Hamlet Character Profiles: Ophelia

When Polonius banned her from seeing Hamlet I thought that Hamlet and Ophelia’s love would be similar to that of Romeo and Juliet, that they would secretly love each other. Sadly this was not the case. While Ophelia loves Hamlet and Hamlet loves Ophelia, Ophelia can not bring herself to disobey her father for her love. Also when Hamlet goes to see her and does not speak to her I think Ophelia believes that Hamlet never did love her.

Hamlet obviously did love her. He tries to hide it by telling her he did not but this is more to convince himself of that fact then to convince her. Hamlet tries to deal with the pain of losing Ophelia by denying he ever loved her. However at Ophelia’s funeral Hamlet’s outburst that he “lov’d Ophelia” forty thousand times as much as Laertes shows how much he did in fact care.

Hamlet believes that Ophelia is breaking up with him while Ophelia believes Hamlet is breaking up with her. This is understandable since Ophelia can not see Hamlet due to Polonius’s order. Since Hamlet stops seeing Ophelia he must believe that she no longer loves him. In response Hamlet breaks up with Ophelia which starts Ophelia on her trail into madness. In this way I think that Ophelia’s madness is at least partly her own fault.

She is too submissive to Polonius. She agrees to easily with him telling her not to see Hamlet. Perhaps if she had continued to see Hamlet he would not have broken up with her. She stops seeing Hamlet and then wonders why Hamlet is so mean to her. Obviously this is Hamlet’s mistake, he should just let Ophelia go and he can not. This also shows that he loved Ophelia but his rudeness and insults toward Ophelia make Ophelia think he did not love her.

If Ophelia had not agreed with Polonius and had continued seeing Hamlet, or even tried to get Hamlet’s advice she may not have gone mad. Polonius’s death only furthers Ophelia’s madness. She is already wracked by grief from losing Hamlet and then Hamlet kills her father. While her suicide is rather sudden it is not surprising. The man she loved tells her he hates her and kills her father. That would definitely drive me over the edge. The problem with her suicide is that she is crazy and I wonder if she understood what she was doing.

Hamlet ponders over whether or not to kill himself for quite a while. Ophelia on the other hand leaps from a tree and floats down the river which seems to me to be erratic behavior. Did Ophelia really mean to kill herself? If so it was probably spur of the moment, not preplanned or meditated upon. I wonder if Ophelia simply decided to go for a swim. In her decreased mental state I would certainly not put it past her. While she was definitely insane it is hard to say whether she meant to kill herself or if it was merely a by product of her mental state.

Based on Ophelia’s acceptance of Polonius’s orders she probably was not particularly strong willed to begin with and it is more then likely that with her mental state crippled she decided to take a swim more then she decided that she was going to die. It is interesting that Ophelia is so weak willed in this story. Once again this makes her character stand out among those who have the will to go around killing each other somewhat callously.

Ophelia and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are the only characters which just seem to accept things as they are placed in front of them. Since all these characters die perhaps there is something symbolic in this. Those that placidly agree, that do not fight back are killed by those who possess strong wills and are willing to do anything to achieve there ends.