For the duration of the play, Ophelia was portrayed as a naïve and submissive woman. Her passivity and powerlessness reinforce the voicelessness of women during the Elizabethan era. For example, “I shall obey, my lord” (I.iii.134) shows that Ophelia concedes to her father’s will, even though she believes Hamlet’s love is genuine. She is willing and expected to obey her father despite the fact that she still loves Hamlet, which emphasizes her character’s submissive nature. Furthermore, in Act I Laertes warns Ophelia that it would be shameful of her to love Hamlet, and she responds with “I shall the effect of this good lesson keep as a watchman to my heart” (I.iii.45). She is assuring Laertes that she will remain obedient and follow his advice.
When they are aware of Hamlet’s feelings towards Ophelia they are convinced that he would just use her for her virginity then break her heart. Ophelia is torn because she is sure in her heart that Hamlet loves her, even though she could never be his wife. Being raised with just men in her life she has no idea how to go about dealing with Hamlet and his mixed feelings. Ophelia starts to go mad dealing with the problem of choosing between her father’s wishes and her true
[…] Blasted with ecstasy…” (3.1.151/162). As a result of this innocence and ignorance, Ophelia is easily manipulated by others for their own purposes. An example of this, is when her father, Polonius, sends Ophelia to have an “accidental meeting” with Hamlet in an attempt to understand his sudden change of character, “at such a time I’ll loose my daughter to him…” (2.2.160). Since Ophelia is often not in control of her choices and how she is allowed to interact with others, there is an element of dehumanization which surrounds her.
From understanding the interaction between Hamlet and Ophelia it’s clear that Hamlet loved Ophelia which is evident in the play from his own words "I loved Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers, if you added all their love together, couldn't match mine" (Act 5). This confession was said by him when the play was nearly to end but for most of the play Hamlet expressed bashful words towards Ophelia. Hamlet treats Ophelia like she did not count or in other words he treated her like a doormat. During the interaction based off realization you can see that Ophelia probably loved Hamlet but if it wasn’t for being under the supervision of her brother and father, she might have been able to influence Hamlet and this would lead to a change in the play.
Ophelia has captured Hamlet’s love and is also in love with him herself. Hamlet constantly mistreats and deceives her, took her innocence, and eventually leaves her even though he promised that he would marry her. Ophelia is constantly a victim of Hamlet and his treatment of going back and forth between his strong love for her and harsh words towards her; he is constantly using her as a tool to get what he wants. In Act 3, Scene 1, Lines 113 – 117, Hamlet states to Ophelia: “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 now the time gives it proof.
Sometimes in life people do not portray things how the really mean to. Sometimes people treat the people they truly love harshly. Sort of like how in the play of Hamlet, Hamlet acts like he does not really love Ophelia. But, in the tragedy of Hamlet, the protagonist, Hamlet, really did love Ophelia. This can be seen through his actions toward her before he found out about his father’s death being a murder, pretending to be crazy simply to prove to the king and Polonius, and by his actions after Ophelia 's death.
Ophelia’s character went through quite a large transformation. In the play her father tells her that she is to stay away from Hamlet and she readily agrees. In the movie Ophelia doesn’t disagree with her father but she also doesn’t agree just to please him. This shows that Ophelia isn’t easily persuaded, even by her own father. Despite her father’s warning about Hamlet, Ophelia met with him in secret at her apartment until her father found out.
The scene opens up within a room in Polonius’s house, where Laertes is getting ready to depart back to Paris. But before he leaves, he decides to give his sister, Ophelia, some advice about her relationship with Prince Hamlet. He basically tells her that she may be in love now, and maybe he is also, but she should be wary of his social status and how he might have to marry someone else for the sake of the state. Not only that, but that she must also be wary of Hamlet as a whole. After all, he's worried that Hamlet might take advantage of her, so he warns her not to have any sort of sexual contact with him, or else, she will suffer the consequences.
That does not help the fact that Ophelia needs guidance and wisdom. Her father never her gave that to her during his lifetime. He was so infatuated with making sure his children do not mess up his agenda, that he totally threw their needs as humans to the side. Ophelia never learned how to cope with struggles that come up during one’s lifetime. Ophelia also lets her relationship with hamlet dictate her self worth.
This provokes him to say that god gives women one face, but they use make up to paint on another one. This quote suggest that Hamlet sees woman as naive and gullible creatures, as he sees Ophelia as nothing but an object that is owned by her father, as she is helping him with all of his dirty work. Hamlet believes that woman cannot be trusted as they have are deceiving. He also sees Ophelia as a grown women who is unable to make her own decisions. Hamlet is utterly disgusted by how feeble Ophelia is as she was following her father's scheme.
Convinced that the love was real, Ophelia is slapped in the face with some harsh reality. "You should not have believed me; for virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it. I loved you not" (Hamlet 160) exemplifies the external conflict she is facing and how she had been fooled all this time thinking their love was real. Now she is in conflict with herself because she feels as if she could have conserved her time and maybe listened to her father. Shakespeare includes this encounter to show the readers yet again that the challenges Ophelia is facing is interfering with her.
In act 3 Ophelia respectfully attempts to return Hamlet's gifts back to him, Hamlet; however, just laughs at her and asks if she is ‘"honest’", showing complete disrespect for Ophelia. This is a blatant act of verbal violence against Ophelia because she is attempting to be respectful to ‘"lord”’ Hamlet, but like Laertes he objectifies her by focusing on her virginity (Ham. III.I.102,103). Here Shakespeare exhibits Hamlet’s complete unappreciation and disrespect for Ophelia by displaying the verbal swords that devalued her as a human being and caused her death. Shakespeare then has Hamlet continue his verbal attack by admitting he “lov’d her not”, displaying that the amount cruelty Hamlet forced Ophelia to undergo was very potent (Ham. III.i.115).
Hamlet does not value Ophelia 's feelings he belittles her. In Hamlets defense this is the way he was brought up to treat women, during that time this was a common way to treat a women. Even though in today 's society it is not at all ok to treat women with such disrespect. He also likes for everything to go as planned and this may result in why he can not have a stable relationship with a woman. This also causes him to have many stumbling blocks in his life that causes some emotional pain
Ophelia was another character in the story that has lost her mind because of her father’s death. She was mad and acting like crazy and this madness has caused her several psychological damages. There is a reflection of the traditional social crises in the play; for example, Horatio sees the ghost that feared him and understood that it is not a good sign because he believed that if the dead are not at peace that means the country is threatened and in danger. The powerful view of this play is when Shakespeare uses the character Hamlet to show the complicated works of the mind, and how someone should use trickery idea in order to mislead others to get to the realism.
Ophelia was not the exception on being treated like all women in those days were treated. She, just like any other women was told by men how to behave. The men who Ophelia obeyed were her father and her brother. Another man that was very influential in Ophelia’s life was her boyfriend Hamlet. She had to do
In his treatment of Ophelia, Hamlet oscillates between undying love and cruelty as reflected in his cold and accusing speech. In short, Hamlet throughout the play uses Ophelia as a tool in his revenge plan. As the Hamlet not being accused by his tragedy plan, but from what he has done, has ultimately played a role that impacted the most to Ophelia. In Hamlet, when Laertes learns of the death of his sister Ophelia, he weeps in sorrow along with genuine feeling, but