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Importance of Ophelia in Hamlet

Ophelia is one of the most essential characters in the play Hamlet. Ophelia’s character is significant in the story as she is a representation of femininity. She is a young and beautiful woman who is stuck between two contradicting poles. On one side, her father and brother strongly believe that Hamlet does not love her and that he will just use her, take her virginity and then get over her as she would never get married to him. Ophelia is convinced that Hamlet loves her but Hamlet denies it and goes ahead to swear that he never loved her. Ophelia’s father and brother view her as a lifelong virgin viewed as a morality instrument that would later turn to being a responsible and committed wife and mother. But Hamlet’s view is very different from this, Hamlet presumes Ophelia to be nothing but a sexual tool and a corrupt lover but due to the fact that she has no mother who would guide her, Ophelia has no way of breaking out of this two contradiction, as a result, she runs mad and drowns to death.

Hamlet has outstayed the life of Shakespeare several times and this is evident in the play’s intricacy and equivocation. Shakespeare’s theory which is staged through the madness of Ophelia is as result fulfilled. It is clear that presentations with boundless connotations have strong imaginative and emotional powers. For instance, in the play, Ophelia turns out to be among the expressive open endings. Who is Ophelia? What are her strongest desires, her fears and her thinking patterns? What are the pre-social traits and propensities that make up her personality? Did she commit suicide? For instance, the ‘O’ at the beginning of her name and how the other characters of the play view her as a desolate and bounded object that can only be seen when it comes to her interpersonal relationships and her involvement with external structures of power and social conversations (Guilfoyle 3).

As a matter of fact, her own name illustrates her emblem in the play as that of an embodied metaphor for the human womb, which is presumed as a placeholder in place of an obscured personality (Aydellot 14). Ophelia has been pushed to being a mystery as other characters on several occasions have had her associated with nothing. In a similar manner, when Hamlet asks Bernado; the watchman if he had seen the ghost that was seen at the beginning of the story, Bernardo answers that he has seen “nothing”. In addition to that, when Gertrude is asked the same question, she answers in the same way, telling Hamlet that she sees “nothing”. Ophelia’s essentiality is an absence so accomplished as to be present. This is clear in her answer to Hamlet after he asks her if she had thought of his requisition to rest his head on her laps as a secret sexual appeal. Her answer is “I think nothing, my lord,” this has a bizarre force. Horatio also claims that her speech is “nothing”. It is true that the word has two denotations as an Elizabethan slang term for female sexual organs depicts Ophelia’s lack of transparency as an attribute of the distance generated into relationships between males and females in both worlds of the play and in the Elizabethan maternal system in which Shakespeare’s congregations lived, but more significantly, it links Ophelia to the play’s debriefing of the presumptions of epistemic logic and therefore morality.

Furthermore, another point of view is that Ophelia, despite being a secondary character, played a big role in facilitating Shakespeare’s congregation’s understanding of the Hamlet. This is shown in various ways including the discovering of Hamlet’s distorted view of women. Throughout the play, Hamlet struggles with the fact that his mother betrayed him by marrying his uncle who is said to have murdered his father. Later own, his anger towards his mother is unleashed on Ophelia, Hamlet goes ahead to tell Ophelia to become a nun in order to have her chastity preserved and never have children who would turn out to be sinners. This indirectly means that Hamlet views Ophelia as not being adequately abstinent. This is because “nunnery” as an Elizabethan slang word means “brothel” (Amaral 17). It can be said that Hamlet uses this rude word on Ophelia in order to punish her because of breaking up with him. Moreover, it can be stated that he asks her to become a nun because when she is a nun, no other guy would have her or even bear children with her; this is a clue that perhaps Hamlet truly loves Ophelia and he is just jealousy of another man ending up with her. This is seen by majority of viewers as “madness”. But as if that’s not enough, when Ophelia commits suicide, no remorse or sorrow is experienced by Hamlet, rather Ophelia is forgotten quickly and in fact her death is not even shown on stage but merely spoken of.

At some point in the play, Ophelia tells Hamlet that, “Lord, we know what we are, but not what we may be.” This point has a hidden meaning in it but from the general point of view, it should be understood that Ophelia is at this point going through a lot that may have resulted to her mental crack down. To be precise, it is at this moment that Ophelia is befuddled by Hamlet’s deeds and words. Furthermore, she has been abolished from her home by her father and brother because of her love and relationship with Hamlet. To even make matters worse, she becomes aware of the fact that Hamlet has just murdered her father (Kadhim et al. 182). With all these contusion, it is undoubtedly more than enough to bring down the strongest mental abilities and individuals. But the point to note is, does Ophelia speak out these words with her mind in a point of superb cerebral insight or are the words coming as a result of her mental cracking down? But with whatever the reason is, Ophelia has a nice point here, the statement she gives is a perfect examination of our lives today, our significance. The fact is we all live in the present, we are aware of what we know now and that we react to what is as at the current time, none of us knows about what we will become in the times to come. People might guess or generate ideas on what they will become or what they would love to become or what to experience in future and how they will go about with the situations that may come in the coming days, but none of them is assured, they are all uncertain until that moment actually comes.

Ophelia also represents a personification of goodness (Coats 8). Similar to Gertrude, Ophelia when still young is naïve. But the difference with Gertrude is that Ophelia is not aware of the cruel realities that come about in life. First of all, Ophelia may have lost her mother during her birth; therefore she is a young girl with no mother to take care of her. Her father and brother love her so much and have had to go through tremendous pain in order to defend and nurse her. Ophelia spends most of her time gathering flowers and at needlepoint; this makes her to be not involved in matters of the state. Due to the loved poured unto her by her father and brother; she reciprocates it with unshakeable loyalty. Her obedience to her father is so extreme that she affirms to his advice of not seeing Hamlet any more or accepting any letters written to her by Hamlet. She follows her father’s words despite her being strongly in love and affectionate about Hamlet (Marino 817). When she breaks up with him, Hamlet views Ophelia as having betrayed him. In fact, he sees both Ophelia and Gertrude as betrayers and whores. Ophelia having betrayed him and been made a whore by her father and Gertrude having been made a whore by Claudius.

Ophelia’s infirmity and virtuousness are the reasons she goes down in the play. The facts that she cannot handle the sudden unfolding of events that come back to back prove to work again her. Her lover Hamlet hurts her on different occasions across the play and that leads to her going insane when Hamlet’s hatred drives him to killing her father. At this point, Ophelia has endured so much that she cannot handle what has just happened. But despite this current state, she is still virtuous and loyal to Hamlet. In the play we learn of her low tones of deep sorrow coming from time to time but there is no instance of a painful cry due to fear that makes her madness to be kind of shocking. When looking at the picture of her lifeless body, it is noticed that she is still saintly cute. From the songs sung by Ophelia to Gertrude, Claudius and Laertes, the trio is reminded that the world, with its widespread corruption has brought reckoning unto the moral Ophelia (Trudell 46). It is also clear to us at this point that it’s only under the influence of her insanity that Ophelia lives up to Hamlet’s false discernment of her as a lustful woman.

References

Amaral, Marina Martins. “OPHELIA IN WESTERN ART: AN ANALYSIS OF PICTORIAL REPRESENTATIONS OF THE CHARACTER BEFORE MADNESS.” Scripta Uniandrade 17.3 (2019).Aydelott, Katherine. “Three Musical Interpretations of Hamlet’s Ophelia.” (2020).

Coats, Karen. “Ophelia by Charlotte Gingras.” Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books 71.8 (2018): 337-337.

Guilfoyle, Cherrell. “” Ower Swete Sokor”: The Role of Ophelia in Hamlet.” Comparative Drama 14.1 (1980): 3-17.

Kadhim, Hana Abdullah, and Mahmoud Ali Ahmed. “The Impact of the Two Murdered Fathers on Madness and Death of Hamlet and Ophelia.” Journal of Science and Technology 18.2 (2017).Trudell, Scott A. “The Mediation of Poesie: Ophelia’s Orphic Song.” Shakespeare Quarterly 63.1

(2012): 46-76. Project Muse. Web. 7 Mar. 2017.

Marino, James J. “Ophelia’s Desire.” ELH 84.4 (2017): 817-839.