More handpicked essays just for you.
Gender and roles of women in literature
Hamlet and mother incest relationship
Gender and roles of women in literature
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Throughout literature, women often play the stereotypical role of living secondary to men. In Hamlet, Shakespeare highlights this reality through Ophelia, a weak-willed women that molds to others’ beliefs, including her father and brother. Shakespeare inserts a constant sense of being ignored and mistreatment to Ophelia, painting a picture of her helplessness and sorrow. Shakespeare allows Ophelia to always seem content with her state of being, but following the death of her father, Polonius, her emotional instability appeared. Though Ophelia is thought to have committed suicide, through analyzing the text, it is possible to interpret the death as accidental. According to this interpretation, Ophelia had no intention to die, but simply succumbed when faced with the prospect of ending her misery.
Throughout the play, Ophelia is constantly seen obeying orders without complaint. Never once did she deny or resist the request of others. She was loyal to all, yet everyone disregarded her and all the characters in Hamlet treated her as though she was an object. The cause of Ophelia’s death is widely debatable; did she commit suicide because she was mad and upset about how everyone she loved mistreated her, or was her death a terrible mishap? Although Ophelia was not entirely sane or lucid during the time
…show more content…
leading up to her death, details of how she drowned from scenes in the play, show that her death can be seen as an accident, if not an unforeseen and unexpected one. Ophelia’s whole world is destroyed after her father dies. She tries to call out for help and find comfort in others, but all fail to aid her. After her father’s assassination by Hamlet, she talks a lot of death, and her madness is evident and obvious when she sings in a completely crazed manner: “He is dead and gone, lady, He is dead and gone; At his head a grass-green turf, At his heels a stone White his shroud as the mountain snow– Landed all with sweet flowers;Which bewept to the ground did not go With true-love showers” (Act 4, Scene 5, line 37). Here, Ophelia is mourning her father’s death. She is put in a horrible situation, baffled, knowing that the man she loves has killed her father. One would think that her ludicrous emotions and irrational behavior preceding her death would suggest that she killed herself. However, Ophelia’s actions leading up to her death suggest that her death was initially caused by an accident. Looking closely at quotes from the text describing Ophelia’s death, it can be proved that Ophelia did not set out to commit suicide. As the Queen speaks of Ophelia’s death, she says, “There is a willow grows askant the brook…There on the pendant boughs her coronet weeds Clamb’ring to hang, an envious sliver broke,When down her weedy trophies and herself Fell in the weeping brook” (Act 4, Scene 7, line 190).
Gertrude says “an envious sliver broke”, meaning that a branch cracked. This branch breaking became the cause of Ophelia falling into the brook, ultimately leading to her death. When she fell into the brook she did not intend on dying, rather it was simply an accident. If Ophelia had decided to kill herself by jumping into the brook, Gertrude would not have mentioned that the branch had
snapped. Although Ophelia’s death at first glance look like a suicide, reading the scenes preceding her death closely show that it was not. It is likely that Ophelia could have had thoughts of suicide because of the state that she was in, from the events which she recently went through, but what caused her death appears to have been an accident. Although initially when falling off the branch Ophelia did not plan on dying, once fallen, she accepted her fate and did not swim out to save herself. The phrase “Her clothes spread wide, and mermaid-like awhile they bore her up”, conveys a very powerful portrayal of Ophelia; spread out submerged in water and drowning. The pain and grief that she was suffering was something she wanted be rid of, once the tree branch had broken, and she had fallen into the water, she decided that what she wanted was to die. Once fallen, Ophelia gave up to the currents of the water, and decided to let herself perish. Similarly to how all those she loved gave up on her, ultimately she gave up on trying to save herself. She began to believe that she could not be saved and that she was not worth anything. When Ophelia clearly needed help and care, she was ignored, so as a result she ignored herself. She refused to save herself from the situation she was in, and as a result she disregarded her own cry for help just as everyone else did. Her death and the manner in which she died reflected the way she was treated throughout her life as a woman.
Ophelia’s mental strength quickly dissipates due to multiple happenings in the play. The man that she once thought she was in love with kills her father, driving her into the dark abyss of grief. She begins to fall into madness, “...speaks things in doubt /That carry but half sense /Her speech is nothing” (3.3.7-8). She begins to jabber on about nonsense. She loses her ability to think, “...poor Ophelia /Divided from herself and her fair judgment” (4.5.91-92). Others see her as an emotional wreck, falling farther and farther into insanity. She finally can’t take it anymore, so she ends her own life, “As we have warranty. Her death was doubtful” (5.1.234). Others saw Ophelia in a dark light, saying that she took her own life, and that she did not deserve a nobel burial. Ophelia was driven into mania by a combination of negative things, that in the end, lead to her taking her own
...She had lost her father and her lover while her brother was away for school, and she was no longer useful as a puppet in a greater scheme. Ophelia was displaced, an Elizabethan woman without the men on whom she had been taught to depend. Therein lies the problem - she lacked independence so much that she could not continue living without Polonius, Laertes, and Hamlet. Ophelia's aloneness led to her insanity and death. The form of her death was the only fitting end for her - she drowned in a nearby river, falling beneath the gentle waters. She finally found peace in her mad world. That is how Ophelia is so useful as a classic feminist study - she evokes imagery of the fragile beauty women are expected to become, but shows what happens to women when they submit as such.
It was not considered suicide because she was not the one who caused her grief. Suicide was only considered suicide back then if you killed yourself for something you had done, for example, if you had murdered someone. As you can see, Ophelia is a great example of a tragic hero. Her loyalty to three men caused her final destruction, death. Also, her death caused the final destruction of the death of her brother and Hamlet as well.
The story of Hamlet is a morbid tale of tragedy, commitment, and manipulation; this is especially evident within the character of Ophelia. Throughout the play, Ophelia is torn between obeying and following the different commitments that she has to men in her life. She is constantly torn between the choice of obeying the decisions and wishes of her family or that of Hamlet. She is a constant subject of manipulation and brain washing from both her father and brother. Ophelia is not only subject to the torture of others using her for their intentions but she is also susceptible to abuse from Hamlet. Both her father and her brother believe that Hamlet is using her to achieve his own personal goals.
Apart from the ambiguity surrounding her death and her love for Hamlet, Ophelia is described by all as an innocent child, grappling with situations her youth is unprepared for. Even if she had consummated her love for Hamlet, I can still picture Ophelia as a vulnerable and innocent child who has to cope with situations beyond her control in a world where the role of the female is passive. It is this helplessness which Gertrude wants to look after as she “hoped thou should’st have been my Hamlet’s wife” and her madness which Gertrude wants to save her form by allowing Ophelia to make the decision over life and death.
It is widely believed that “Living life without honor is a tragedy bigger than death itself” and this holds true for Hamlet’s Ophelia. Ophelia’s death symbolizes a life spent passively tolerating Hamlet’s manipulations and the restrictions imposed by those around her, while struggling to maintain the last shred of her dignity. Ophelia’s apathetic reaction to her drowning suggests that she never had control of her own life, as she was expected to comply with the expectations of others. Allowing the water to consume her without a fight alludes to Hamlet’s treatment of Ophelia as merely a device in his personal agenda. Her apparent suicide denotes a desire to take control of her life for once. Ophelia’s death is, arguably, an honorable one, characterized by her willingness to let go of her submissive, earth-bound self and leave the world no longer a victim.
Ophelia, in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, represents a self-confident and aware female character. She analyzes the world around her and recognizes the multitude of male figures attempting to control her life. Her actions display not only this awareness, but also maturity in her non-confrontational discussions. Though she is demeaned by Laertes, Polonius, and Hamlet, Ophelia exhibits intelligence and independence and ultimately resorts to suicide in order to free herself from the power of the men around her.
This can be proven by the change in Ophelia’s actions and behavior. Ophelia starts to sing strange songs in front of Gertrude about her father’s death and Hamlet’s madness. Ophelia sings to Gertrude and sings, “He is dead and gone, lady, he is dead and gone, at his head a grass-green turf, at his heels a stone” (4.5.26-29).This tells us that Ophelia is a very soft and is a very weak character and can easily get heart broken. She cares about her family and the death of her father has shattered her into pieces, it may cause problems for her to
This madness was preventable, the men in her life caused it and Gabrielle Dane’s article “Reading Ophelia’s Madness” explains this excellently, what is written in the article gives clear and straight forwards facts and examples on what is the cause of her madness. The cause of her madness started with her controlling father, brother, and lover. All three of these men told her what to do, when to do it, and how she should carry it out, and the things they tell her to do always have to benefit them, they didn’t care what would happen to Ophelia’s mental or emotional state in the process. With the men’s constant abuse they each start telling her different things. Unsure of whom to listen to, she starts to get confused and starts losing herself. When finally there was no one there to tell her anymore she goes mad, and in the brink of her madness she ends up killing herself. Throughout all these events no one stops to think of her as an actual person but instead like a rag doll they could just toss around. The play Hamlet itself was discussed without any bother of Ophelia for nearly four hundred years before scholars started to think of her and read the play with a Feminist view point. Today more and more articles are being written about Ophelia’s treatment by the other characters in the play and her madness. Even though most would see suicide as a cowardly act, Ophelia’s death may be the only rational one in the death-filled
Ophelia is a perfect example of how the poison of revenge of the kingdom of Elsinore does not only affect the person committing these acts, and as the victim, but the innocent bystanders as well. Originally Ophelia had nothing to do with King Hamlet’s unjust death, but her relationship and involvement with Hamlet, her father, and Claudius and Gertrude is enough to make her a lunatic and at last her deplorable death. Shakespeare shows Ophelia’s heartbreaking downfall in her speeches after her father’s passing “There’s/ rue for you, and here’s some for me.../Oh, you must wear your rue with a difference.—There’s a daisy. I would/ give you some violets, but they withered all when/ my father died. They say he made a good end” (Hamlet: IV.v.51). It is clear that the corruption in the kingdom causes Ophelia to become insane. She cannot cope with or overcome her father’s unfortunate death because it was committed by her love, Hamlet. As Ophelia becomes insane due to her father’s death, she is also affected by Hamlet’s treatment of her. Ophelia wants to trust Hamlet and does not understand his antic disposition, but still tries to be loyal to him. However, the way Hamlet treats Ophelias contributes to her insanity and is arguably the most recognizable cause of her misfortune “Get thee to a nunnery,/...Or, if thou wilt needs marry,/ marry a fool,
In William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Ophelia is the most static character in the play. Instead of changing through the course of the play, she remains suffering in the misfortunes perpetrated upon her. She falls into insanity and dies a tragic death. Ophelia has issues surviving without a male influence, and her downfall is when all the men in her life abandon her. Hamlet’s Ophelia, is a tragic, insane character that cannot exist on her own.
To capture our sympathy, Ophelia goes through a transformation unlike any other character in Hamlet. She is abandoned by everyone she holds dear; her father Polonius, her brother Laertes, and Hamlet, her lover. And yet Ophelia becomes tangled in a web of madness when her loyalty is torn between Polonius and Hamlet. Most horrible of all is Ophelia's suicide-death. The emotion is evokes, coupled with the above points shows that Shakespeare's intentions was to make Ophelia, a minor character in terms of the number of lines assigned to her, into a memorable character evoking the most sympathy.
In the play Hamlet Ophelia is portrayed as an innocent young woman who does not have a say in anything. All the men control Hamlet, her father Polonius, and her brother Laertes. She is portrayed as inferior to all of them and lets herself be pushed around by them. She is unable to convey her opinions or emotions throughout the play. The men dominate her thoughts and behaviors. In Hamlet, Ophelia’s obedience to her father and brother, along with her dismissal by Hamlet, reveals that women were not allowed to assert their opinions, emotions, or desires in a courtly setting.
In many cases, when there is instability between a child and a parent, that initial relationship dictates the dynamics of a child’s future relationships with others. Shakespeare critiques this idea in his tragedy Hamlet through the relationship between Hamlet and Ophelia. Both of these characters’ relationships with their parents are very complex. Hamlet’s father, the King of Denmark, was murdered by his uncle, Claudius, who then married his mother, Gertrude. Hamlet is now living in a world in which he is expected to accept that his uncle and mother are married, also meaning his uncle is the new king.
Love is a dish best not to be reheated, as it bubbles and turns crusty on the edges, something no self respecting human being should ever try. Unfortunately, Ophelia did not get that memo. When Hamlet and Ophelia’s relationship came to a dramatic end, due to his development of “psychosis”, Ophelia, did not check out. Instead, she chose to stay, but was it out of love, pity, or maybe a mix of both? Evidence points to the latter.