Welcome my Darling readers to this week’s Femme Fatale Friday!   I have decided to discuss the topic of Ophelia, the female lead of Shakespeare’s Hamlet.    In particular, I want to discuss her as a Gothic-style heroine!   I have already done a video on this subject, which I will link to at the bottom of this post.

Ophelia is the daughter of Polonius in the play.    She is a childhood sweetheart of sorts to Hamlet.   When the play begins Hamlet is returned home after his father’s death to find out that his uncle has married his mother and become King of Denmark in the time he has been away.   This distracted him from paying any mind to Ophelia, often ignoring her attempts to nurture him.

Hamlet is so invested in his hatred of and obsession with his uncle’s perceived treachery that it becomes all-encompassing for him.   This is when he fully pushed Ophelia away, using the words “get thee to a nunnery.”   It is heartbreaking for Ophelia to feel she is losing the man she loves and not long after she experiences the loss of her father when he is killed.   She is often portrayed as a tragic figure that was so delicate and far too weak to endure the ravages of the pit of vipers that was the Court of Denmark at the time.

I personally see that as an oversimplification of a character that has much more complexity than most readers and viewers would ever give her credit for.   Ophelia is very loving and nurturing.   She is the only woman in her household and therefore is very capable of running a house and caring for her family.   This should have put her in an ideal position to be a well-suited bride for Prince Hamlet as he returned home.   It is the circumstances that get in the way of her fulfilling her potential.

Hamlet is far too focused on his mission to get revenge upon his uncle for killing his father, especially after seeing his father’s ghost, to understand that he has a support system that can help him.   While his mother may be under the thumb of his uncle, Ophelia is on Hamlet’s side and would have happily helped him in any way he needed.   Instead, she endures multiple traumas, her father’s death, being rejected ultimately by Hamlet, and all-in-all the feeling of being cast aside.   It is in this mindset that we see Ophelia become utterly dejected and lose all hope.   That is when we have her tragic mad scene, where she sings a sad song while picking flowers before drowning herself!   She is possibly the only truly sympathetic character in the whole play, as she is not on a quest for vengeance, a murderer, or in a marriage to a murderer.   All of this shows that she has many of the markers of the classic Gothic heroine.   She is a tortured figure, who becomes an orphan and spirals into madness.   We do see these same things occur to several Gothic heroines.   In many ways, she was a character far ahead of her time, as the Gothic Romance genre would not truly exist until the end of the eighteenth century!    

In the modern age, we did get a book that retold the Hamlet play from the perspective of Ophelia herself.   This would also become a quite beautiful film starring Daisy Ridley as Ophelia.    I did like that in that version we get to see Ophelia get an ending that she deserved!   As a bonus, the film chose to largely style Ophelia in the way she is painted by Waterhouse, as is seen in the picture above, which made me enjoy the film even more! I do highly recommend reading the book and watching the film.    I hope that you have enjoyed this short overview of my thoughts about Ophelia being a Gothic-style heroine.   What do you think of Ophelia?   Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!

Note on Image: The image at the top of the post is one of John William Waterhouse’s paintings of Ophelia.   I found the image on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ophelia_(John_William_Waterhouse).

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Further Reading/Watching

• The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark by William Shakespeare
• Ophelia by Lisa Klein
• Ophelia (2018) 
• https://youtu.be/6ld9cIsmRUk