Shakespeare's Hamlet Without Ophelia

Throughout the play, Ophelia is portrayed as the victim of the male characters around her. “Ophelia is very much a pawn to Hamlet and her father […] which ultimately is […] the reason for her suicide she committed later on in the play” (Jacklitsch). Hamlet makes Ophelia believe she is the cause of his madness and treats her as a sexual object rather than the woman he had led her to believe he loved. The manner in which Shakespeare chose to write Ophelia makes it so that there could be the character Hamlet without Ophelia. However, there would be no Ophelia without Hamlet showing her unimportance to the men surrounding her, namely Hamlet. Polonius is the typical 17th century father. He treats Ophelia as his property and expects her to be at his beck and call to do as he says. Ophelia states “I do not know my lord, what I should think.” (1.3.113) She follows in her father’s belief …show more content…
She is passive, loyal, and submissive to all of them despite the fact that she is the queen and therefore superior to all of them, with the exception of Claudius. Gertrude literally states, “I shall obey you” (3.1.41), showing her submissiveness to her husband and again, playing into a woman’s role from the Elizabethan era. Throughout the duration of the play, Hamlet continuously insults his mother calling her names such as a whore. However, Gertrude remains calm, quiet, and never speaks up for herself even though she is his mother and queen. She allows him to do and say whatever he pleases without complaint. However, “since these words are so few throughout the play and so often overshadowed, it is hard to consider her words as a full representation of Gertrude.” (Graf) Since Gertrude only has sixty-nine out of the three-thousand, eight-hundred, thirty-four lines in the whole play one cannot fully understand or know the character, again showing her insignificance to the men surrounding her as well as to the writer