Ophelia's Portrayal Of Women In Hamlet

Shakespeare 's portrayal of women in Hamlet is unlike his portrayal in Macbeth; nevertheless, they have comparisons later on the plays. Whilst Lady Macbeth (LM) was seen as a strong, ambitious manipulative woman, unafraid of the means to come by her goals. She played with her husband, Macbeth like a puppet; she pressures him to murder, turning him into a puppet in her sly game with her greed for power. Despite huge delay, her corrupt crimes catch up with her conscious, and she is driven to suicide by her remorse.
Ophelia, on the other end of the hand, is an outwardly senseless young girl, all obedient to oblige to the expectations of her father and brother. The clichéd stereotypical woman, who’s submissive and considerate, she goes insane …show more content…
A quote to support this would be ‘I shall the effect of this good lesson to keep as watchman to my heart’. This suggests that she respects his decision and values his choice. She is being polite. The word ‘good’ has connotations of value, precious and rational which is what she is saying Laertes’ words are to her. Some people may view her as submissive as she doesn’t care about her emotions and is allowing him to make the decisions, and complying with his wishes and ideas. The effect this has on the audience is that it makes her sound like she is weak and pathetic as she can’t make her own decision and is agreeing to his instead. It makes her sound like her brother is controlling him and needs him to be there to be her ‘watchman’ so her heart doesn’t break as he’ll be there to support her. She is calling Laertes’ words a ‘watchman’ as ‘watchman’ has connotations of protection, guard and safety which have a warming affect in the audiences mind. Personally, I believe that Ophelia is very weak when she says this. She sounds vulnerable, pitiable and defenseless. We could almost imagine her whispering this line because of how submissive she is. The author has made these choices as she is a stereotypical Shakespearean woman who has these characteristics like Ophelia. It reflects and portrays Ophelia’s character well. However, Shakespeare could have also done this as …show more content…
However a similarity that both Lady Macbeth and Ophelia share is a descent into madness. Lady Macbeth 's reason for her suicide was the lose of control and the distance from her husband, Macbeth, who went on and killed Banquo, even though she was the one who left him both physically and sentimentally without any sensitivity, which would be peculiar in that era. Ophelia on the other hand committed suicide because she lost both her father, Polonius, and her love, Hamlet, rejected her and told her 'get thee to a nunnery '. However, Ophelia was very serene, and calm. Unfortunately, she was on the verge of depression, and she was fatigued,and the only option was to accept death to end her miserable