How Does Ophelia Treat Women In Hamlet

In the Shakespeare play Hamlet, many of the male characters treat the female characters poorly. But in all the play, no female character receives treatment as poorly as Ophelia. Ophelia is treated as a possession by her father Polonius as well as other characters in the play, her main love interest Hamlet uses her to aid in his revenge plans, and the current societal norms place restraints on Ophelia's freedoms and prohibit her ability to break free of the men surrounding her. But is all of this mistreatment just misguided love and support for Ophelia, or are the abusive male characters of the play acting intentionally?

First, Ophelia is treated poorly by her father Polonius, and other powerful characters in the play. Polonius treats Ophelia

At the beginning of the play, Hamlet is quite caring and affectionate towards Ophelia. But as the play progresses and Hamlet starts to become more delusional in his quest for revenge, he starts to manipulate Ophelia in order to use her as a pawn in his plan and disregards her well-being in the process. A good example of this is in act 3 scene 1 when Hamlet says, “I did love you once”. Hamlet originally starts out by saying that he used to love Ophelia. This action gives Ophelia, who does love Hamlet, hope that if he loved her in the past, he could love her again in the future. But suddenly only 4 lines later, Hamlet switches and says “You should not have believed me, for virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it. I loved you not”. What Hamlet means when he says this is that Ophelia was a fool for thinking that Hamlet ever loved her. Hamlet knows that Ophelia loves him, so she is willing to try to win him over by whatever means possible. When Hamlet switches up what he is saying fast, he adds urgency to the situation because now Ophelia thinks that she is losing the chance to win Hamlet back. So, if she wants him to love her again, she must act fast and do whatever he says, thus allowing him to use her in his plot of revenge. Hamlet's mistreatment of Ophelia clearly shows how he is acting intentionally, he is intentionally messing with her in order to get her to help him.

When Hamlet was written in the early 1600’s women didn’t have many rights, and while some did work, they were generally only seen as being good for working around the house and making babies. In Hamlet and many other Shakespeare plays this is very well represented by the male characters. A great example of this is when Hamlet says “To a nunnery, go, and quickly too. Farewell.”(3.1.6). A nunnery is a place where only nuns live, so when Hamlet tells her to go there, he wants her to go to a secluded place where she can't have any children. Hamlet disregards that she might not want to go away to a nunnery and become a nun because he objectifies her, he views her as a bad item that needs to go to the trash bin that is the nunnery. The idea of social norms influencing how characters interact with Ophelia is cemented when Hamlet later says “I have heard of your paintings too, well enough. God has given you one face and you make yourselves another. You jig and amble, and you lisp, you nickname God’s creatures and make your wantonness your ignorance.” (3.1.6). Here, Hamlet is making fun of Ophelia for doing girly things because he, like many other people, has no respect for women, he only sees Ophelia as an object for men to