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Perhaps the most descriptive sexualization of Ophelia is when Gertrude describes her dead body as “mermaid-like” (4.7. 201) with “her clothes spread wide” (4.7. 200). Describing her clothes as “spread-wide” is especially suggestive, as to reference the act of removing clothing before sex.
Ophelia, spurned by her lover and abandoned by the absence of her brother and the death of her father, is driven mad and drowns. Moreover, the portrayal of a woman in various stages of incurring madness stems from a fascination with the concept of victimized womanhood itself.
In Hamlet, through the oppression of men Ophelia loses her voice and becomes objectified as a seuxal object. The men define Ophelia's values through constant banter, leading up to her not being able to form opinions of her own. The sexual harassment defines what makes Ophelia and causes her to become a sexual object.
She is a naïve girl who wants to please both her father and her boyfriend Hamlet. She behaves innocently and is not trying to use her feminine nature to deceive or control a man as Hamlet suspected. Ophelia is loyal to her father and brother who raised her.
Q: What does Ophelia represent in Hamlet? Ophelia represents femininity in Hamlet. Hamlet acts out his aggression toward his mother on her, which finally leads to her madness.
Hamlet is cruel to Ophelia because he has transferred his anger at Gertrude's marriage to Claudius onto Ophelia. In fact, Hamlet's words suggest that he transfers his rage and disgust for his mother onto all women.
Hamlet's sexually objectifies Ophelia when he asks her if he can lie on her lap (Act 3, scene 2, 105). This behavior is Hamlet's attempt to transfer his frustrations about his mother. Hamlet reconfirms his sincere love for Ophelia at her death bed.
As Ophelia has become an image of femininity, most often realized as a fragile and powerless maid with few words beyond “I shall obey, my lord” (I. III. 19) and rarely imaged as a woman in control of her own choices, with her own agenda, she has come to embody this virgin/villain dichotomy.
Hamlet's attitude toward women is notoriously sexist and stems from his disgust at his mother's sexuality and seeming unfaithfulness to his dead father. This outlook eventually spills over to include all women, especially the hapless Ophelia, who has virtually no power or control, even over her own body.
She has followed her father and brother's power unconsciously since her childhood. Also, Ophelia can never feel her love; her love, as her life, has been forbidden by the males. Power of patriarchy steals her pure love from her like her life and victimizes her for the sake of canons of society.
Victim of fate
At the beginning of “Hamlet” by William Shakespeare, the young prince Hamlet is clearly the victim of a tragic fate. He has recently lost his father and must now watch as his mother remarries after only a few weeks - to his uncle.
Hamlet uses Ophelia for his own personal gain, he toys with her emotions by making to seem as though she is the cause of his madness. Hamlet emotionally abuses Ophelia with no regard for her psychological well-being.
On the stage, Ophelia was costumed in virginal white to contrast with Hamlet's scholarly black, and in her mad scene she entered with dishevelled hair, singing bawdy songs, and giving away her flowers, symbolically deflowering herself. Drowning, too, was a symbolically feminine death.
Ophelia is a character in Hamlet who is shown to be diagnosed with the mental illness “Schizophrenia”. Her diagnosis within the first acts of the play is weak, however, her mental illness reaches its peak in act 4, as a cluster of schizophrenia's symptoms are shown.
Women such as Ophelia lack female tradition, thus possess no identity other than the one molded for them by dominant male characters. By looking at Hamlet through the feminist lens, Ophelia is seen as a tragic figure whose identity is completely lost when male dominance no longer controls her actions.
Ophelia was very obedient to her father, and well-loved by many characters. She was very sweet to everyone and had an innocent personality. However, she was very compliant and did everything her father asked of her. When he told her to stop seeing Hamlet, she did so.
Hamlet “assigns many contemptuous terms to women, such as 'whore,' 'drab,' 'strumpet,' 'bawd,' 'harlot,' etc. What underlies this gender hatred is a revelation of his self-negation and self-hatred” (De-yan 94).
One moment he says 'I did love you once', the next 'I loved you not'. He goes on to insult Ophelia and tells her to go to a nunnery. He tells her that this will be the best place for her and, by being a nun, Ophelia won't have children and produce wicked men like his uncle.
What has changed him? Hamlet treats Ophelia cruelly because he believes that she is being more loyal to her father than to their love. He no longer loves her because she has betrayed him, just like his mother. Why does Hamlet say to Ophelia, "Get thee to a nunnery"?
Hamlet acts mad in order to manipulate Ophelia into believing he is gone crazy. Hamlet planned to create a dominos effect that would start with Ophelia thinking he has gone mad which would lead her to pass this information onto Polonius further passing it onto Claudius.
By this point, Ophelia would be well aware of her pregnancy, and well aware that she would soon begin to show outward signs of it.
Ophelia's pose—her open arms and upwards gaze—also resembles traditional portrayals of saints or martyrs, but has also been interpreted as erotic. The painting is known for its depiction of the detailed flora of the river and the riverbank, stressing the patterns of growth and decay in a natural ecosystem.
Ophelia gained the character of an invalid as a result of her insanity, and the intrinsic passivity of her death intensifies her sensuality. She lay still in the water like a mermaid, wearing a flowy white gown, entirely at the mercy of the onlooker's gaze.
In the play Hamlet, written by William Shakespeare, Ophelia, the daughter of Polonius and the love interest of Hamlet, is depicted as a young and beautiful woman who is innocent, virtuous, and loyal. Ophelia is the innocent victim in Hamlet and the specific attributes that she has lead to her tragic death.