Hamlet who is ophelia

Ophelia is a passive character, mainly silent, that wants to be active. She breaks her silence when madness strikes her, and her words reveal a lot about the play. This is a transcript from the video series How to Read and Understand Shakespeare. Watch it now, on Wondrium. This scene sums up how Ophelia is always treated by men of her life and how she obeys as a daughter. Like Juliet, Ophelia cannot find a way out of the prison her world has become. When she agrees to help Claudius and Polonius find out why Hamlet pretends to be mad, she chooses the side of her father against her beloved.

They both know that her father is hiding behind the curtain. Learn more about staging Hamlet. Hamlet is disappointed by the women around him: his mother has married the murderer of his father, and his beloved is conspiring against him.

He accuses her of changing the face that God has given her, like other women, and treats her brutally. Shakespeare always has the appearance versus reality theme in his plays, and this is another realization of it. From the creators of SparkNotes, something better. Literature Poetry Lit Terms Shakescleare. Download this LitChart! Teachers and parents! Struggling with distance learning? Our Teacher Edition on Hamlet can help.

Themes All Themes. Symbols All Symbols. Theme Wheel. Everything you need for every book you read. The way the content is organized and presented is seamlessly smooth, innovative, and comprehensive. Understand every line of Hamlet. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:. Act 3, Scene 1 Quotes.

Related Characters: Hamlet speaker , Ophelia. Related Themes: Action and Inaction. Page Number and Citation : 3.

Explanation and Analysis:. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance. Act 1, Scene 2. Claudius delivers a long monologue in which he laments the Act 1, Scene 3. After Laertes leaves, Polonius asks Ophelia what her brother told her.

Ophelia tells him that Laertes gave her some advice about Act 2, Scene 1. Just as Reynaldo exits to board a ship to France, Ophelia enters looking pale and in a state of fright. To her father and brother, Ophelia is the eternal virgin, the vessel of morality whose purpose is to be a dutiful wife and steadfast mother. To Hamlet, she is a sexual object, a corrupt and deceitful lover. With no mother to guide her, she has no way of deciphering the contradictory expectations.

Just like Hamlet, the medieval precept that the father's word is unquestionable governs Ophelia. But her Renaissance sense of romantic love also rules her. How can she be obedient to her father and true to her love?

When she lies to Hamlet and tells him that Polonius is home when he is concealed in the room eavesdropping, Ophelia proves she cannot live in both worlds. She has chosen one, and her choice seals her fate.

The dilemma also forces her into madness.