"Ophelia as a Symbol of Women in the Elizabethan Era"

Savannah Price

Published in Dalton State College's Exemplar Spring 2022

"Ophelia as a Symbol of Women in the Elizabethan Era" by Savannah Price

Ophelia is the ideal woman in Shakespeare’s time: passive, timid, and obedient. Her father and brother constantly warn her of Hamlet’s intentions with her, and, therefore, she must choose between her father and her lover, Hamlet. Ultimately, she obeys her father’s orders, symbolizing the expectation placed on women in the Elizabethan era. Because of this decision, she is a victim of Hamlet’s madness, as he uses her in order to prove his madness to her father, Polonius. Ophelia, who is kept in the dark about Hamlet’s feigned madness, is confused and hurt by Hamlet’s sudden disinterest in her. Not only does she lose her lover to madness, but she also loses her father to Hamlet’s hand. As a result, Ophelia succumbs to madness that eventually results in her death. Her actions during her madness reveal the way Shakespeare views the patriarchal Elizabethan era—things her previously reserved character never would have voiced can be seen in her songs following her father’s death. Shakespeare uses the way Ophelia is treated by the dominant male figures in her life, whether it be her father or her lover, to ultimately lead to her madness and death so that he can parallel the realities of the double-standard based patriarchal society and treatment of women in the Elizabethan era.

Women in the Elizabethan era were expected to be obedient to their fathers, brothers, and husbands, from which they received their social standing by association. Ophelia was at King Claudius’s court as a result of her father’s title as the king’s councillor. Because of her father’s standing with King Claudius, Ophelia is raised in a higher social standing than would be normal for a “common” person like herself (Kemp 30). Though without her father’s title (upon his death) or a husband of title, Ophelia is essentially stripped of her social status. Though this association goes both ways. For example, when Polonius is afraid that Ophelia is entertaining Hamlet’s lustful desires, he warns her to stop, or he will become “a fool” in the eyes of the people at court (1.3.109). While Polonius is not the one who is committing the sin, he knows his daughter’s actions will reflect badly on him. Similarly, women in the Elizabethan era were expected to obey their fathers or husbands. If they chose not to, both fathers and husbands were able to punish their wives or daughters so that their patriarchal authority over their daughter or wife was not questioned by witnesses (Kemp 41-2). Additionally, Elizabethan women were believed to be “by nature fickle and changeable” in their love and fidelity in marriage because of their ability to choose in affairs of love and desire (Kemp 41). Shakespeare mirrors this ideology through Hamlet, who often states that the love of a woman is impulsive and volatile. This belief is rooted in Hamlet’s anger with his mother for remarrying so quickly following his father’s death, but he imposes this idea onto Ophelia as well. When speaking of the brief prologue in the play that Hamlet organized, Ophelia states, “’Tis brief, my lord” to which Hamlet responds with, “As woman’s love” (3.2.140-1). While Hamlet is probably referring to his own mother’s brief remarriage, he also implies that all women possess this same brief ability to love. In other words, Shakespeare uses both Hamlet’s and Polonius’s assertions to symbolize what the class-based Elizabethan ideology of women was.

Ophelia, who loves Hamlet at the opening of the play, is advised by the two dominant male figures in her life to distrust Hamlet’s intentions with her and, in turn, question the feelings she possesses for him. She is anticipated, according to Elizabethan expectations, to obey her father and brother’s wishes. Polonius and Laertes, Ophelia’s brother, continually warn Ophelia of the dangers of losing her maidenhood (virginity). In one instance, Laertes warns Ophelia not to leave her “chaste treasure open / To [Hamlet’s] unmastered importunity” (1.3.30-1). In the Elizabethan era, women’s chastity held a “commercial as well as moral value” that women had to protect if they wished to marry (Lyons 69). Polonius’s constant badgering combined with the way Hamlet treats Ophelia causes her to question and fixate on her own perceptions. Though Ophelia had already been warned by Polonius and Laertes of Hamlet’s false intentions, she still holds hope in their love. When Claudius and Polonius conspire to have Ophelia and Hamlet encounter one another alone, Ophelia is shocked upon hearing that Hamlet “loved [her] not” to which she responds that she “was the more deceived” (3.1.118-9). Ophelia is quite understandably confused on how she could have been so naïve to Hamlet’s intentions for her, and therefore, begins to question her own judgement. Smith similarly asserts that “Ophelia’s faith in love and sincerity is crushed” as a result of Hamlet’s behavior and sudden rejection of her (97). The reader understands that Hamlet’s abuse of Ophelia is a part of his feigned madness, but Ophelia is kept in the dark of Hamlet’s plan (Lawrence 415). Like Ophelia, women of Shakespeare’s time were often deprived of knowledge that was found unsuitable for them to know about (Smith 97-8). For Hamlet, he cannot inform Ophelia of his plan because he knows she is loyal to her father, as she is expected to be, and may expose his fabricated madness. Though Ophelia’s deprivation of knowledge only plays a minor role in Ophelia’s imminent hysteria, her father’s constant badgering largely affects her fall into madness.

Not only does Polonius consistently control his daughter’s life, but he also reinforces a variety of double standards that are also evident in the Elizabethan era. For example, Polonius, who arrives near the end of Laertes’s warning to Ophelia, decides to assert his own distrust in Hamlet by relaying that he has heard rumors of Ophelia spending a questionable amount of time with Hamlet alone. As a result, he cautions Ophelia that being “free and bounteous” makes her seem cheap (1.3.93). This ideology is similar to the way virtue was viewed in Shakespeare’s time (Smith 100). In contrast, moments before telling her this, Polonius sends off Laertes with a long list of hopeful recommendations, one of which being: “To thine own self be true” (1.3.77). Unfortunately, Ophelia never gets the same recommendation from her father as she is, instead, told to be true to her virtue and her female expectations and never told to be true to herself. Despite witnessing her father’s obvious gender-based double standards, she concedes with her father’s wishes as was expected of daughters in the Elizabethan era: “I shall obey, my lord” (1.3.135). In another instance, Polonius explains to Ophelia that Hamlet is allowed to have more free will than she is as he has “a larger tether may he walk / Than may be given [to her]” (1.3.123-4). This can be taken two ways: (1) Hamlet is given more responsibility because he is a future king or (2) Hamlet has a more giving lifestyle because he is a man. Either way, Polonius is enforcing a double standard onto Ophelia by defending Hamlet’s right to practice wanton behavior. This ideology is mirrored in Shakespeare’s time as women were held on tight leashes by their fathers and mothers in order to ensure their commercial value as future wives, while men were encouraged to discover themselves (Kemp 33). The effects of Polonius’s double standards can be seen after his death, in which the mad Ophelia is walking around court singing a song about a maid who is lured to the bed of a man and leaves the next morning no longer a virgin. Smith agrees, asserting that the song is one of “lost virginity and painful double-standard exactly those issues that were the subjects of Laertes and Polonius’ warning” (Smith 98). In other words, Polonius’s warnings are internalized by Ophelia, causing such fears that she fixates on them in her madness as well as the double standards that cloud them.

Shakespeare reflects on the social and cultural issues of his time regarding the treatment of women and daughters through his character Ophelia and her progressive path to madness. These parallels between Hamlet and the Elizabethan era can be seen through Polonius’s role as an overbearing father with an agenda to maintain his daughter’s chastity, the expectation of obedience from a daughter, and the double standards rooted in the expectations of females versus males. Some scholars assert that Ophelia’s song about the maid who loses her virginity to a man who promises marriage reveals that Ophelia is possibly pregnant. Thus, they allege that her hidden pregnancy is what drives her mad especially upon Hamlet’s rejection of her and her father’s continuous concerns with her virtue. Because Shakespeare does not clearly define how intimate the relationship between Hamlet and Ophelia was, Ophelia’s pregnancy could be a possibility. Another implication is that Ophelia may have committed a grief-stricken suicide rather than accidentally falling into the lake as Queen Gertrude claims has happened. If Ophelia’s death was indeed a suicide, Gertrude probably lies in order to provide Ophelia with a proper burial as suicide would have resulted in an unsanctified one. The implications of Hamlet are countless as so much is left up to the reader’s interpretation due to a lack of information, but the parallels between Shakespeare’s time and Hamlet’s Ophelia are undeniable.

Works Cited

Kemp, Theresa D. Women in the Age of Shakespeare. Greenwood, 2010. EBSCOhost, https://search-ebscohost-com.proxygsu-dal1.galileo.usg.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=nlebk&AN=319112&site=eds-live&scope=site&custid=dal1&ebv=EB&ppid=pp_i.

Lawrence, William W. “Ophelia’s Heritage.” The Modern Language Review, vol. 42, no. 4, Modern Humanities Research Association, 1947, pp. 409–16, https://doi.org/10.2307/3716794.

Lyons, Bridget Gellert. “The Iconography of Ophelia.” ELH, vol. 44, no. 1, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977, pp. 60–74, https://doi.org/10.2307/2872526.

Shakespeare, William. “Hamlet.” The Arden Shakespeare, edited by Richard Proudfoot, Ann Thompson, David Kastan, and H.R. Woudhuysen, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021, pp. 345-382.

Smith, Barbara. “Neither Accident nor Intent: Contextualizing the Suicide of Ophelia.” South Atlantic Review, vol. 73, no. 2, South Atlantic Modern Language Association, 2008, pp. 96–112, http://www.jstor.org/stable/27784781.