What was Ophelia's role in the play
'Hamlet'? or,
What impression of Ophelia do you
have from your reading Ham let?
Ophelia,
daughter of Polonius and Laertes's sister, embodies the romantic notion of
womanhood: she is beautiful, sweet, industrious and gentle. She possesses more
of the qualities of heart than of the
head. Although she appears but rarely in the play, and though half the time she
is distracted, yet her influence is felt throughout the play. Her purity and
innocence are a welcome relief amidst
the worldliness, the intrigue and the corruption which is a marked feature of
the Danish court and of those connected with it.
Childlike
and innocent, and unlike her father and brother, Ophelia possesses no knowledge
of the world or of its wickedness, as her father has wisely kept her apart from
the corrupting influences of court life.
There is no cunning, no deceit, and even no coyness about her. she is frank and
noble. she has fallen in love with Hamlet, and he with her, and she devotes
herself heart and soul, to her lover without making any efforts to conceal her
love. But when her brother and father
lecture her on the impossibility of this love and her foolishness, she bows to their authority and
withdraws. Thus the only fault of her
character is that she is too docile and timid. She seems to have no personality of her own, Following the
advice of her father she shows Hamlet
his letters and by his command rejects further advances from the Prince. She
even allows herself to be used as a decoy so that the Prince's secrets may be
discovered.
Ophelia's
love for Hamlet is profound and sincere. She "suck'd the honey of his
music vows", and his madness makes her, "of ladies most deject and
wretched". Yet her love is not such as could have brought Hamlet strength and comfort. She does
not understand his crisis and so could
never have been a source of strength to him.
Hamlet's "madness" first confuses
her; then it wounds and terrifies her. Although she reveals an intelligence in
her conversations with Laertes and Polonius, and her behaviour at "the
play-within-play", she is completely unable to comprehend the treachery of
the court and the complex behaviour of Hamlet.
Direct, Iffiest and trusting, Ophelia is a
pathetic figure. The deceitful intrigues which surround her, combined with the
sudden death of her beloved father, throw her into a state of madness.
Ophelia's drowning, described by the Queen as an accident resulting from her
distraught behaviour, is sometimes thought to have been the suicide of an
innocent, unworldly maiden who can no longer cope with the complexity of her
life. There is little factual proof for this latter interpretation of her
death.
0 Comments