Differences Between Hamlet And Ophelia

During the 16th century, the idea of women’s rights and equality was a few hundred years away from being an important issue in the world. Women were considered subordinate to men, unquestionably. This idea was believed almost universally, but William Shakespeare reveals through many of his works an unpopular, more progressive opinion. Plays like Othello or The Taming of the Shrew portray certain women, like Emilia or Katherine, as very strong characters who stand up to “more-powerful” men, indicating his protofeministic beliefs. Though the women in Hamlet are not as strong-willed as some of Shakespeare’s other female characters, Shakespeare still expresses the opinion that women are not the “weaker sex,” but in a more subtle way. By comparing …show more content…
Once she loses both Hamlet’s love and her father’s life, she goes mad, losing her ability to think and behave logically and maturely. Unlike Hamlet, Ophelia’s madness manifests itself in a regressive form; she becomes very childlike, singing nonsense songs and picking flowers. She spent her whole life doing what she was told to do, always subordinate to Polonius, Laertes, and Hamlet. She never had any say in her own life; when her father tells her to stop seeing Hamlet, she has no choice but to reply, "I shall obey my Lord" (1.4.10). Likewise, she also had no choice but to obey her father when he wants her to be a pawn he can use to spy on Hamlet. This mistreatment of Ophelia built up throughout her life, and when she lost Hamlet and her father, she lost herself as well, because they always made decisions for her. She was left alone in the world, and this drove her to insanity. She sings about her sadness, telling a story of a girl who was tricked into going to bed with a …show more content…
Ophelia only appears in five scenes out of twenty, but her scenes are so important to the play that it balances out the difference. For instance, Ophelia’s death scene is by far the most dramatic, decorated, and descriptive death in the entire play. It is a very long, poetic scene in which Gertrude describes Ophelia’s final moments, depicting the scenery as a place where “a willow grows aslant a brook that shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream” (4.7.162-163). She continues to describe how Ophelia “fell in the weeping brook” and eventually sank “to muddy death” (4.7.172,180). This final scene is ethereal and beautiful, while also tragic. Hamlet’s death scene, on the other hand, is quick and not special. He dies at the same time as many other characters, including Claudius, Gertrude and Laertes, because of poison. His death scene is not nearly as descriptive as Ophelia’s and does not seem as important because it is drowned out by all the other deaths occurring at the same time. So Ophelia’s lack of stage time balances out because of her important, dramatic final scene in comparison to Hamlet. This is another way in which Shakespeare points out that men and women are not the same, but neither is better. The two characters had an unequal amount of stage time and unequal death scenes, but they balance each