The nunnery scene is important because it reveals a great deal about Hamlet's character. It is one of the best instances in which readers may find themselves torn between Hamlet's assertion that he's pretending to be mad and the possibility that he may actually be mad.
Meaning of 'Get thee to a nunnery'
Hamlet's misogyny goes further. “Nunnery” was an Elizabethan slang term for a brothel. That makes his suggestion that she should get herself to a nunnery doubly offensive. On the one hand he is telling her to preserve her virtue and on the other suggesting that she should overindulge.
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.
Aware that they are being watched, Hamlet stages his own response and argues that he gave her nothing and that he has never loved her. He tells her to go to a nunnery, assaulting her with another double entendre insult.
A nunnery is a group of buildings in which a community of nuns live together. [old-fashioned] Synonyms: convent, house, abbey, monastery More Synonyms of nunnery.
Hamlet seems to know that Ophelia is helping her dad spy on him, and he accuses her (and all women) of being a "breeder of sinners" and orders Ophelia to a "nunnery" (3.1.
Act 5 Scene 2 - The tragic climax
As they fight, Gertrude drinks the poisoned wine that Claudius had intended for Hamlet and dies.
While she lives in the same patriarchal society that demands that she subjugate herself to her father and her brother until she is married, Ophelia has fallen in love with Prince Hamlet. There is strong evidence that she has even had sexual relations with him.
To a nunnery, go. There are overtones here of the slang meaning of 'nunnery' as 'whorehouse,' but primarily Hamlet consigns Ophelia to a life of pious chastity. Yet in effect, he is murdering Ophelia, and starting her on the path to suicide.
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.
Why does Hamlet repeatedly say to Ophelia, "Get thee to a nunnery"? He views the world, people, and especially woman as hopelessly corrupt.
-Hamlet tells Ophelia to go to a nunnery meaning to become a nun to protect herself from all men because they suck at first and then he realizes that they are being spied on so he tells her to go to a nunnery meaning a wh0re house. -Before this conversation, Ophelia and Horatio were the only people Hamlet could trust.
'To be, or not to be: that is the question'.
Arguably the most famous quotation in the whole of Hamlet, this line begins one of Hamlet's darkest and most philosophical soliloquies.
HAMLET: Get thee to a nunnery! Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me.
Throughout the entire play, Hamlet's love for Ophelia is questioned. What Hamlet is really doing is trying to throw off the other characters and make it seem like he does not love Ophelia, even though he really does. Hamlet did not want Ophelia to become involved in case Claudius decided to get revenge on Hamlet.
Background: Ophelia's syndrome is the association of Hodgkin's Lymphoma and memory loss, coined by Dr. Carr in 1982, while it's most remembered for the eponym in reminiscence of Shakespeare's character, Dr.
Introduction: The association between memory loss and Hodgkin's lymphoma has been given the eponym of Ophelia syndrome, in memory of Shakespeare's character in The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.
Some see Ophelia's death as an accident; others see it as a suicide resulting from the accumulation of a series of unfortunate events: her rejection by her boyfriend, her father's murder, and her possible pregnancy.
The Mystery of Death
In the aftermath of his father's murder, Hamlet is obsessed with the idea of death, and over the course of the play he considers death from a great many perspectives.
Act 4 Scene 6 of Hamlet is one of the shortest scenes in the play, yet it is important because the contents of Hamlet's letter to Horatio thicken the plot.
The first half of this scene, written in colloquial prose, is the longest comic sequence in Hamlet and serves as a dramatic contrast to what follows.
Her frailty and innocence work against her as she cannot cope with the unfolding of one traumatic event after another. Ophelia's darling Hamlet causes all her emotional pain throughout the play, and when his hate is responsible for her father's death, she has endured all that she is capable of enduring and goes insane.
Tragic flaw: Ophelia has no control over her mind, body, and relationships, she doesn't think for herself.
During an angry tirade against Ophelia, Hamlet blames his madness on women, particularly on what he sees as women's habit of disguising themselves with make-up and feminine behavior. Hamlet often struggles with the difficulty of separating disguises from reality, but he also seems obsessed with female sexuality.