My relation to Shakespeare’s longest play Hamlet is nothing short of turbulent. After high school, my teenage ego told me that I knew everything there was to know about the play. After studying it in university, I realised that, in fact, I know nothing. The problem may be that as with most Shakespearean plays, when you peel back the layers, you just find more.
But it’s not really the eponymous tragic hero that I want to peel back the layers to. For all his long winded monologues, Hamlet’s presence at front and centre stage is expected, and therefore, not so interesting to me. I’m more allured by that demure woman who mostly lurks in the shadows of the off-stage, with garlands of wildflowers in her hair and brook water dripping off her clothes. I speak, of course, of Ophelia.
Ophelia lacks the fire of her Shakesperean female peers. She doesn’t have Juliet’s defiance, Portia’s ingenuity, nor Helena’s obsession. Instead, Ophelia seems to serve two primary purposes – to support Hamlet’s role as protagonist, and later, to play the part of ‘Shakespearean fool’ when she goes mad.
But her limited role is not of her own doing. Time and again, Shakespeare gags Ophelia, offering her a meagre 58 lines throughout the play, and having the male characters Hamlet, her brother Laertes, and father Polonius brutally mansplain her own feelings to her. We see this when she tries to explain her relationship with Hamlet to Polonius:
OPHELIA
He hath, my lord, of late made many tenders
Of his affection to me.
LORD POLONIUS
Affection, pah! You speak like a green girl
Unsifted in such perilous circumstance.
Do you believe his ‘tenders,’ as you call them?
(1.3.8-12)
Here, Ophelia’s subjectivity is ignored, and she is understood figuratively as a naive “green girl”. She is constantly cast into metaphor by the men around her as a “Nymph” (3.1.97), “a baby” (1.3.14), and “rose of May” (4.5.181). Perhaps it is because Ophelia is not given space to redefine who she is that we are forever stuck with the image of her as a tragic, pitiful ingénue who drowns at the end of Hamlet – epitomised by Sir John Everett Millais in his painting, Ophelia.
Part of the intrigue of Ophelia is that she doesn’t resist these figurative identities. In fact, she embraces them with open arms. Take Ophelia’s response to Laertes after he advises her to stay out of Hamlet’s way:
LAERTES
Farewell, Ophelia, and remember well
What I have said to you.
OPHELIA
’Tis in my memory locked,
And you yourself shall keep the key of it.
(1.3.90-93)
Ophelia is quick to judge that her brother sees her as nothing more than an empty vessel to influence, and she claims this objectification proudly by turning her own mind into a figurative element – something to be locked and unlocked with a key. She does this again in the same scene, “I shall the effect of this good lesson keep/ As watchman to my heart” (1.3.49-50). Ophelia’s quietly confident acceptance of the figurative identities cast onto her by others offers us clues into her self-awareness. She knows she has been denied a sense of subjectivity all her life. And so, she’s developed mastery over the figurative. Ophelia’s ability to manipulate figurative language therefore becomes her strength, and her power. We see this in full force towards the end of the play. When her father Polonius is murdered by Hamlet, Ophelia goes mad and begins handing flowers to the members of the king’s court:
OPHELIA
There’s fennel for you, and columbines.
There’s rue for you, and here’s some for me; we
may call it herb of grace o’ Sundays. You must wear
your rue with a difference. There’s a daisy. I would
give you some violets, but they withered all when
my father died. They say he made a good end.
(4.5.204-209)
Though there are no explicit stage directions to mark who receives which flower, symbolism provides clues. Fennel and columbine go to King Claudius as insulting symbols of infidelity and deceit. To Queen Gertrude, Ophelia offers rue, a symbol of sorrow and repentance, which must be worn “with a difference” by the queen for they reveal her carnal lust. Ophelia cannot offer violets to anyone as there is no faithfulness or fidelity in this court.
And with that, Ophelia, the demure, weak, oblivious tragic heroine has exacted a striking blow of revenge. Her vengeance is subtle; as a woman she cannot hack Hamlet to pieces with a poisoned sword. Still, through artful rhetoric – her use of figurative language – Ophelia does great damage, exposing the deceitfulness of the play’s leading characters in front of witnesses.
We’ve only peeled back some layers. There are so many more ways to read Shakespeare’s most misunderstood tragic heroine. But for me, I like the readings where Ophelia is not only a docile victim of her own sexuality. I like the readings where she is a conscious political player making the most in her patriarchal world. I like the readings where she has power.
