Joey Puvel Ophelia’s Madness Despite the difficulty to pinpoint exactly what Shakespeare’s intended personalities for his characters in Hamlet were, Ophelia’s legitimate madness is one trait that isn’t easily proven otherwise. Poor Ophelia is a young girl conditioned to the medieval dogma that her father is the ultimate authority in her life until marriage, while also heavily drawn to her sense of romance characteristic to the Renaissance. Also, Ophelia cannot express herself the way the men around her can, reserving her to a balloon of emotions, which, in addition to being left stranded after the men in her life essentially disappear, bursts into her ultimate insanity. Every person with influence in Ophelia’s life are men: Polonius, her father, Hamlet, her lover, and Laertes, her brother. These are the people who most of the time dictate her decisions for her. In the first scene of the play involving Ophelia, her lines are not many in number or lengthy by any means. This is because Polonius and Laertes spend the bulk of the scene instructing her. Both men discourage her from trusting Hamlet’s love. Laertes says, “His greatness weighed, his will is not his own. For he himself is subject to his birth.” (1.3.17­18) Laertes is saying that Hamlet cannot be devoted to her because his focus has to be on Denmark as the heir to the throne. He also tells her to protect her virginity, which is a very authoritative statement and possibly

an uncomfortable command to receive from your brother. Polonius in the same scene after Laertes leaves forbids Ophelia from seeing Hamlet again, telling her Hamlet may walk with a “larger tether”(125) than she, meaning her standards are stricter than his and that she cannot partake in his lifestyle. It is now impossible for Ophelia to remain obedient to her father and be true to her love, Hamlet. In act 3, Ophelia proves this by lying to Hamlet about her father’s whereabouts in a spy trap Claudius and Polonius set up with her. Hamlet recognizes he is under surveillance and ultimately tells Ophelia he is cutting her off. Ophelia loses her lover Hamlet because of the decision to be obedient to Polonius, which ironically, is a similar obedience Hamlet has for his own father. Being a woman, Ophelia is held to a different standard than the men around her which doesn’t allow her to express herself the way they can based on emotion. Hamlet plays insanity in a tactic to eventually get revenge, while Laertes storms the castle on motives to avenge his fathers death. Ophelia, however, must remain relatively passive. The rejection of her lover and murder of her father causes insurmountable feelings of anger, stress, and frustration, and with no avenue for these feelings to escape, she must keep them boiling inside. Eventually, she starts taking these inner frustrations and sorrows out on herself. Upon act 4, both Hamlet and Ophelia are fatherless from murder, but these similar circumstances do not call for similar reactions. It would be absurd for Ophelia to seek revenge as Hamlet has for the his father. This is Laertes’s role as he declares, “only I’ll be revenged most thoroughly for my father.” (4.5.135­136). Being a man, avenging his father is expected, while Ophelia’s expectations require her

to remain static on the case even though her feelings for her father are just as intense as her brother. At this point with the return of Laertes, Ophelia has already boiled over into insanity. Being habituated to the non independent lifestyle subject to the commands of the men around her, she is at a loss when that authority has essentially disappeared. Her father is dead, her brother is away at school, and Hamlet is being exported to England for killing Polonius. Hijacked of this independency, Ophelia inevitably is led to her own destruction with no turning back. Up to this point Ophelia was reserved, only speaking a few lines, and mainly those lines were in response to a man. After being instructed to stay away from Hamlet in act 1, she simply responds to end the scene, “I shall obey, my lord.”(1.4.136). After her madness ensued, she almost seems liberated from her reserves, and leads the stage. In Act 4, she is the focus of the stage in scene 5. She sings without embarrassment, says what she is thinking and feels, and everyone listens to her. Unfortunately, though everyone is listening, they are not understanding what she is expressing, only associating her songs and words with her madness. Additionally, Ophelia’s madness can be last traced, but not limited to, the death of her father. Most of her songs of madness refer to her father, like in act 4, scene 5, “ Sings. Larded with sweet flowers, which bewept to the grave did go with true­love showers.”(4.5.36­39) meaning she has been crying over the death of her father. In one song Ophelia refers to Hamlet saying, “Quoth she, before you tumbled me, you promised me to wed.” meaning Hamlet promised to marry her if she came to bed with him, but the following few lines, “So would I ha’ done, by yonder sun, an thou hadst not

come to my bed.”(4.5.62­65) show Hamlet’s deceitful double standard where he says he would’ve married her if she wouldn’t have come to his bed. Accustomed to the precept that she must be fully obedient to her father Polonius, Ophelia is torn when he commands her to stay away from her lover, Hamlet. This inner strife erodes her mind because she cannot express these conflicting emotions to anyone. Instead, because of the differences between an honorable lady and an upstanding man of this time period, Ophelia is expected to remain neutral on the events in her life, even after her father is murdered by Hamlet, whom she once loved. Being habituated to the men in her life commanding most of her decisions, Ophelia is on a path of ruin when these men essentially disappear (Polonius her father is dead, Laertes her brother is overseas, and Hamlet is on his way to England). Accordingly, the bottled feelings inside her having no reserve any longer, release out all at once, causing her complete fundamental change and obvious insanity. Had Ophelia disobeyed her father and given herself to her lover Hamlet, her fathers death may have never occurred, for Hamlet was driven into blinding anger when he was betrayed by her, losing the last person he had to trust. Though a minor character, Ophelia’s impact is a powerful one. Her madness was inevitable and reflective of the situation women of her time were often in, being subject to the male dominance which prevailed. Equality amongst men and women is important, for a double standard is an impossible one to operate within whilst maintaining a healthy sanity.