I need to start with some context. (And a bit of a personal revelation.) Last fall, something happened to me that has only happened a few times in my life: I formed a remarkably personal bond and a deep affection for a character I was portraying onstage. (Or, in this unique case, over Zoom. On zoom? I’m not familiar with Zoom theatre terms quite yet.) Although, admittedly, this time, I wasn’t expecting to form such an attachment, because I was portraying a character about whom the world has already formed quite a firm, negative opinion about.
I’m talking about Ophelia.
Now, I know that as you just read that last sentence, you probably rolled your eyes and thought “oh no, she’s the one who drowns herself for love, ‘too much of water hast thou” and all that jazz. Classic Shakespeare.
But it’s not. It’s not “classic Shakespeare”, because Shakespeare didn’t write flimsy female characters. If you go out and pick any one female character in any Shakespeare play, you’ll quickly find that no matter her fate, she almost always will have agency and substance.
Back in high school, a girl once tried to convince me that Shakespeare wrote terrible female characters. When I tried to protest, she simply said (rather condescendingly, I might add): “honey, let me introduce you to Ophelia”. At the time, I couldn’t think of a way to argue. Looking back on it, I definitely could have brought up Portia or Beatrice or Viola as a counterpoint, but I must have just assumed I couldn’t dispute any claim of Ophelia being a weak character, because at that point in time, I still believed in the image of her that is generally accepted by the public.
Of course, this incident is just one example of being too quick to present Ophelia as the epitome of weak female figures. She is the reference that people point to when comparing contemporary female characters to their more archaic counterparts. The mere mention of her name brings up images of a watery grave, of a death so romanticized by Pre-Raphaelite artists like Millais and Waterhouse, that society now associates Ophelia with dying for love. It became all too easy to paint her as a classic Arthurian damsel-in-distress, a sort of Elaine of Astolat figure, who drowns herself when she is rejected by the man she loves.
But that’s not what happens.
Ophelia’s character development is a lot more nuanced. I’ll admit, when I first received the part, I was a bit apprehensive, and anticipated a struggle ahead of me, a struggle to find any piece of this girl that I could identify with. But as I started to read through her scenes, I realized that the canon Ophelia and the Ophelia often represented in popular culture are two very different women. When we first meet her, she is a spirited, loving young woman, who exchanges in lighthearted sibling banter with Laertes, and endearingly teases her aging father, Polonius. Even after Hamlet viciously rejects her with the famous “get thee to a nunnery” speech, she does not lose her gumption. During the “play within a play”, Hamlet directs vulgar, taunting comments towards her, and Ophelia refuses to stand for it, refusing his advances and later criticizing his disruptive (and frankly irritating) narration of the play being performed for the court. This is the last time we see Ophelia before her famous mad scene — we never actually see the moment where she begins to lose her wits. This proves that the catalyst for her madness is, in fact, the moment when Hamlet murders Polonius a few scenes later, proving once again that her fate is not fueled by Hamlet’s rejection, rather her grief over the death of a beloved family member.
The stark contrast between the Ophelia we meet in the beginning of Act I and the Ophelia in her final appearance in Act IV, is what makes her story so tragic. She is not a weak character, per se. She is an idealistic yet vulnerable young girl who is greatly misused by the man she loves, and must eventually live to experience the death of her beloved father at the hands of that same man. Her madness does not signify weakness; it is the tragic result of Hamlet’s cruelty. She does not kill herself for love. She does not go mad when Hamlet tells her he doesn’t love her. She goes mad after her father is murdered. Read anything about Hamlet, whether it’s basic synopsis or detailed analysis, and you will see that the generally accepted fact is that Ophelia’s madness is caused by the murder of her father. Her ultimate death is not suicide, either. It was not her choice to end her life, which, again, adds to the tragedy of her story. Ophelia did not want to die. In her madness, she loses control of her senses, and falls into the river where she was climbing a tree.
After spending half my life in love with the works of Shakespeare, and conversing with fellow Bard aficionados, I find that when Ophelia is brought up in conversation, most people cringe and express their gratitude that we just “don’t see characters like her anymore”—and for a time, I felt that way too. But after truly getting to know her last fall, I discovered that she is a far more complex and intriguing woman than anyone ever gives her credit for. As a result of the frequent aestheticization of her death, combined with modern society’s obsession with just one kind of “strong” female character, Ophelia has been repeatedly dismissed by scholars, actors, and Shakespeare fans alike. But you only have to delve into the words that Shakespeare wrote for her, and analyze her circumstances and her fate, to truly understand that there is a lot more to this woman than just her watery grave. Sometimes I’m convinced that this is truly the hill I will die on: Shakespeare didn’t write flimsy female characters. And Ophelia is no exception.
