I was wonderin if I could get your thoughts. Want to write from Ophelia's pov but I really can't get a grip on her character. She loved Hamlet - but did he undermine her? Repress her like all the other men of her time did, and that was why they split? Did he just become blind to her 'madness'? WAS she mad? Would she have thought his quest silly and self-centred? Did she aspire to greater things she couldnt achieve as a woman? (stay tuned 4 part 2)
part 2: How did the men in her life let her down /exactly/? she’s not super fleshed out and I could use some thoughts. For e.g. I’m also writing about Desdemona and focusing on abusive relationships, but it’s much harder to pinpoint a specific subject matter for Ophelia (the idea is giving voice to victims of patriarchy in literature) just because all the text on her is very vague e.g “she was oppressed” like ok gimme some to work with here pham. Anyway would love your thoughts/take on her <3
Sounds like an interesting project… and lots of questions to answer!
I assume you saw this post, which covers some of the problems you address, but I’ll try to answer your questions more specifically.
Insofar as Ophelia is a fictional character, some of your questions are unanswerable. There’s nothing in the text that can give us an accurate assessment of what Ophelia would have thought of Hamlet’s quest and whether she aspired to greater things, for instance. That can be up to you as a creative writer to imagine.
As to why they split up (if they were ever exactly together), the indication is that Ophelia broke off the relationship with Hamlet because her father and brother told her to: ‘as you did command / I did repel his letter and denied / His access to me’ (2.1.105-7). It can’t really be blamed on Hamlet. That’s a typical instance of patriarchal values dictating a woman’s life and how she ought to appear before marriage, and how she ought to act towards men who might not marry her. If the obsession with virginity and purity didn’t exist, then there would be no need for Ophelia’s father and brother to monitor her activity and look out for her. But it’s important to note that Polonius and Laertes’s words and actions are also dictated by patriarchal values that they didn’t make up themselves. Objectively, one can say she was let down by them, but as far as they’re concerned (and as far as Ophelia’s concerned too), they’re looking after her interests.
As for Ophelia, she never actually says exactly what she thinks of Hamlet. She only says that Hamlet has been courting her, but not her feelings. In fact, she says to her father ‘I do not know, my lord, what I should think’ (1.3.103), suggesting either that she’s intimidated by her father, or that she doesn’t have much of a mind of her own (itself an interesting indication of her position). Basically, the text leaves quite a lot of leeway for actors to play her as they like: she could be clearly in love and grudgingly obeying her father and brother, she might be confused, or she might just be going along with whatever she’s told (feeling for Hamlet because he feels for her, stopping seeing him because she was told not to). She does later say that seeing Hamlet mad makes her ‘of ladies most deject and wretched’ (3.1.154), and since Hamlet killing her father is enough to send her mad, she is probably quite fond of him. I don’t say she didn’t love Hamlet, but unlike characters like Juliet or Desdemona, she never says anything passionate to or about Hamlet.
There’s nothing in the text that would suggest Hamlet is undermining Ophelia, but he does insult her and her gender, especially during the nunnery scene (3.1.141-45). Telling her to go to a nunnery isn’t insulting in itself, but he goes on a whole tirade about women and their ways that would be nothing but confusing from her perspective. She does end up putting it down to his madness though, so she doesn’t seem to take that to heart: ‘O, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown!’ (3.1.149).
The text does suggest that Ophelia really does go mad, and that the madness is caused by the death of her father at the hands of her lover: all of her songs after she goes mad are about death and sex. This is the biggest hint of the kind of oppression she’s been under: she never talks about sex before she’s mad, which shows that her madness has freed her to talk about the things that actually concern her. This suggests that the patriarchal values that dictate her constrain her not to talk about sex. But you’ve got to remember that Hamlet and Ophelia are never on stage together after she goes mad, so there’s nothing for him to notice. The last time they spend together is in the Mousetrap scene, Hamlet goes to England, and when he returns, she’s dead.
I think the important thing to remember with Ophelia is that there are more men in her life than Hamlet, and that patriarchy and oppression don’t necessarily manifest in certain actions. That is to say that the men in her life don’t have to have let her down for her to be oppressed by patriarchy. This is because, while it can lead to abusive actions and particular instances of mistreatment of women and abusive relationships, patriarchy points to the larger systemic oppression of women that prevents them from acting freely, it’s not necessarily about individual men. There are some moments when this becomes clearer, for instance when she is made to act a certain way (and not see Hamlet) because of social expectations, or where it turns out that the suppression she feels is so strong that the loss of her father is enough to drive her mad, but it’s not like there are exact and specific instances of abuse and repression in Ophelia’s case, because what she’s suffering under reflects a much wider problem caused by the values of the patriarchal society she lives in but that neither she nor the people around her are necessarily aware of.
I’m afraid Shakespeare isn’t simple. Nothing is black and white, and being a victim of a situation often involves forces much larger than a few individuals and their lives.
