Blog Post #16: Hamlet Blog 4 - Ophelia

For this blog assignment, read Seng's criticism. In the voice of your character, respond to this criticism. Use at least THREE direct quotations from the criticism, and at least FIVE direct quotations from Acts 1-4 to support your position. If your character is Ophelia, pretend that you've come across someone's diary entry about you. If you are another character, respond as though you've been watching the news, or reading a newspaper/magazine.

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My, my. What on earth could have happened to Ophelia? I, for one, would not know. A girl like her could not possibly think to act mad as I have in order to get what she wants. All she has to do is bat her eyelashes and act pretty, "for the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty from what it is to a bawd" (3.1.111).

She truly is a indecent girl, no better than the woman who calls herself my mother. In her supposed madness, it is obvious she is trying to blame me for soiling her innocence, but that is not possible as she had none to begin with! "Let in the maid, that out a maid/Never departed more," she sings (4.5.38). No, it is not I who dirtied her sheets - her dear brother and that fool, Polonius, have already done so with their words. As Seng remarked, "Ophelia's father and brother have had their share in the spoliation of her mind's purity and her child-like trust" (220). Yes, it is Polonius and Laertes who have ruined her with their "groundless slander", if she hadn't already been ruined (Seng 221). 

Ophelia is weak. The others have nothing but pity for her, saying that it is "the poison of deep grief" (4.5.49). But I think differently. Her words carry "but half sense" (4.5.8). I think she is mad because she could not have me; she thinks me dead. Seng states that she believes "Hamlet has been laid to earth by strangers, and without the tribute of [her] true-love tears" (219). True love! What humor. And that is precisely what makes women so weak, so dependent on those they share beds with. Without me, that girl has lost her object of desire. She should have listened to me, who told her, "To a nunnery, go" (3.1.149), but she didn't. Quite ironic in that her father and brother were the ones who told her not to flaunt herself in the first place. 

Seng does bring up an interesting point though, that "the lives of all [of us] seem to have been infected by Claudius' original crime" (227). He believes that this is what Ophelia's songs truly represent, though I would be hesitant on taking it that far. She is but a mere woman, one who could not possibly understand such happenings. But it does seem peculiar when Seng provides a detailed criticism of the song. Perhaps there is something more complex that I am missing, something I must figure out once I return to Denmark.