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She always did what she was told. She had no other choice she spoke her mind not for she was to do what her father said. It didn 't end there the all the other male in her life perceived her as an item. In Hamlet, Shakespeare portrays Ophelia as a character that is used as an object that is being manipulated. She is dehumanized by male figures, and the play rejects the sexist treatment of Ophelia. She is used as bait by male characters in the play to bring others into a means of a selfish end. As Laertes says his farewells to Ophelia the love he has for her is portrayed as more than that of a brother. As he tries to manipulate Ophelia that Hamlet’s love is, ...A violet in the youth of primy nature Forward, not permanent, sweet, not lasting, The perfume and suppliance of a minute. No more.(1.3 7-10) He uses the love she bears for him and describes it as a “A violet in the youth primy nature forward” to …show more content…
why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinner” Here hamlet is stating that she deserves not to be in this world coming around she doesn’t deserve to have a women 's life. But when he states “ I am myself indifferent/it were better my mother had not borne me.” Hamlet has now deprived her from life, because if he he is good but can call himself a sinner it would have been better if he hadn’t been born therefore since she more of a sinner he believes she shouldn’t have been born either. Although the men in her life may love her they treat her like an item, and the play portrays them as sexist bastards who only care for themselves. Hamlet sure knows the reasons why Ophelia went to return his love letters ,yet he still demonizes and ends up objectifying her like the other two male figures in her life. They all disclaim her to be a women. They treat her like a little girl although she is a women she is
“Pretty Ophelia,” as Claudius calls her, is the most innocent victim of Hamlet’s revenge in Shakespeare’s play Hamlet. Hamlet has fallen in love with Ophelia after the death of his father. Ophelia “sucked the honey of his music vows” and returned Hamlet’s affection. But when her father had challenged Hamlet’s true intentions, Ophelia could only say: “I do not know, my lord, what I should think.” Ophelia was used to relying on her father’s directions and she was also brought up to be obedient. This allowed her to only accept her father’s views that Hamlet’s attention towards her was only to take advantage of her and to obey her father’s orders not to permit Hamlet to see her again.
Hamlet shows much anger and disrespect to the women in his life. Ophelia’s believing her father’s words breaks Hamlets heart, being the reason for his treatment towards not just her but his mother. Ophelia
Ophelia is a character in Hamlet that is chronically faithful to everyone else but herself. Ophelia is deeply in love with Hamlet, and she is certain that he loves her as well. This is clear from the assertions she makes in Hamlet’s defense: “My lord, he hath importuned me with love in honest fashion. And hath given countenance to his speech, my lord, with almost all the holy vows of heaven” (1795). Ophelia’s downfall emerges when she doubts her own feelings and beliefs about Hamlet, upon instruction and advice from her brother and father. Ophelia, a confident and intelligent woman, begins to rely on others to tell her what to think and how to act. “I do not know, my lord, what I should think” (1795). Upon Polonius request, and going against her own hearts desires, she starts to avoid Hamlet. “No, my good lord, but, as you did command, I did repel his letters and denied his access to me” (1806). By doing what her father advises and wishes Ophelia is no longer capable of making decisions for herself. The loss of Hamlet’s love and the death of her father leave her with confusion and doubts about her future. “Well, Go...
Ophelia in the fourth act of Hamlet is demonstrably insane, but the direct cause of her slipped sanity is something that remains debatable, Shakespeare uses the character Ophelia to demonstrate how women during this time were unable to break away from social norms. While it is evident that Ophelia is grieving over the death of her father, Polonius, as Horatio says of her “She speaks much of her father, says she hears / There’s tricks in the world, and hems, and beats her heart” (4.5.4-5), as lines from one of her many “songs” points towards grieving over an aged relative, “His beard as white as snow / All flaxen was his poll” with flaxen indicating a white or grayed head of hair (4.5.190-191).
As the play opened, Hamlet and Ophelia appeared as lovers experiencing a time of turbulence. Hamlet had just returned home from his schooling in Saxony to find that his mother had quickly remarried her dead husband's brother, and this gravely upset him. Hamlet was sincerely devoted to the idea of bloodline loyalty and sought revenge upon learning that Claudius had killed his father. Ophelia, though it seems her relationship with Hamlet is in either the developmental stage or the finalizing stage, became the prime choice as a lure for Hamlet. Laertes inadvertently opened Ophelia up to this role when he spoke with Ophelia about Hamlet before leaving for France. He allowed Polonius to find out about Hamlet's courtship of Ophelia, which led to Polonius' misguided attempts at taking care of Ophelia and obeying the king's command to find the root of Hamlet's problems. Ophelia, placed in the middle against her wishes, obeyed her father and brother's commands with little disagreement. The only time she argued was when Laertes advised her against making decisions incompatible with the expectations of Elizabethan women. Ophelia tells him, in her boldest lines of the play:
When reading the text, one can comprehend that Ophelia is caught in the middle between two opposite sides. Her family (father and brother) believe that Hamlet is a womanizer rather then the philosopher that he is. They also believe that he will use her in order to achieve his own purposes, and that he would take her precious virginity only to discard it because he would never be her husband. But, Ophelia's heart mesmerized by Hamlets cunning linguistics is set on the fact that Hamlet truly loves her or loved her, even though he swears he never did. In the eye of her father and brother, she will always be a pure, wholesome girl, an eternal virgin in a sense, (due to a parents nature to always see their offspring as a child) they want her to ascend into her stereotypical role in life as a vessel of morality whose sole purpose of existence is to be a obedient wife and a committed mother. However, to Hamlet she is simply an object used to satisfy and fulfill his sexual needs. He also seems to hold her at a distant which suggests that he may...
Hamlet and Laertes share a different but deep love and concern for Ophelia. Laertes advises her to retain from seeing and being involved with Hamlet because of his social status. He didn’t want her to get her heart broken by Hamlet, since he believed that his marriage would be arranged to someone of his social status, and that he would only use and hurt Ophelia. Hamlet on the other hand, was madly in love with Ophelia but it languishes after she rejects him. Ophelia’s death caused distress in both Hamlet and Laertes and it also made Laertes more hostile towards Hamlet.
In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Ophelia and Gertrude are both passive women that are considered vulnerable and spineless by the men in their lives. The two women lived their lives in the shadows of the male characters while their thoughts and opinions are oppressed by a patriarchal society. Ophelia embodies the flaw of obedience, but deeper than that, the flaw of dependence. Ophelia is completely dependent on her father, Polonius, and proves this when she agrees to stay away from Hamlet and his false feelings. Ophelia’s actions show that she will do anything to appease her father, even doing things that she doesn’t necessarily want to do. “Get thee to a nunnery!” (Act III, scene i) Hamlet mocks Ophelia using this quote and commands her to go to a covenant rather than give birth to more sinners. In this scene Hamlet goes on to mock women and society in general for buying into the whole idea of marriage and true love. Hamlet insults Ophelia's father and argues that married men are fools and marriage should not exist. Hamlet accuses Ophelia and all of womankind for being deceitful and unfaithful. Hamlet says this quote to Ophelia repeatedly during this scene, adding emphasis to the foolish idealistic nature of marriage.
The reader is left guessing on Hamlet’s true feelings for Ophelia through his various insults, sexual innuendos, and admitted desire. Hamlet’s claim, “God hath given you one face, and you / Make yourselves another.” (3.1.155-156) is laced with irony and hypocrisy given Hamlet’s own deception regarding true feelings. This proclamation comes at the end of a lengthy tirade against Ophelia and womankind in general for their conniving deceit leading men astray. The fact that Hamlet cannot see this duplicity in his very own actions shows the double standard he holds for females. Ophelia’s immediate reaction is one of shock and defense due to the aggressive nature of Hamlet’s attack. She calls out “O, woe is me!” (3.1.174) in distress to the ferocity of Hamlet and is unable to form a particularly coherent response akin to the ones seen against Laertes and Polonius. She does show her intelligence and rebellion from this assumption of power by Hamlet in her songs while Hamlet is gone. While many attribute her madness to the death of her father, a large portion of her instability should be attributed to Hamlet and his earlier actions. In her first introduction as insane she sings, “And I a maid at your window, / To be your Valentine. / Then up he rose and donned his clothes / And dropped the chamber door, / Let in the maid, that out a maid / Never departed more.” (4.5.55-60). Due to her references to sexuality and deceit the
Sweet and innocent, faithful and obedient, Ophelia is the truly tragic figure in William Shakespeare's Hamlet. "Her nature invites us to pity her misfortune caused not by any of her own self-initiated deeds or strategies"(Lidz 138). Laertes tells us convincingly how young and vulnerable Ophelia is, (act I. iii.10) likening her budding womanhood's destruction from Hamlet to a process as "the canker galls the infants of the spring,/ Too oft before their buttons be disclosed, /And in the morn and liquid dew of youth / Contagious blastments are most imminent". "He advises her to stay away and she lovingly banters back, typically like a young teen, reminding him to act as he advises" (Campbell 104). We then learn more of how pure and innocent she is as her father counsels her (Act I.iii.90). Telling her that she is a "green girl" and to think of herself as "a baby" in this matter, he insists that she must stop seeing him.
Two of Ophelia’s difficulties arise from her father and brother. They believe that Hamlet is using her to take her virginity and throw it away because Ophelia will never be his wife. Her heart believes that Hamlet loves her although he promises he never has (“Hamlet” 1). Hamlet: “Ay, truly, for the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the force of honesty can translate beauty into his likeness. This was sometime a paradox, but not the time gives it proof. I did love you once.” Ophelia: “Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.” Hamlet: “You should not have believed me, for virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock ...
Over a course of time; some things change. As humans, we have to adapt to those changes over time. Many would say that so much has changed since Shakespeare’s time, which is very true, but some things also have remain the same throughout those hundreds of years that passed. Currently in our world today, a large amount of small-minded men still belittle women like they did back in the sixteen-hundreds. As shown numerous times in the play Hamlet; Ophelia, as a woman, was controlled and had no say for herself. Throughout the play, Ophelia was always suppressed by one man after another. She was forced to obey her father, Polonius; undervalued by her brother, Laertes, and downplayed by her so-called beloved, Hamlet. Poor Ophelia had not much power to do anything back then, but has that changed at all?
Despite Ophelia’s weak will, the male characters respond dramatically to her actions, proving that women indeed have a large impact in Hamlet. Her obedience is actually her downfall, because it allows the male characters to control and use her in their schemes. Ophelia’s betrayal ends up putting Hamlet over the edge, motivating him in his quest for revenge. Ophelia is one of the two women in the play. As the daughter of Polonius, she only speaks in the company of several men, or directly to her brother or father. Since we never see her interactions with women, she suppresses her own thoughts in order to please her superiors. Yet however weak and dependent her character is on the surface, Ophelia is a cornerstone to the play’s progression. One way that her manipulation is key to Hamlet’s plot is when Polonius orders her “in plain terms, from this time forth/ Have you so slander any moment leisure/As to give words or talk with the Lord Hamlet,” (1.3.131-133). She complies with his wishes, agreeing to return any tokens of Hamlet’s love to him, verify t...
It is evident that Hamlet defines Ophelia by her sexuality. Hamlet does not value her as the woman she is. Instead, Hamlet views her as a mere object. Hamlet makes various sexual innuendos towards Ophelia. For example, this is apparent in 2.3, when Hamlet is speaking to Ophelia. Hamlet says, “It would cost you a groaning to take off mine edge” (3.2.250). Hamlet is making this regard to her in public and Ophelia lets him continue. Ophelia because of her gender continues to let Hamlet exploit and oppress her. Ophelia embodies a mutual assessment of femininity. Author Pragati Das writes, “Ophelia, it would seem, wholly at the mercy of the male figures throughout her life, is certainly a victim character” (Das 38). Ophelia does not have any alternative thoughts; she only responds with a simple sentence, “Still better and worse” (3.2.251). Ophelia is not standing up for herself, instead of she “…expresses acquiescence, uncertainty, and obeisance; she utters half lines” (Fischer 2). The power of Hamlet is manipulating Ophelia and it this shown through from her dull reaction of such crudities. Hamlet sums his vulgar and suggestive speech with, “For, oh, for, oh, the hobby-horse is forgot” (3.2.23–24). After Hamlet’s pressures of sexual suggestions, Ophelia is found to be under the absolute dominance of Hamlet’s demands, and as a result, her sanity diminishes. Ophelia’s song reflects on Hamlet, her father, and life
Act I, Scene III Shakespeare's Portrayal of Ophelia Treated as to a lesser degree a man and a greater amount of a question Father secures her as his property Villa regards her as a negligible sexual protest Questions to remember Why does Hamlet depict ladies as being sub-par? What to consider How ladies are depicted. How they are dealt with by male characters. How the females treat the male characters. Gertrude Feminist Criticism