Move over Hamlet, you need a woman to finish the job!

Hamlet is a play strangely centered on the men. Yes there are women, only two though. In the whole play, only two women have any importance. One of the women is Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother and the Queen. The modern audience has a problem with her. We don’t understand how the wife of one man could so readily switch to being the wife of his brother when he dies. Of course, there are a few approaches to why she did this. One: she was having an affair with him anyway. This would make sense as to why she would dump her old husband “wearing the shoes that he bought her to the wedding.” Two: it was normal. Gertrude, being a women, might not have had any idea about the plot and simply married her brother-in-law for security and to keep Hamlet in the castle. In fact, she could have been trying to protect her son. Nevertheless, people today still find it weird.

The other main character that we can address is Ophelia. Personally, I feel for her. You can tell she has a major crush on Hamlet but he father and brother warn her to not like him because they are afraid that he will choose the good of the state over her. I wonder where her mother is in all of this. Her father is a bit of a bumbling man who goes on to stick his nose in business it shouldn’t be stuck in and then get himself killed. And her brother is off to go back to school in France. She has no one who can really guide her, to tell her how to act around Hamlet. How to answer his letters. How to deal with the grief she feels when he pushes her away. But sadly, she is left to her own devices and ends up dead. Many people question her death. Was it suicide or did she simply drown? The only information we have to base our decision off of is her actions before her death and how Gertrude (yes, the other women) describes it.


“There is a willow grows aslant a brook,
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;
There with fantastic garlands did she come
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them:
There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide;
And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up:
Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes;
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and indued
Unto that element: but long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,

Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.”


The passage begins with the image of the willow or commonly known as the weeping willow. The image of the weeping would have gone along with Ophelia’s attitude at this point quiet well. Hamlet was her first love that seemed to reciprocate and now he is either done with her or mad, both horrible thoughts.
Next is the image of the hoar leaves. Hoar means leaves that are covered with a frost. The leaves are masculine, which can refer to Hamlet. His heart has covered with frost, a reason that Ophelia might want to kill herself.
Then Ophelia is seen with a crown of flowers around her head. Is this a biblical image? Does she see herself sacrificing herself ? Does she think that she has mad Hamlet mad as her father suggested once? Or is this a foreshadowing to when Hamlet learns about her death and seems to come out of his madness for a moment. Perhaps she is what helped him to gather his wits and actually do something, causing the dual at the ends and the death but what helps to restore the kingdom again. The whole play has images of the kingdom being foul and rank, a once Garden of Eden gone wrong. Ophelia, with her flowers, embodies the Garden of Eden and helps to set Denmark to order again.
The next part talks of Ophelia wanting to hang the wreath on a suspended bough. But the wording is what trips me up, it says clamoring to hang. She could have wanted to hang the wreath or herself, it could be a reference to her wanting to kill herself.
Lastly, she sings when she is about to die. She falls into the water and sings as her skirts fill with weight and she is pulled under. This is a poetic image. It is an image of her knowing what she was doing. I would like to say that it is also an image of her being a sacrifice for the good of Denmark. Perhaps it is the women that save the kingdom versus the man?
I would like to say that Hamlet was putting on a show before all of this. That it was merely because he was unhappy with his new father. But once he hears of Ophelia’s death, his grief is then translated into madness. Hamlet then acts. He tells Horatio of his plan with the letter in the next scene. And the next scene is where the shit hits the fan. It is Ophelia who pushed Hamlet toward action. It is Ophelia who saves Denmark!