What happens to Ophelia?

[ElephantsAndMiasmas]

Ok, slightly strange question maybe, but every time I see/read bits of Hamlet, it strikes me that Ophelia's role/story is always left to one side. She goes "mad" and that's that, apparently. Such gems as "Ophelia herself is not as important as her representation of the dual nature of women in the play." really get my goat. What actually happens to her?

Last time I saw it it seemed pretty obvious that Hamlet has either slept with her or raped her and got her pregnant, and then refused to marry her. Is there a consensus on this, or anything good I could read about her or other female characters in Shakespeare?

Thinking about that, there's no reason for picking plants off the riverbanks specifically - it's more likely they were filtering stuff through the reed beds. That would be really dangerous for a child working with a heavy load. I did read the contemporaneous report of the drowned girl, though, and it said she was picking flowers.

Oh, that's really sad. And of course his son Hamnet drowned.

Ah, didn't know about that - have just read up. No wonder the story moved him.

LRD - crucial to this fascinating debate, I know - the play was set in Denmark??

haven't read Hamlet but feel like an expert now. Particularly because of 'late in life gap year goth'

Yes, Pan, why? I dunno if he had that clear an idea what 'Denmark' was though.

sal, are you a bit of a Hamletta yourself then?

In the Lutherian section above you place the play in Germany. Rookie error and I had my big red pen out.

Yes, I did! Sorry Pan ... I did think that was a weird question. I meant Hamlet's at uni in Germany.

Shall I hand over my faux credentials now?

Simply can't comment LRD through sheer ignorance but am finding the thread fascinating.

I did Hamlet for 'O' level - at a boys grammar school in the 70's - we didn't cover the anal rape angle. Funny that.

I can't imagine the anal sex angle getting much coverage at our Irish convent, either, Pan.

Ha!

Oh, oh, still nothing about Ophelia's role, but I just found this top answer about Denmark. Here's half of it:

For much the same reason MAS*H was set in the Korean War.

Hamlet didn't have as much to say about English politics as say Henry V did, but there was some stuff in there that could be controversial given the times. Setting a play in another country or an earlier time period, however, allows the author to comment about politics in their own time and place with more freedom.

I cite MAS*H because much of it was a condemnation of the Vietnam war. However, condemning the Vietnam war was tricky business. You risked angering viewers, having network censors nix your plotlines, jumping the gun on events that later turn out not to be so clear-cut, etc. But if you set the show during a previous war (the Korean conflict), then you can condemn the horrors of that war as a way of condemning the horrors of the current one.

The rest of the answer is on Wikipedia (an old Nordic legend with British parallels)

Sadly, I googled "anal sex in Shakespeare's plays" and got nothing.

Maybe if we repost in Chat in a few days?

If anybody googles that phrase now, LRD, they'll end up on this thread

Ah yes and Dante, when mooning over Beatrice, is a cheating, whiny-ass, ineffectual patheticums who should either say something or get over it.

Thanks for that excellent addition to my vocabulary, Elephants!
Patheticums. Rolls off the tongue, dripping contempt

garlic - great, I can see the A Level essays now: 'Hamlet is a play where the hero is called a patheticums, which in the English they spoke back then means he had anal sex with lots of men, in Germany. There was also Ophelia, who died. And something about Elephants.'

elephants Nooooooo! You hate all the people I like! Actually I don't like Dante but I do like Virgil. If we're going to hate men in fiction, can we put forward anything Dickens ever wrote? None of the women characters are ever more than cardboard cutouts.

Truly ROFLing at that, LRD!

Agree generally re Dickens, LRD, but I've just read Our Mutual Friend and would like to put in a word for Bella Wilfer, who starts off as a shallow girly but grows up and becomes a decent believable human being; she also has a very close and touching relationship with her father.

Dickens also has some decent female characters who are young or old - they are all a bit caricatured but then so are most of his men. He was clearly one of those Victorians who went all mushy over a certain type of Innocent Young Woman, a la the ghastly Dora in David Copperfield and various other identikit types.

At least dickens has the grace to castigate himself (in the person opf Copperfield) for going overboard for the appalling Dora types. There are very wise young women in his novels (the daughter of the man with whom Copperifeld stays while studying, and despite her saccahrine(sp) goodness the young woman whe gets smallpox in Bleak House. The trouble is that their wisdom is in the service of a concept of virtue that is basically about serving men -- often by protecting them from their own stupidity.

For that reason, you can feel quite glad of the ice maiden in Great Expectations -- because she alone has been taught to withhold from men. The trouble of course is that that independence is represented only as sterility and loss: she isn't given the chance to go anywhere with it.

Ok ... maybe I should give Dickens another try. I got put off quite young.
Sorry elephants - back to Shakespeare!