How does shakespeare present ophelia assignment

Gertrude speaks to Ophelia with love and affection that seems very genuine, “ And for your part, Ophelia, I do wish that your good beauties be the happy cause of Hamlet’s wildness: so shall I hope your virtues will bring him to his wonted way again, to both your honours. ” This shows that she has a care for Ophelia but it more so shows her care for Hamlet, but then the idea of Gertrude feeling motherly feelings toward Ophelia is seen in the lines, “ I hoped thou shouldst have been my Hamlet’s wife; I thought thy bride-bed to have deck’d, sweet maid, and not have strew’d thy grave. This shows her previous hopes for Hamlet and Ophelia’s relationship. Ophelia’s madness sets her free, she is able to speak in a lewd and outrageous fashion and very often in song. She speaks of things that have affected the play previously and more so about the possibility of an illicit relationship between her and Hamlet, “ How should I your true love know From another one? By his cockle hat and staff, And his sandal shoon. ” This is one of her songs that she sings to Gertrude once she has gone mad with grief from her father’s death. Which is also sung about by Ophelia; He is dead and gone, lady, He is dead and gone; At his head a grass-green turf, At his heels a stone. ” These songs are her personal views on the previous events in the play, she sings the bawdy songs to illustrate her feelings to Hamlet and how their previous relationship could have been illicit and how Hamlet mistreated her. Then there are songs more about her father’s death and her speech regarding the various plants she gives to people, “ There’s a daisy: I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died: they say he made a good end”

This is the last we see of Ophelia until her very idealized death, she is returned by Shakespeare to a state of innocence and femininity. Her death is entwined with nature from the, “ fantastic garlands” of “ Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples,” to how it is the breaking of a branch that causes her to fall into the river. It is made to sound a quite devastating death even describing the brook as “ weeping,” this shows the effect it may have on some of the other characters, though it’s also seen as natural as her falling in the water was described like, “ like a creature native and indued. Her death is where characters namely Hamlet and Laertes start to argue over who can grieve most and best with lines such as, “ I loved Ophelia: forty thousand brothers Could not, with all their quantity of love, Make up my sum. What wilt thou do for her? ” This shows even in death Ophelia is just a tool for the men in her life to get back at each other. The fact is Shakespearian audiences would view males’ treatment of Ophelia as if it were the done thing, she is to be seen and not heard, post Womens Rights audiences would view it as unusual and probably abusive.