Hamlet
Prompt #12 · Hamlet
Prompt Type: Character Arc
Ophelia transforms from an obedient daughter who follows Polonius's commands to reject Hamlet's affections into a mad, tragic figure distributing flowers and singing fragmented songs. Analyze how Shakespeare uses Ophelia's descent into madness to critique the patriarchal structures that destroy her agency and identity. Explain how it contributes to the meaning of the work as a whole.
Quote 1
“At such a time I’ll loose my daughter to him. / Be you and I behind an arras then, / Mark the encounter.”
Act II, Scene 2
Argument
Early in Ophelia's arc, this quote establishes her baseline as a passive object controlled by patriarchal authority—Polonius literally uses the verb 'loose' to describe releasing her like an animal, reducing her to a tool in male schemes and demonstrating the complete absence of agency that will ultimately destroy her.
Quote 2
“There's rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray love, remember. And there is pansies, that's for thoughts.”
Act IV, Scene 5
Argument
At the turning point of Ophelia's descent into madness, the symbolic flower distribution represents her fragmented identity—each flower's meaning (rosemary for remembrance, pansies for thoughts) reveals how patriarchal trauma has shattered her coherent self into disconnected symbols, transforming obedient silence into chaotic, coded speech.
Quote 3
“There is a willow grows aslant a brook, / That shows his hoary leaves in the glassy stream. / There with fantastic garlands did she make / Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples, / That liberal shepherds give a grosser name, / But our cold maids do dead men’s fingers call them.”
Act IV, Scene 7
Argument
In Ophelia's final state, Gertrude's description of her death uses lush natural imagery to aestheticize her drowning with 'fantastic garlands' and flowers, critiquing how patriarchal society romanticizes the destruction of women it has driven to madness rather than acknowledging its complicity in her tragedy.
Quote 4
Act IV, Scene 5
Argument
During Ophelia's madness, this self-reflective statement reveals her awareness of identity fragmentation—the juxtaposition between 'what we are' and 'what we may be' demonstrates how patriarchal control has severed her from any stable sense of self, leaving her unable to reconcile her obedient past with her shattered present.
Quote 5
“Her clothes spread wide, / And mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up, / Which time she chaunted snatches of old tunes, / As one incapable of her own distress, / Or like a creature native and indued / Unto that element.”
Act IV, Scene 7
Argument
In the final stage of Ophelia's arc, Gertrude's description of her singing 'snatches of old tunes' while drowning, 'incapable of her own distress,' reveals how patriarchal destruction has rendered Ophelia so dissociated from her own suffering that she cannot even recognize her death, critiquing a system that has so thoroughly erased her agency she becomes 'native' to her own annihilation.