next abstinence, the next more easy (Act 3, Scene 4).
The events in Act 3, Scene 4 definitely illustrates the depth of the dysfunction in Hamlet's relationship with his mother. He tells Gertrude that he firmly believes Claudius had a hand in killing his father. However, neither openly discuss Gertrude's possible culpability in the whole affair. Gertrude promises to keep Hamlet's confidence and later, tries to deceive Claudius about Hamlet's guilt in killing Polonius. She tells Claudius that Hamlet "weeps for what is done (Act 4 Scene 1). Of course, this isn't true at all, but Gertrude is merely protecting Hamlet.
To recap, Hamlet's relationship with his mother definitely highlights the larger themes of deceit and women's frailty in the play. If you're looking for some good sources to back up this argument, I include two links below. Two of my sources are also listed here.
Sources:
1) Gertrude's Elusive Libido and Shakespeare's Unreliable Narrators by Richard Levin, Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, Vol. 48, No. 2, Tudor and Stuart Drama (Spring, 2008), pp. 305-326
2) Hamlet and Gertrude or The Conscience of the Queen by Robert M. Smith, The Shakespeare Association Bulletin, Vol. 11, No. 2 (APRIL, 1936), pp. 84-92
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