Ophelia's Uncontrolled Passion In Hamlet

While the trait reason holds a high value by the characters in the play, it overlooks the fact that the characters in the play easily gets enslaved by their uncontrolled passions, that led to disaster. The first example of a character’s uncontrolled passion can be shown by Ophelia when she gets deflowered by her boyfriend, Hamlet ignoring the warnings of patriarchal pressure about women’s behavior in society because she is passionately in love with him. We later find out that Ophelia is not a virgin anymore when she sings during her insanity after Hamlet departures to England and her father’s death. “ Quoth she “Before you tumbled me, you promised me to wed.”” (4,5,67-68) This implies that Ophelia is so passionately in love with Hamlet that she willing gave her

Her clothes spread wide, /And, mermaid-like awhile they bore her up, /Which time she chanted snatches of old lauds, /As one incapable of her own distress/Or like a creature native and endued/Unto that element./But long it could not be/Till that her garments, heavy with their drink, /Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay/To muddy death.” (4,7,199-208) Queen Gertrude suggests that Ophelia's death is a suicide because, in the quote, Ophelia neglects to save herself from drowning even though her clothes is acting as her life vest giving her time to survive. In addition to the literal meaning of the quote when Queen Gertrude explains how Ophelia sunk to the bottom, it is also a metaphor that shows their time period's societal values of women that did not allow females to talk back to men because they are of lower status. Thus making Ophelia feel worthless and results in suicide. If Ophelia controlled her emotions with reasoning, then she would have had time to think through all of the possible consequences of her actions and plan out her future for the better after discovering her father’s death and Hamlet’s departure to