It's easy to feel sorry for Ophelia. Or, more unkindly, it's easy to feel contempt for her. It is hard to identify with her, especially when Hamlet suffuses all of her scenes—Hamlet, who's so easy to project onto that nobody can even agree on his core personality traits. It's easy to limit Ophelia to Hamlet's Ophelia. Things happen to Ophelia like things happen to a duck left among foxes. You could argue that Hamlet's equally helpless. Maybe he realizes that he's trapped in a play, for example, and he knows that he has no agency. Maybe his depression prevents him from either forgetting his father or deposing Claudius. Sure, but theoretically—physically—Hamlet could have helped himself [1]. Nobody forced him to stage the play. Nobody guided his sword through Polonius' body. I can identify with Hamlet's helplessness; even in the most miserable straits I know that I can always lift a finger to help myself. I hadn't identified with Ophelia becaus...
and sometimes writes about it