Opehlia, Hamlet

"T' have seen what I have seen, see what I see!"

Never in a Shakespearean tragedy has a female been used and abused than in Hamlet; Ophelia allows herself to be used as a doormat and refuses to speak up even as she is been abused.  When Laertes tries to advise his sister about sex before marriage, Ophelia facetiously replies by saying, “Do not as some ungracious pastors do, show me the steep and thorny way to heaven (1.3.53)”. This gives the reader the impression that Ophelia is quite witty and outspoken.  The reader therefore is shocked and even perplexed when Ophelia completely agrees not to speak and communicate with Hamlet when her father tells her so without putting up a fight of any kind. Yes, she was just been an obedient daughter however she could have still objected in a respectful fashion.

Ophelia’s obedience to her father is remarkable and questionable at the same time. When Polonius plants Ophelia in Hamlet’s way to check if he is mad, directly placing Ophelia in harm’s way; She again fails to say anything knowing very well that Hamlet is mentally unstable and she could be harmed in the process.  She is so obedient and so submissive that she allows her father to literally put words in her mouth.  These very words lead to her physical, emotional, mental and verbal abuse and attack by Hamlet.  Even as she was been thrown around in a hallway and her hair been pulled, even as she was been called a whore and been told to, “ get thee to a nunnery (3.1.131)” she fails to neither confess that the meeting was planned and she is reading a script nor does she call for help.
After the abuse, she is emotional drained and upset; she is left in a state of self-pity and says, “O woe is me. T’ have seen what I have seen, see what I see! (3.1.175)”. 

After Polonius is killed, Ophelia descends in to a state of insanity. The last the reader sees of Ophelia is a mad woman questioning love and singing about death and betrayal.  Queen Gertrude eventually announces to the reader that Ophelia drown; it is left ambivalent whether this untimely death was self inflicted or not. Shakespeare acquaints the reader to Ophelia as witty and outspoken then slowly diminishes her by making her virtues her flaws; strictly speaking by making her obedience her tragic flaw. He then subjects her to greedy misogynist and abusive men leading to her premature downfall.