Gertrude's Ophelia Essay

The frequent portrayal of women as inferior beings throughout the history of literature has sparked much heated debate, especially among feminist literary critics. Despite the prevailing view of Shakespeare’s character Ophelia as a fragile, subservient character, she possesses inherent emotional and intellectual complexity that has been suppressed by familial and societal obligations. A victim of patriarchal oppression and rejection, Ophelia is, in truth, a multi-dimensional figure displaying the intellectual and emotional intricacies of womanhood when confronted with the burdens of society.
It seems on the surface that Ophelia is a simple-minded, easily dominated girl. Upon cursory examination, like other women in Shakespearean literature,
Underneath the constraints of her father’s control, she is able to think independently and reasonably; she exhibits this cognitive potential through the flowers which she distributes during her madness. “Rosemary for remembrance, pansies for thought...fennel for memory, columbine for folly, rue for mortality, the daisy for her innocence, and the withered violets for her modesty now transformed to shame” (Mancoff). Ophelia’s knowledge of these symbolic meanings exposes her reflective and intelligent nature. Interestingly, she gives both Gertrude and herself rue, symbolic of sorrow and repentance; she also gives Gertrude a daisy, representing innocence. Thus she acknowledges Gertrude’s adultery as regretful but sees her ultimately as innocent. Ophelia assigns rosemary to Hamlet, emblematic of remembrance, because of her undying love for him. She gives pansies to Laertes, representing thought; this gesture is reflective of his previous thoughts on Hamlet’s love for her. Giving Claudius fennel and columbine, Ophelia implies her opinion on his adultery and faithlessness; by the meanings of these flowers (memory and folly) she conveys her disapproving view of his infidelity. Whether the distribution of flowers occurred purely in Ophelia’s imagination or in actuality, her designations of symbolic flowers to various characters reveal her mental intricacy as well as