With regards to the character of Ophelia, no doubt there is a sense that her relationship with Hamlet is one that at best, was vague and uncertain. Its true nature upon the text of the play itself has never been discernible and much of what has been concluded is speculative in nature. The theory that Ophelia was pregnant at the time of her death falls within this category. Though preposterous to those who hear it for the first time, there is evidence that seems to back this claim, although again this purely on the basis of the uncertainty that permeates their relationship.

With Ophelia, the primary concern that her brother and her father seem to have on her is her virginity. It is not surprising thus that Ophelia is held to be a symbol of innocence and purity. To us the audience, we meet her with her slate clean, with no previous knowledge of anything that has happened before, and the depth and nature of her relationship with Hamlet. Tying in to this innocence is the way she is associated with flowers. Her first allusion to flowers in the play, "the primrose path of dalliance treads", suggests a mental landscape for her that is filled with them.

It is this supposed and held innocence however that is a point that becomes blunt at close examination. There is an almost unnatural manner in the way she is told of this advice to keep her "chaste treasure" and to "weigh what loss" her "honor may sustain". The lengthy discourse that is harped on the innocent girl is more a statement of Ophelia being in danger of becoming natural with her instincts rather than Hamlet forcing himself on her. This lack of trust is thus not on Hamlet but rather on Ophelia. Such advice, coupled with the heavy-handed way her father chides her and explicitly forbids further interaction gives the notion that men perhaps had, of the "frailty" of the female mind when confronted with lust and desire.

Thus we see that with all the suppression that is place on her, the question is whether the culture that surrounds her has already been implicitly teaching these values to all its female members. If this were so then Ophelia’s innocence is perhaps a manufactured one that was cultivated in line with the expectations of society. That Ophelia’s presence contrasts directly with predominant images of filth and decay in the play is noteworthy in this respect, since who is to say that her flowering innocence is but a product of the filth and fear of her society, an all to paradoxical image. Too often we blame Ophelia for her weak-will and her tendency to submit easily to the male members of her family, yet we do not ask if instead of blaming her we should blame the attitudes that have been so entrenched in the society such as to produce the disastrous consequences of one other obvious example, Hamlet’s anger at Gertrude’s marriage. Ophelia thus, in strength, bravery and mental fortitude, cannot be compared to the other great Shakespearean heroine, Juliet, simply because her place was to show the effect of this aspect of decay in Denmark.

In fact, Ophelia’s plight takes a stab at a flaw in her society that is as prevalent as today as when the play was written. The fact that she was female made it only proper for her to bow down to the male members of her family. Hamlet’s entrance into the fray, with him showing her a kind of attention she had never received before from a man made her determine her happiness and well being by the acceptance that he gave her. This kind of behavior is of course widely seen today since few females try to question the norms in a male-dominated society. Instead, denying their true selves, they try to accord themselves to the expectations that society places on them, regardless of whether they are in agreement with them or not. This creates the kind of uncertainty in girls as they mature, that is expressed in a "do I say what I feel, or what will make me well liked" kind of mentality. With Ophelia’s immediate relations being all men, this meekness and submissiveness would no doubt be more firmly rooted in her behavior. Like many coming of age girls, Ophelia was thus simply the possessor of an easily influenced mind.

This having of such a mind would have made it easy for us to believe in possible relations that could have been going on between Hamlet and Ophelia. Though it is never revealed explicitly, it seems to have been an undertone for many of the scenes to do with Ophelia. When Hamlet tells her to "Get thee to a nunnery", we are confronted with the word "nunnery" which is an Elizabethan slang a brothel. Some versions of the play have even been more directly with the choice of the word here being "nannery". There needs no implication here since the meaning of this word is brothel. In both cases, there is a strong sexual connotation that cannot be denied. Perhaps on another level, we can regard Ophelia’s alleged relations with Hamlet as sinful, therefore needing a nunnery as a place to ask for confession. Here the possible implication that Hamlet gives is accusing Ophelia of whoring herself for the throne and for her father’s thirst for power. That Polonius is described before as a "fishmonger" supports this idea since it is an Elizabethan slang for a pimp.

These features being but clues to a possibility of sexual relations are not altogether incongruent, since the uncertainty takes care of that. The incongruency of this aspect of Ophelia comes during her last scene when she mad. Because of our initial preconception of her innocence, it is jarring to sudden hear her sing of songs with overtly sexual connotations. First in the form of her disguised lover, which Hamlet most certainly would have been. Her reference to cockle hat was to do with it being the mark of a pilgrim, this alluding to old stories where it was a favorite trick of lovers to disguise themselves as pilgrims. Her next song again is targeted at Hamlet as she blames him for promising to marry her before they had sex, (Before you tumbled me, You promised me to wed) and not keeping that promise. These songs that she sings have the possibility of being either true occurrences or a result of the suppression of her innermost desires. When she returns into this scene halfway there is a kind of her crazy logic at work in her. Even Horatio notes it to us at the beginning:

They carry but half sense. Her speech is nothing,
Yet the unshaped use of it doth move
The hearers to collection; they aim at it
And botch the words up fit to their own thoughts,
Which, as her winks and nods and gestures yield them,
Indeed would make one think there might be thought,
Though nothing sure, yet much unhappily.

As she gives out her flowers, a deeper symbolic and perhaps even cryptic meaning is embedded in the action as these are to recipients who seem to need them most. For Claudius she gives her fennel and columbines. Fennel stood for flattery, such as a king would receive and such that Claudius would give. Columbine was also a symbol of infidelity in love. To the queen and herself, she gives rue. Rue stood for sorrow and repentance. Ophelia distinguishes which meaning is for whom, when she says "you must wear your rue with a difference". It is obvious that she means repentance for the queen and sorrow for herself. A daisy, also for the queen, stood for deception in love affairs. The last flowers she mentions are violets. Violets stand for faithfulness. It is likely that this allusion is made with regards to Hamlet since Laertes called Hamlet’s affections a "violet in the youth of primy nature". It is perhaps Ophelia’s own interpretation that Hamlet’s faithfulness has withered and she cannot possibly love him again.

In this climate of Ophelia’s supposed madness, it is easy to see that perhaps her madness also had a "method". Perhaps she wasn’t mad but in utter despair at her situation. Who can blame her, with Hamlet going mad and far off in another country where he may never come back from again, the death of her father and also the complete destruction of her cozy family structure? Her despair and anger could have no doubt have expressed itself in the cynical way she hands out hidden meanings with her flowers. It is obvious then that she is more intelligent that it seems. Also, her non-willingness to reconcile with her brother is perhaps a realization on her part that a further dependence on him or on any male would inevitably lead to more sorrow.

Such an assumption seems to be in line with the possibility that she was having sexual relations with Hamlet. And if this were true, would it not be a certainty that perhaps she could have become pregnant by him? The evidence that supports this theory has to do with the underlying significance of Ophelia’s flowers. Apart from their symbolic usage as already discussed, they were also Elizabethan herbal abortifacients and emmenagogues, which were used for abortion. Elizabethan audiences would no doubt have picked up on this meaning and that these flowers were being used to abort her child and produce the wanted menstruation. Alternatively, her severe depression was perhaps a cause of the cessation of her menses, which she was trying to cure. With this added meaning, it would be illogical to assume that Ophelia was mad. Couple this with the evidence of her directed sarcastic judgements on the various members of the court, and we find a hidden possibility of the true nature of the situation we purport to know so well.

Yet another interesting layer to this idea was that if these herbal medicines were not taken correctly, they would cause madness. Whether madness did arise as a result of a misuse in the herbs would indirectly answer the question of whether Ophelia committed suicide or if she merely fell to her death. Would she have then would she have chosen to commit suicide if she did not become mad? My opinion is yes. The implications of her pregnancy had she not, would no doubt have placed her under much shame from her society and also from her brother. With a father like Polonius, such an act would have been deemed a sin that only death could punish. Ophelia in all her life would have been told that umpteen times already.

That Ophelia could have been pregnant as a result of her alleged sexual relations with Hamlet has not escaped two movie interpretations of the play. The first, in Jacobi’s version where in the nunnery scene, Jacobi playing Hamlet touches her stomach. In the latest Branaugh version, there is a quick flashback to Ophelia and Hamlet in bed. Alternatively in the text of the play itself, Hamlet putting his head on Ophelia’s lap could also be a hint.

That the aspect and possibility of a sexual Ophelia exists, sheds new light on the many held beliefs of her character. In my mind, though these possibilities are uncertain, they were placed there perhaps by Shakespeare to allow them to be found out. Theatrically, this new element would produce a more sophisticated Ophelia that would be interesting to watch on stage.

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