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Ophelia's role in hamlet
Characterization of women in shakespeare's
Roles of ophelia in hamlet
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[…] Blasted with ecstasy…” (3.1.151/162). As a result of this innocence and ignorance, Ophelia is easily manipulated by others for their own purposes. An example of this, is when her father, Polonius, sends Ophelia to have an “accidental meeting” with Hamlet in an attempt to understand his sudden change of character, “at such a time I’ll loose my daughter to him…” (2.2.160). Since Ophelia is often not in control of her choices and how she is allowed to interact with others, there is an element of dehumanization which surrounds her.
Ophelia has captured Hamlet’s love and is also in love with him herself. Hamlet constantly mistreats and deceives her, took her innocence, and eventually leaves her even though he promised that he would marry her. Ophelia is constantly a victim of Hamlet and his treatment of going back and forth between his strong love for her and harsh words towards her; he is constantly using her as a tool to get what he wants. In Act 3, Scene 1, Lines 113 – 117, Hamlet states to Ophelia: “Ay, truly, for the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the force of honesty can translate beauty into his likeness. This was sometime a paradox, but now the time gives it proof.
Ophelia’s character went through quite a large transformation. In the play her father tells her that she is to stay away from Hamlet and she readily agrees. In the movie Ophelia doesn’t disagree with her father but she also doesn’t agree just to please him. This shows that Ophelia isn’t easily persuaded, even by her own father. Despite her father’s warning about Hamlet, Ophelia met with him in secret at her apartment until her father found out.
That does not help the fact that Ophelia needs guidance and wisdom. Her father never her gave that to her during his lifetime. He was so infatuated with making sure his children do not mess up his agenda, that he totally threw their needs as humans to the side. Ophelia never learned how to cope with struggles that come up during one’s lifetime. Ophelia also lets her relationship with hamlet dictate her self worth.
When they are aware of Hamlet’s feelings towards Ophelia they are convinced that he would just use her for her virginity then break her heart. Ophelia is torn because she is sure in her heart that Hamlet loves her, even though she could never be his wife. Being raised with just men in her life she has no idea how to go about dealing with Hamlet and his mixed feelings. Ophelia starts to go mad dealing with the problem of choosing between her father’s wishes and her true
The scene opens up within a room in Polonius’s house, where Laertes is getting ready to depart back to Paris. But before he leaves, he decides to give his sister, Ophelia, some advice about her relationship with Prince Hamlet. He basically tells her that she may be in love now, and maybe he is also, but she should be wary of his social status and how he might have to marry someone else for the sake of the state. Not only that, but that she must also be wary of Hamlet as a whole. After all, he's worried that Hamlet might take advantage of her, so he warns her not to have any sort of sexual contact with him, or else, she will suffer the consequences.
Sometimes in life people do not portray things how the really mean to. Sometimes people treat the people they truly love harshly. Sort of like how in the play of Hamlet, Hamlet acts like he does not really love Ophelia. But, in the tragedy of Hamlet, the protagonist, Hamlet, really did love Ophelia. This can be seen through his actions toward her before he found out about his father’s death being a murder, pretending to be crazy simply to prove to the king and Polonius, and by his actions after Ophelia 's death.
Misogyny, by definition, is the dislike towards women for a particular motive. In William Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet, Shakespeare elucidates his misogynistic tendencies through the characters in the play—particularly Hamlet. The role of women in Hamlet is little short of misogynistic as Hamlet consistently displays throughout the play evidence of misogynistic behavior through his views of women being cruel, adulterous, and frail. Fundamentally, there are merely two female characters in Hamlet; Ophelia and Gertrude. Though Ophelia does not intend on wounding Hamlet emotionally, she does so for being submissive to her father which conforms to the misogynistic attitude of women being powerless and pathetic as Ophelia is under control by
In “Hamlet” William Shakespeare uses the character Ophelia to get to the men around her. She’s portrayed as a weak, trusting woman that tells her father and brother everything. They see her as a virtuous, unsuspecting, loyal daughter. Hamlet sees her differently. He sees her as an object, easily disposable.
Saying this, Hamlet’s behavior towards Ophelia is crude, rough, and full of anger. Despite Hamlet’s harsh treatment towards Ophelia, he really did love her, but because she was not his main focus, the
In act 3 Ophelia respectfully attempts to return Hamlet's gifts back to him, Hamlet; however, just laughs at her and asks if she is ‘"honest’", showing complete disrespect for Ophelia. This is a blatant act of verbal violence against Ophelia because she is attempting to be respectful to ‘"lord”’ Hamlet, but like Laertes he objectifies her by focusing on her virginity (Ham. III.I.102,103). Here Shakespeare exhibits Hamlet’s complete unappreciation and disrespect for Ophelia by displaying the verbal swords that devalued her as a human being and caused her death. Shakespeare then has Hamlet continue his verbal attack by admitting he “lov’d her not”, displaying that the amount cruelty Hamlet forced Ophelia to undergo was very potent (Ham. III.i.115).
Ophelia was another character in the story that has lost her mind because of her father’s death. She was mad and acting like crazy and this madness has caused her several psychological damages. There is a reflection of the traditional social crises in the play; for example, Horatio sees the ghost that feared him and understood that it is not a good sign because he believed that if the dead are not at peace that means the country is threatened and in danger. The powerful view of this play is when Shakespeare uses the character Hamlet to show the complicated works of the mind, and how someone should use trickery idea in order to mislead others to get to the realism.
This provokes him to say that god gives women one face, but they use make up to paint on another one. This quote suggest that Hamlet sees woman as naive and gullible creatures, as he sees Ophelia as nothing but an object that is owned by her father, as she is helping him with all of his dirty work. Hamlet believes that woman cannot be trusted as they have are deceiving. He also sees Ophelia as a grown women who is unable to make her own decisions. Hamlet is utterly disgusted by how feeble Ophelia is as she was following her father's scheme.
As a young woman of the 1600’s Ophelia is most likely unaware of the patriarchy that shadows above her. “I do not know my lord, what should I think?”. Ophelia is so unsure about her affair with Hamlet that she
Hamlet does not value Ophelia 's feelings he belittles her. In Hamlets defense this is the way he was brought up to treat women, during that time this was a common way to treat a women. Even though in today 's society it is not at all ok to treat women with such disrespect. He also likes for everything to go as planned and this may result in why he can not have a stable relationship with a woman. This also causes him to have many stumbling blocks in his life that causes some emotional pain