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Replies | Post Reply | Shakespeare Queries From Genuinely Interested Students 4.2.97: Top | Help
I perceived it as Ophelia not being able to deal with death, rejection and influence.
Basically Ophelia was constantly influenced by: Hamlet, Polonius, Laertes, etc (I'm sure you know the details) and to add to the dependance that stems from this Polonius always ensured that she remember her subservience as daughter, sister, woman, less than royal social status all of this would have left her in a not particularly strong psychological state and unable to cope without the control and dominance of her 'betters'.
So, when they all leave her in one form or another she has nothing to cope with and goes mad. As is emphasised in the play she seems to 'bewail' her virginity through her mad outbursts as though she knows she will never marry etc. despite her seemingly semi-conscious state, it is as if she has lost the will to battle on (as Hamlet debates internally in his soliloques and he relates this (vaguely) to madness with his antic disposition).
Ophelia's links with nature (flowers, drowning alone on the creek) tie back to medieval religious perceptions of innocence and women linking to nature (later interprted pagan philosophy) = why she died as she did. She's lost and alone in a world far beyond her innocent experiences, it is filled with death, deceit, violence and confusion, she doesn't have anywhere to turn, so she withdraws to what is safe, innocent and what she knows-
nature. Maybe it also has something to do with not knowing which way to turn in regard to loyalties also.
It's something he Uncle Bill doesn't really elaborate on, maybe to remind us of the ambivalence of 'sanity' and death and of the fact that the world is completely ambiguous.Posted by Sympathiser on May 02, 1997 at 05:04:42
In Reply to "Ophelia, What's her prob?" posted by kumapunk on April 26, 1997 at 10:15:47
Replies | Post Reply | Shakespeare Queries From Genuinely Interested Students 4.2.97: Top | Help