Feminism of Ophelia in Play “Hamlet”

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Feminism is always a big problem in our society, today we are living a society that mostly is governed by men, we can barely imagine what a women dominated society would look like, we have fought gender equality for centuries, clearly we would never have in today’s society without looking at novels or films. In either Shakespeare’s novel, play or film, it always left us that men are powerful and supreme, that women’s impressions being submissive or being weak.
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The novel hamlet has strong theme that reflects feminism in today’s world.
In the beginning of the play, Ophelia was showing her love toward Hamlet. In Act I, scene iii, when her brother and father try to convince her of Hamlet’s bad intent, she seems focus on how honorable and convincing he had appeared to be in his declarations of love. Ophelia is convinced of his good intentions and tries to convince her father. When her father tells her she is foolish to believe Hamlet, Ophelia says that his declarations of love were in an ‘honorable fashion’.

When her father still expresses disbelief, she tries to convince him by telling him of the ‘holy vows of heaven’ which ‘ countenance to his speech’.
In Act III, scene i, she says that she had ‘sucked the honey of his musicked vows.’ The verb ‘sucked’ is active, indicating that she was not passively receiving his vows of love. Ophelia loved to hear the sweetness of his loving words and she wanted him to tell her that he loved her.
She kept remembrances of Hamlet’s; letters with ‘words of so sweet breath composed’. She cherished the love letters he sent her and kept them as mementos. However, Ophelia does not love him enough to go against her father wishes, so at the end of Act I, scene iii, she promises her father that she will discourage Hamlet’s affections and she states in Act II, scene i, that she has ‘repelled his letters and denied his access to her.’
Hamlet’s feigned insanity frightens Ophelia away. In Act II, scene i, Ophelia reports to her father about the recent encounter she has had with Hamlet. She says he looked as though he had been ‘loosed out of hell to speak of horrors’ and that she ‘truly did fear it’. His seeming insanity and rudeness basically strangles any love Ophelia had for him. In Act III, scene I, she returns remembrances of his, for ‘their perfume has been lost’. The importance of his letters to her becomes naught when ‘givers prove unkind’. Though Ophelia has been ordered by her father to await Hamlet, within the text of the play he does not tell her to give back these once cherished items or to explain to Hamlet how they were once important to her. She does not want his love anymore and is letting him know how she feels. She calls herself ‘most deject and wretched’. Apparently spurned by Hamlet, she feels unhappy about the loss of his love.

Lola Hayes

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