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 because her situation seems horrible beyond my ability to conceptualize. Yes, I can imagine falling in love with a nice kid only for him to visibly lose his mind and kill everyone I ever cared about (even though none of them did anything to help me anyway). When I try to frame this trauma relative to my experiences, though, Ophelia's pain rises too far off the chart for me to follow her. And it never ends. No hope spot to drive home the darkness by contrast.
This isn't to say that I've experienced my uncle killing my father and marrying my mother. But the failing at the task you thought was your destiny, losing trust in your closest friends, hating yourself for being insufficient, wondering if everyone else is as lost as you are—these resemble my experiences closely enough for me to empathize. They each contain choice. Can Hamlet defeat Claudius with words, not blades? Will he avenge Old Hamlet? Will he kill Rosencrantz and Guildenstern? Will he kill himself? There is no agony without choice, no deliberating soliloquy without options to deliberate between. Even at his worst, Hamlet always has his words.
Ophelia only has mute tears until she doesn't.
Some scholars spent entire papers dissecting her mad songs, but they were lost on me for years. Maybe they still are. I've gone back to read them because they're so opaque, so intentionally obfuscating, yet they must be true. Why would a mad girl lie? "They say the owl was a baker's daughter. Lord, we know what we are, but not what we may be." What does this mean? I've read the legend about the baker's daughter refusing bread to Christ, but what does that mean? Is Ophelia the baker's daughter for refusing to see Hamlet? She knew what Hamlet was, but never predicted that he'd become his later self? But that's not a we. Does she know that she's gone crazy? What good counsel does she refer to when she prepares to leave? The counsel to avoid Hamlet? There's so much here. Every force in the play conspires to keep her quiet, but she uses her most grievous wound—madness—to speak. She doesn't have Hamlet's poetry or intellect. She has ballad scraps and nursery rhymes. These are enough for her to make herself heard.
The older I get, the less certain I am about what I can control. I've gotten better at controlling my immediate surroundings. But can I do anything to prevent bad things from happening to the people I care about? Do I know anything about the world? Have I even begun to attain Horatio's "philosophy"? I'm just someone who speaks without knowing the right words. I don't have Hamlet's polish. I just have the scraps I've managed to gather. Maybe, if they were enough for Ophelia's brief revelation, they can be enough for me too.
[1] He acknowledges this a few times: (1) when he scolds himself after seeing the player weep for Hecuba, (2) when he sees Fortinbras' army, and (3) when he considers that anyone can escape anything by committing suicide. (1) and (2) serve to shame him rather than give him hope. (3) gives him both hope and fear. I'm not sure what to make of it except the entirely unoriginal observation that Hamlet's clearly depressed.
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 because her situation seems horrible beyond my ability to conceptualize. Yes, I can imagine falling in love with a nice kid only for him to visibly lose his mind and kill everyone I ever cared about (even though none of them did anything to help me anyway). When I try to frame this trauma relative to my experiences, though, Ophelia's pain rises too far off the chart for me to follow her. And it never ends. No hope spot to drive home the darkness by contrast.
This isn't to say that I've experienced my uncle killing my father and marrying my mother. But the failing at the task you thought was your destiny, losing trust in your closest friends, hating yourself for being insufficient, wondering if everyone else is as lost as you are—these resemble my experiences closely enough for me to empathize. They each contain choice. Can Hamlet defeat Claudius with words, not blades? Will he avenge Old Hamlet? Will he kill Rosencrantz and Guildenstern? Will he kill himself? There is no agony without choice, no deliberating soliloquy without options to deliberate between. Even at his worst, Hamlet always has his words.
Ophelia only has mute tears until she doesn't.
Some scholars spent entire papers dissecting her mad songs, but they were lost on me for years. Maybe they still are. I've gone back to read them because they're so opaque, so intentionally obfuscating, yet they must be true. Why would a mad girl lie? "They say the owl was a baker's daughter. Lord, we know what we are, but not what we may be." What does this mean? I've read the legend about the baker's daughter refusing bread to Christ, but what does that mean? Is Ophelia the baker's daughter for refusing to see Hamlet? She knew what Hamlet was, but never predicted that he'd become his later self? But that's not a we. Does she know that she's gone crazy? What good counsel does she refer to when she prepares to leave? The counsel to avoid Hamlet? There's so much here. Every force in the play conspires to keep her quiet, but she uses her most grievous wound—madness—to speak. She doesn't have Hamlet's poetry or intellect. She has ballad scraps and nursery rhymes. These are enough for her to make herself heard.
The older I get, the less certain I am about what I can control. I've gotten better at controlling my immediate surroundings. But can I do anything to prevent bad things from happening to the people I care about? Do I know anything about the world? Have I even begun to attain Horatio's "philosophy"? I'm just someone who speaks without knowing the right words. I don't have Hamlet's polish. I just have the scraps I've managed to gather. Maybe, if they were enough for Ophelia's brief revelation, they can be enough for me too.
[1] He acknowledges this a few times: (1) when he scolds himself after seeing the player weep for Hecuba, (2) when he sees Fortinbras' army, and (3) when he considers that anyone can escape anything by committing suicide. (1) and (2) serve to shame him rather than give him hope. (3) gives him both hope and fear. I'm not sure what to make of it except the entirely unoriginal observation that Hamlet's clearly depressed.
Comments
Post a Comment