Haunting to contemplate, these are the words of someone in which the fire of individual expression has been extinguished by the demands of social norm. They could describe the condition of hundreds of young women in Hamlet’s Denmark as well as Shakespeare’s England, or even in our century. The words are from the mouth of mad Ophelia, a quite fascinating and complex figure often neglected in study and interpretation in favor of the masculine title character who overshadows her in the world’s imagination. Though witnesses to Ophelia’s insanity declare that her "speech is nothing," (IV.iv.7), they might hear wisdom in that same speech, if only they were inclined to hear it.
Ophelia’s chief objective in life, whether she is conscious of it or not, is to epitomize her culture’s ideal of what a woman should be: beautiful, delightful, always obedient, and never inconvenient. As a male, Hamlet has not only a formal education and an ambition to greatness, but possesses the power, individuality, and determination for which Ophelia only has unrealized potential. Their Elsinore has just as ardently denied Ophelia of these qualities as it has cultivated them in Hamlet. Because Ophelia’s madness and destruction somewhat parallels and foreshadows Hamlet’s own, it has been said that "Ophelia’s story is the repressed story of Hamlet." (2) While Hamlet’s madness, half-feigned yet partly very real, has a lasting effect on the exterior world and results in the destruction of his rivals before his own death, Ophelia does not even attempt to manipulate the fates of those around her before she fatally harms herself.
The parallels between Hamlet’s and Ophelia’s plights are unmistakable. Both are traumatized by the murder of their father, both are troubled that an important loved one has played a significant role in the respective murders, and mental stability is eroded in both characters as a result. Hamlet is able to employ his madness when he intentionally magnifies it as part of his plot to avenge his father’s ghost by killing Claudius. As misguided as Hamlet’s direction may be, Ophelia lacks a direction at all. When she goes mad, she, in contrast to Hamlet, seems to have lost her reason entirely (as her brother Laertes proclaims: "Is’t possible that a young maid’s wits/ Should be as mortal as a young man’s life?" (IV.v.137)). It is interesting that, though these two characters exhibit such different behavior, both are categorized as "mad."
The difference stems mostly from the fact that the world Hamlet and Ophelia inhabit holds hugely different expectations for women than for men. As a man, Hamlet would achieve the ideal of his society by contributing to its advancement with his intellect and individual talent, while Ophelia is expected to maintain the status quo of society by being obedient and refined. As they have learned these separate sets of virtues, it is not surprising that they react to similar events in different ways.
Freud theorized that the values of one’s society become internalized as the individual’s superego and become just as much a part of one’s identity as their instinctive nature. Because society has assigned them each a gender role, Hamlet and Ophelia become mirrors of decorum. Hamlet possesses traits admired both by his companions and his audience, as Theodore Lidz states:
These qualities were fostered in Hamlet, as his culture has dictated that a man should make the most of a public voice. In contrast, a woman was supposed to be a private individual who was devoted to domestic responsibilities and was not to detract the public’s attention from the men. Hamlet, surrounded by friends who admire him for his witticism and eloquent turns of thought, is the distressed public counterpart of the private Ophelia, who has no constant companion such as Hamlet has in Horatio. Despite Queen Gertrude’s affection for her, the only three figures who actively influence Ophelia’s life are all men, and Hamlet, Laertes, and Polonious all appear far more interested in how she relates to them than in her own needs and desires. They all profess to love her, and Polonious and Laertes treat her as something very delicate and precious, but have little interest in what she actually has to say. Up until her madness scene, we do not see Ophelia on stage when she is not being ordered, admonished, sermonized at, or, as in the "nunnery scene," condemned by one of these male figures.
It is by their imposed standards that Ophelia judges herself. If she is capable of independent thought, she lacks the confidence to express it, and if asked about her own thoughts, she will reply, "I know not, my lord, what I should think." (I.iii.104), or "I think nothing, my lord." (III.ii.114) Her only aim in life is to please others, as her culture has insisted it is the only legitimate goal for any woman. Though her exchange with Hamlet as they await the performance of The Mousetrap attests to a superior intelligence, she is so hesitant to say what she does that we may believe that she is afraid of her own voice. Hamlet is such an independent and bold thinker that he almost intimidates those around him with his sharp-witted commentary and abstract musings. His education at Wittenburg is the least of the encouragement he can use. Ophelia, because of her sex, does not have access to the same encouragement.
The scene in which Hamlet tells Ophelia to go to a nunnery most perfectly contrasts Hamlet’s sureness of identity and purpose to Ophelia’s lack of confidence in herself. Though Hamlet’s opinion of himself may not be altogether flattering, what sets him apart from Ophelia is that he is capable of expressing an opinion and at all. Here, Hamlet delivers a very detailed, albeit negative, view of himself:
Nowhere in the play does Ophelia describe her own nature so intricately, or indeed at all. How can she if she does not trust herself to know what it is? Instead, she only responds to others’ perceptions of her, and when Hamlet says he loved her once, her response is "Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so." (III.i.116) She may as well say that he has made her - or her self - image, at any rate - out of clay. If she had learned to trust what she herself believed about life, she could have had as much power over Hamlet as he has over her. Already able to cast great confusion and melancholy in Hamlet’s life when she obeys her father’s orders to spurn him, she would be a most formidable figure to Hamlet if she possessed power and not merely the potential for it. If Ophelia allowed herself to express her inner voice in spite of the social code that has been imposed upon her, Hamlet would not be able to reduce her to quivering mouse that dubs herself, "of ladies most deject and wretched", (III.ii.158) but rather might have met his match in intellectual barter and soulful intensity.
If we examine how Polonious treats his son Laertes as compared to how he treats his daughter Ophelia, it makes perfect sense that spiritual independence is eroded in Ophelia, having received quite differential treatment than her brother from the start. We cannot imagine that Polonious would give the same advice to Ophelia as he does Laertes: "To thine own self be true, /And it must follow, as the night the day, / thou canst not then be false to any man." (I.iii.78-90). The same man who praises intuition and instinct in his son scoffs at his daughter when she expresses her faith in Hamlet’s devotion to her: "Affection, pooh! You speak like a green girl/ Unsifted in such perilous circumstances," (I.iii.101-103) and proceeds to forbid her to consort with Hamlet. He would never issue this sort of edict to Laertes, for as a man Laertes is permitted to use his own discretion. Having been a university student like Hamlet, the independent will that his father and his teachers have instilled and encouraged in him has made Laertes a quick and ample foil for Hamlet. If Ophelia had the same access as Laertes, and was not brought up to believe she was inferior to him, it is quite possible she would have been every bit as "noble in reason" and "infinite in faculty" as Hamlet himself. Her muteness and passivity do not betray a lack of intelligence but rather a squelching of it.
Ophelia’s true chance to occupy center stage only comes to her when disaster strikes. The love of her life has shunned her with the coldest of hearts and killed her father. She goes mad and commands the audience of the court. This is the first time she has asserted her own voice, as before characters talked at her and had little interest in what she had to say beyond information she could report. The desperation that we have, until now, only had a notion of, now hits us in the face. Finally blind to "propriety" and the convention of "what a woman should be," she sings snatches of familiar songs, all either about death or a relationship thwarted by the man, in a final overwhelming need for self-expression:
The young man in the song is torturing the woman in much the same way Hamlet has treated Ophelia - at one moment he claims to love her; in the next he tells her she is wretched and unworthy of his attention. The song mirrors Ophelia’s inner despair, and through it she has found the art to express what she would have never been able to find sanely with her refined and proper tongue. Because this song is accompanied by snatches of tunes about death, we see that the two concepts - death and rejection - have been muddled into one horror in Ophelia’s mind. Without her father, she feels no security, and without Hamlet’s acceptance, she feels no self worth. She has not learned that anything else is of any importance, and therefore finds herself unsuited to continue her life. In going mad, she has in essence freed herself from the strain of that life’s expectations. Before death, it is her last and only chance to explore what "she could be" after a lifetime of "knowing what she is." She could be a musician, an actress - even a leader of people, but if she ever entertained such aspirations, they have long since been killed in her until now. Hamlet is capable of using his madness as a tool to achieve his goal, but Ophelia’s madness is so all encompassing that she can make no connection to her odd emotions and the circumstances that provoked them whatsoever. Her madness is her moment of glory, but she must not live with the shame of having failed the rules of feminine decorum to experience it.
Even as their lives demonstrate opposing approaches to moral and personal issues, Hamlet’s and Ophelia’s death scenes contrast sharply as they exit earthly existence. Hamlet makes a public show of his expiration and Ophelia withdraws from the world. Hamlet believes his life is expendable if he loses it to avenge his dead father, and before he dies, he has the grand pleasure of seeing King Claudius, the man he detests more than anything in the world, meet his end. The obsession that has become the purpose of Hamlet’s existence will not, however, be buried with Hamlet’s body, as we see when Hamlet asks a favor of the loyal Horatio with his dying breath:
He dies, and Horatio has nothing but kind words for the man that has brought about the death of so many others: "Now cracks a noble heart. Goodnight, sweet prince/ and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest." (V.ii.340) When Fortinbras succeeds Claudius on the throne, he eulogizes Hamlet:
Even comparing the reaction to her death to the reaction of Hamlet’s, we see that the world has an impossible set of standards for Ophelia because she is female. Hamlet, though a murderer, is lauded as noble and valiant by his survivors. Ophelia, who would not harm another soul, has a watery death that is perceived as a suicide. In the eyes of Denmark’s religion these are both severe sins, but the characters in the play treat Ophelia as far the more contaminated. We do not see Hamlet’s formal funeral before the play ends, but Fortinbras speaks eloquently in praise of Hamlet on the occasion of a different formal ceremony. The funeral rites for Ophelia, are, in Hamlet’s own words, "maimed" (V.i.214), as they refuse to pay full respect to this sinner. Though Laertes is devastated that his sister will not receive a proper funeral, the other members of the congregation quite severely judge Ophelia as a tainted soul. The Doctor of Divinity so responds to Laertes when he inquires if anything more is to be in ceremony for Ophelia:
Even after her death, people do not consider the individual needs of Ophelia but the social norms that she, as a young woman, was supposed to conform to with grace. These expectations already extinguished her spirit; it is hardly surprising that her body would follow after the tragic blow to the entirety of what she imagines to be her identity. If she had been allowed to possess a real identity, and pursue her own interests and desires as Hamlet does, she probably would have been a much stronger person and would not have succumbed to a last mad plea before death.
When Hamlet cries, "Frailty, thy name is woman!" (I.ii.146) and shifts his disillusionment in his mother to contempt for Ophelia, he is not the only man in the play to make a sweeping generalization about all women. Laertes, grieving for his sister, says this:
By attributing emotional weakness to an entire sex, Laertes and his contemporaries do not seem to be able to distinguish one woman from another. Ophelia may fit the female stereotypes of being passive and not strong enough to bear her emotions, but her helplessness is not a product of an intrinsic "woman’s nature" at all, but rather a product of a man’s uninformed idea as to what a woman should be. It is a pity that Ophelia has no company as Othello’s heroine Desdemona has in Emilia, for in the world of Hamlet we sense a desperate need for a speech such as Emilia’s:
Neither of the two women in Hamlet make a remark at all similar to this, and the male sex’s claim to dominance and superiority remains intact throughout the play. If Ophelia had a friend like Emilia, or indeed a mother to counterbalance Polonious’s treatment of her as "the other sex," she might have possessed the strength to endure the tragedies in her life and remain a capable individual. Without the closeness of another female (Gertrude’s affection for her is not enough - she is far too concerned with her own affairs to be of ample support to Ophelia), Ophelia will naturally believe in the definition of herself as "the other" because it is the only one she has been taught. Alienated from functioning society because of it, she retreats into nature and drowns. Hamlet was raised by a father and a mother, and however estranged he does feel from the norm, he has no reason to fell alien because of his gender. He lives in a world tailored to men, and as a man can accomplish what he must. On the other hand, Ophelia is lost.
Reading the third book of Baldesar Castiglione’s The Book of the Courtier, which reflects the debate concerning the role of the "gentler sex" transpiring in Renaissance times, we can imagine the pressure on a woman who was expected to be a "lady," and we can understand why Ophelia, feeling that she has failed to meet the standard sets for her, becomes irretrievably lost. Since the other three books in Castiglione’s book concern themselves with the perfect man, it is implied that women are not nearly as important a consideration. Some of the noblemen who are participants in the dialogue recorded in the book express impatience at the length of the discussion devoted to women, as signor Ottovino declares that, "we have lost the opportunity of hearing many other fine things that remain to be said about the Courtier," (5), i.e., the ideal gentleman. In this way of viewing the world, which was predominant in the time Ophelia would have lived, the only problem of any significance concerning women was how they related to men. As signor Gasparo says:
Moreover, within book three, it is decided that women are much more responsible for valuing their own physical appearance and maintaining moral integrity than men are. Magnifico, who is actually the most in favor of women’s rights of all the men in the dialogue, proclaims that "women are not only permitted but bound to care more about beauty than men." (7) Signor Gasparo remarks that women must remain chaste until they marry, regardless of how much pressure they receive from various suitors to go to be with them. Men are not nearly as disgraced if they happen to "wander astray," as women are, nor are they as much to blame. This is a responsibility that weighs heavily on Ophelia, and when she does go mad, there is such a release of the sexuality she has been repressing in her struggle to be a perfectly composed lady that it shocks the audience as well as the other characters. The woman we have never heard speak any word that was not innocent and proper, even in such cases as when Hamlet is taunting here with sexual double entendres in the scene they have together before The Mousetrap, is now full of vulgarity, not hesitating to talk of sex or to let words as base as "cock" fall from her lips in song. Such a tacit character before, her verbal outpouring is now overwhelming, and unlike anything we were prepared to expect from Ophelia. These are some of her deepest passions and anxieties that she is now revealing, and the only reason no one might have expected she harbored these feelings before is because she buried them so as not to shame herself as a lady of the court. To be thought to have any moral flaw whatsoever devastates Ophelia, as we see happen in the "nunnery scene," when Hamlet harshly accuses her of abominable evil.
When Ophelia, after Hamlet’s verbal abuse to her, cries, "O what a noble mine is here oe’erthrown," (III.i.140), it is ironic she should be speaking of Hamlet and not herself. The world will never know what Ophelia could have been had she not been used as her father’s puppet and Hamlet’s scapegoat for his hostility. As modern and enlightened readers, we must entangle Ophelia from the web of Hamlet’s tragic history and give her time to herself for a bit. After centuries of critics who treated Ophelia as the same priceless, powerless object as Polonious and Laertes do, the voice which champions Ophelia is finally being heard in our criticism, and it is with good and long overdue reason. Sandra K. Fischer emphasizes this:
Fischer entreats us not only to look at Ophelia, but to hear her. In fact, the notion that it is easier and more pleasurable to look at a young woman than to listen to what she has to say is at the core of the sexism which hinders the spiritual and intellectual advancement of the human race. We should not view Ophelia, then, as a decoration befitting Hamlet and his troubled mind, but consider the problem of her own troubled mind and why it self-destructs. With all the attention we have lavished on Hamlet, it is conceivable that he could stand to turn his spotlight over to Ophelia for a while, for even though she died long ago, she longs to be heard as desperately as ever. As Shakespeare’s literary creation, she symbolizes so much more than what is briefly recognized in all that has been written about Hamlet. She is as important to a feminist reading of Shakespeare as The Merchant of Venice’s Portia or any other female character who ends her play on two balanced feet, for she embodies the worst that can happen to a
potentially powerful individual in a world that grossly mistreats women.
1. William Shakespeare. Hamlet, 1601. All further references to this work will be cited in the essay.
2. Elaine Showalter. "Representing Ophelia: Women, Madness, and the Responsibilities of Feminist Criticism" in Shakespeare and the Question of Theory. Ed. Patric Parker and Geoffery Hartman. (London: Metheum, 1985) 77
3.Theodor Lidz. Hamlet’s Enemeny: Madness and Myth in Hamlet. (New York: Basic, 1975}). 107.
4. William Shakespeare. Othello. 1604. IV.ii.96
5. Baldesar Castilglione. The Book of the Courtier, 1528, trans. Charles S. Singleton (Garden City, New York: Double Day and Company, 1959) 281.
6. Castiglione 213
7. Castiglione 211
8. Fischer, Sandra K. "Hearing Opheila: Gender and Tragic Discourse in Hamlet," Renaissance and Reformation. XXVI.1.1990.