The penultimate character who uses Ophelia in Hamlet is King Claudius. Although he has minimal interaction with Ophelia throughout the play, the reader is still able to see how Ophelia is a victim as a result of his actions. Much like Polonius, Claudius uses Ophelia to spy on Hamlet. He uses Ophelia to try and uncover what Hamlet is hiding from him. In Act 3, scene 1, Claudius tells Gertrude, “...leave us too / For we have closely sent for Hamlet hither, / That he, as ‘twere by accident, may here / Affront Ophelia” (Shakespeare 136). Claudius is aware of the fact that Hamlet has been sending Ophelia love letters, and that Ophelia only told Polonius about the letters “in obedience” (Shakespeare 94). Claudius willingly participates in a situation where two young people, who are struggling with their emotions for each other, will purposefully run into one another. Claudius does not care for how this interaction will affect Ophelia’s naive and sensitive emotions. He only uses her so that he can gain the information he so badly craves and needs from Hamlet. Finally, the last male figure in Ophelia’s life that mistreats her is the title character, Hamlet. In the beginning of the play, the readers discover that Hamlet has …show more content…
She has been expected to blindly obey and follow anything her father and brother tell her, her father has been using her to get closer to the king, her king has used her to gain information, and her first love has turned against her and gone mad. Ophelia’s madness “...is a natural response...of how someone can be driven mad by having her inner feelings misrepresented, not responded to, or acknowledged only through chastisement and repression.” (Leverenz 300).With the death of her father, Ophelia is no longer bound by an inhibiting power. Ophelia’s madness becomes a gateway for her to escape the constraints that have bound her through her entire