Male oppression of Ophelia in HamletIn The Tragedy of Hamlet, Shakespeare developed the story of Prince Hamlet and the murder of his father by the king's brother , Claudius. Hamlet reacted to this event with an internal battle that harmed everyone around him. Ophelia was the character most affected by Hamlet's feigned and real madness: she first lost her father, her reason, then her life. Ophelia, obedient, weak-willed and without a feminist role model, deserves the most pity of all the characters in the play. At the beginning of the play, Hamlet and Ophelia appeared as lovers going through a period of turbulence. Hamlet had just returned from his studies in Saxony and discovered that his mother had quickly remarried her deceased husband's brother, which seriously upset him. Hamlet was sincerely devoted to the idea of ​​loyalty to lineage and sought revenge upon learning that Claudius had killed his father. Ophelia, although it seems that her relationship with Hamlet is in the developing or finalizing stage, has become the first choice as a decoy for Hamlet. Laertes inadvertently opened Ophelia to this role when he spoke with Ophelia about Hamlet before leaving for France. He allowed Polonius to discover Hamlet's courtship of Ophelia, which led to Polonius' misguided attempts to care for Ophelia and obey the king's order to find the root of Hamlet's problems. Ophelia, placed in the middle against her will, obeyed the orders of her father and brother with little disagreement. The only time she argued was when Laertes advised her against making decisions inconsistent with the expectations of Elizabethan women. Ophelia tells him, in her most daring lines of the play: "But, my good brother, ...... middle of paper ...... She had lost her father and her lover while her brother was gone for school, and she was no longer useful as a puppet in a larger scheme Ophelia was displaced, an Elizabethan woman without the men she had been taught to depend on. Therein lies the problem: she lacked independence so much that she could not continue to live without it. Ophelia's loneliness led to her madness and death. The form of her death was the only ending that suited her: she drowned. in a nearby river, falling beneath the fresh waters She finally found peace in her crazy world. This is why Ophelia is so useful as a classic feminist study - it evokes the imagery of the fragile beauty that women have. are meant to become, but shows what happens to women when they submit as such Works Cited: Shakespeare, William Ed. David Bevington New York: Longman.., 1997.