What does Ophelia's drowning symbolize?

Ophelia's drowning is the consummate representation of an eternal retreat into the feminine, trading an individual voice for eternal silence in union with feminine essence. In turn, her death expresses the danger of reducing an individual to his or her gender and disregarding the voice of the marginalized.


Who describes Ophelia's drowning?

SARAH: Gertrude offers two different visions here of Ophelia singing as she sinks into the water — the first is of someone unaware of her life-threatening danger, and seems to convey Ophelia's actual state. After all, the young woman has gone mad, and apparently did nothing to try and escape her watery death.

What was Ophelia doing when she drowned?

She accidentally drowned after falling into a brook while hanging a garland on a tree branch. She drowned herself by jumping into a brook and weighing herself down with branches, stones, and flowers.


What does Ophelia symbolize in Hamlet?

Q: What does Ophelia represent in Hamlet? Ophelia represents femininity in Hamlet. Hamlet acts out his aggression toward his mother on her, which finally leads to her madness.

What caused Ophelia to drown?

Had she the license to think for herself, Ophelia might have reasoned through her dilemma, but, caught as she is between her father's and brother's restrictive instructions and Hamlet's crushing demands, trapped as she is in a choice-less existence, Ophelia has no alternative but to throw herself into the river to ...


Ophelia Analysis



Why is Ophelia in the water?

Gertrude describes how Ophelia fell into the river while picking flowers and slowly drowned, singing all the while.

Why is Ophelia's death the most tragic?

Unlike the other characters in the play, Ophelia died from loving too much, being too innocent, and too pure. She died because of her virtues, while others perished because of their faults. She did nothing wrong, but so many wrongs were dealt to her.

What is Ophelia's syndrome?

Background: Ophelia's syndrome is the association of Hodgkin's Lymphoma and memory loss, coined by Dr. Carr in 1982, while it's most remembered for the eponym in reminiscence of Shakespeare's character, Dr.


What mental illness does Ophelia have?

Clinically speaking, Ophelia's behavior and appearance are characteristic of the malady the Elizabethans would have diagnosed as female love-melancholy, or erotomania.

What does Ophelia's madness and death symbolize?

The significance of Ophelia's madness is to signify her losing two of the most important men in her life, Polonius and Hamlet.

What does Ophelia give out before her death?

Ophelia uses flowers as symbols of her deep sorrow and grief. She is very upset because her father, Polonius, has just been killed by Hamlet. Being a sensitive and intelligent young woman, Ophelia needs to express herself, and she does so by passing out flowers to the court in her seeming mad state of mind.


Was Ophelia pregnant in Hamlet?

Laertes must have been clued in to Ophelia's pregnancy. Polonius inadvertently admits to such a claim. Polonius's knowledge is revealed when Hamlet discloses that he knows Ophelia, his lady love might be pregnant. Check out the words that Hamlet uses when he confronts Polonious.

What is the controversy surrounding Ophelia's death?

They argue whether Ophelia should be buried in the churchyard since her death looks like a suicide. According to religious doctrine, suicides may not receive Christian burial.

How would you describe Ophelia's death?

Her apparent suicide denotes a desire to take control of her life for once. Ophelia's death is, arguably, an honorable one, characterized by her willingness to let go of her submissive, earth-bound self and leave the world no longer a victim.


What is Ophelia's tragic flaw in Hamlet?

Tragic flaw: Ophelia has no control over her mind, body, and relationships, she doesn't think for herself.

What is Ophelia obsessed with?

However, the explicit sexual references in Ophelia's songs perhaps account for her obsession with the now absent Hamlet, as in “promising his love” to her earlier in the play and then being scorned, she is doubly heartbroken alongside the death of her father.

Who is the child at the end of Ophelia?

Naomi Watts plays Gertrude and Mechtild, and the two characters are sisters. Mechtild was considered a witch because she had a miscarriage. The death of her baby was thought to be the work of the devil, and so she was to be burned at the stake. Interestingly, the child was Claudius'.


Why does Hamlet reject Ophelia?

Hamlet is cruel to Ophelia because he has transferred his anger at Gertrude's marriage to Claudius onto Ophelia. In fact, Hamlet's words suggest that he transfers his rage and disgust for his mother onto all women. He says to Ophelia, “God has given you one face and you make yourselves another.

What is the message of Ophelia?

In the painting, Ophelia is surrounded by colorful flowers and plants, symbols of life and continuity, and her body seems to be one with the water; this signifies the concept of returning to the earth when one dies.

Is Ophelia Hamlet's daughter?

Ophelia, daughter of Polonius, sister to Laertes, and rejected lover of Hamlet in William Shakespeare's tragedy Hamlet.


What are the two possible causes of Ophelia's death?

She is also the daughter of Polonius and sister of Laertes. The death of Ophelia is questioned due to different accounts regarding the circumstances of her death. Her death could be either interpreted as an accident or suicide.

What flowers was Ophelia holding when she died?

A red poppy floats near Ophelia's hand, a symbol of sleep and death. Despite her saying that there were no violets, we can see she wears a necklace of them. Fritillary, symbols of sorrow, also appear. In Act 4, Scene 5 we hear Queen Gertrude's description of Ophelia's death.

Did Hamlet love Ophelia?

After Ophelia's death in the gravedigger scene, Hamlet reconfirms his love for Ophelia stating that he had always loved her and says after finding out that she's dead that “Forty thousand brothers, could not, with all their quantity of love, make up my sum.”


Does Hamlet have a mental illness?

The interpretation which best fits the evidence best is that Hamlet was suffering from an acute depressive illness, with some obsessional features. He could not make a firm resolve to act. In Shakespeare's time there was no concept of acute depressive illness, although melancholy was well known.

Are Hamlet and Ophelia a couple or not?

She is the daughter of Polonius, the sister of Laertes, and up until the beginning of the play's events, she has also been romantically involved with Hamlet. Ophelia's relationships with these men restrict her agency and eventually lead to her death.