Hamlet's Ophelia With A Voice Analysis

Hamlet’s Ophelia with a Voice

Shakespeare wrote Hamlet during the Elizabethan age, which is the time period when England was under the reign of a woman for the second time. Despite this, the sustaining years of the traditional patriarchal society was still a basis that many people in 16th century England followed. This would explain for Ophelia’s quick compliances to the standards of the men close to her. A more in-depth examination of this can be made in act 4, scene 5 of Hamlet, which has also been nicknamed the “Mad Ophelia” scene. Patriarchal constraints can be seen when both Hamlet and Ophelia showcased their “madness,” but one is considered acting while the other is diagnosed as mad as King Claudius says, “…poor Ophelia, Divided from herself and her fair judgment,” [IV.V.85]. Actress Frances Barber interpreted Ophelia as “acutely intelligent and highly perceptive” instead of mad, which opposed Elaine Showalter’s argument that Ophelia’s madness stems from a “predictable outcome of erotomania” (139, 287). In addition to these arguments, Ophelia is repressed for she can’t speak out her mind unless she acts hysterical. Hamlet, on the other hand, has more freedom in this category whether he acts sane or not. What Shakespeare conveyed in this scene is not madness, but the voice of a repressed woman.

The first sign of Ophelia’s oppression is shown with her quick obedience to the men around her and this gives a typical representation of Elizabethan women. Ophelia doesn’t hesitate to say “No, my good lord, but as you did command,/ I did repel his letters and denied/ His access to me” [II.I. 106 – 108] and Polonius doesn’t hesitate to sell his daughter out either when he commands her to “Read on this book,/That show of such an exe...

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...ll his arm,” which helps create a visual image of Ophelia acting out what Hamlet specifically did to her.(II.I. 85 – 86). Her commendable acting convinced Polonius to believe that Hamlet was madly in love with his daughter that Polonius would go as far as to repetitively try to prove Hamlet’s affection to Ophelia in front of Claudius. Ophelia would take this acting to a whole new level before her death. Even though she will most likely not get reprimanded publicly for insulting the King and Queen, she can get executed and buried in secret like her father if they found out how much information she actually knew. Knowing too much is dangerous and the audience knew the outcome of someone who’s too inquisitive in Hamlet may end up with Polonius’s tragic fate. Therefore, Ophelia possesses another power over her life and that is by choosing where to die and how to die.