The description though does allow us to understand why she killed herself. The description of the self made rope is very phallic and can be interpreted that she was giving her virginity to nature by symbolically having sex with it. The ?long purples / That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,?? are symbolic of a penis (V.i.169-70). Ophelia is trying to get a penis inside of her, but does not actually understand where exactly to put it. She makes a rope out of the long purples, drapes them on her, and has them lying all around her. She wants nature to take it, do it, and get rid of the thing that has driven her insane. She wanted to get rid of her virginity so that she could die peacefully.
Society has a way of making young girls feel like being a woman is bad, but being a prude women is worse. Ophelia was stuck in the middle with no where to go. There was no one to take her virginity because the one person she could give it to denied her. Everyone else around her died protecting it or abandoned her. She had no other alternative than to simulate giving it away to the one thing that would not reject her, nature.
It is amazing how people react when someone dies. All of a sudden, they are the best person that ever lived. At Ophelia?s funeral, everyone is complementing her and wishing that she were still alive. The Queen says:
Sweets to the sweet, farewell!
I hop?d 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. (V.i.244-7)
Wait a minute; is this the same woman who watched Ophelia kill herself? After a person is dead, everyone who is left honors that person for his or her presence on earth. Is it possible that the Queen truly meant her touching final good-bye. Was it just done for appearance sake? The Queen acted too viscous previously to be sincere in her final farewell. She denied her help in her final moments, and constantly viewed her as competition for her son?s love. Now that she is dead, the Queen can say anything she wants to suppress the guilt she feels, but it will not change the fact that Ophelia is dead. She throws flowers on Ophelia?s casket in order for her to buried with them. In a sense, she is trying to give Ophelia back the innocence that she knows she took and denied of her when she was alive. This demonstrates the Queen?s over pouring gilt for her actions.
Laertes feels immense sadness for his sister?s death because now he is all alone and only has Hamlet to blame. He is overwhelmed with emotion and jumps into the grave to get one final embrace. When he jumps in, he destroys all of the virginity that the Queen tried to give back to her. This represents a man?s point of view that no women is virtuous. Although he is expressing his love for her, at the same time he is saying he cannot love her if she is a virgin because all women are whores. Men do not know how to love the innocence of a women only the sexual side of her.
In competition for who loved her more, Hamlet charges the scene and jumps in with him. Hamlet says, ?I lov?d Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers / Could not with all their quantity of love / Make up my sum. What wilt thou do for her?? (V.i.269-71) Again, wait a minute, what is wrong with all of these people? They obviously do not understand that they are all the reason she is dead. Now two men are smashing her virginity to bits. Shakespeare is really trying to drive the concept of men not being capable of loving the innocence of a woman when he has both of them fighting on her casket. The Queen just tried to make amends with the soul of this poor girl, and now we see two men fighting over it and at the same time destroying it. While she was alive, no one made a fuss over her virtue. Now that she is dead, they all feel that they loved her more than the others did. If one had only said this to her while she was alive, the pains of adolescence would not have killed her.
In conclusion, Ophelia?s death could have been prevented if an adult would have only conveyed their interest for her while she was alive. If Ophelia would have faced these exact situations as a man, the outcomes would have been different. If she would have been an adult woman, Hamlet?s games to prove all women are whores would have had no effect on her. Adult women know what it means to be a whore, and understand that men sometimes have different perceptions of what exactly that is. They understand how to live in a society of men. The Queen communicates her knowledge of this when she marries a man to keep peace in her kingdom. How ironic it is that Hamlet condemned her for surviving in society that has no respect for women. He did not see her actions as survival; he saw them reinforcing the idea that all women are whores, even mothers. Ophelia?s death is tragic, but could have been prevented even though she was pubescent girl. Society?s outlook of women needs to change, not only for equality, but also for the lives of all the innocent blossoms that long to be flowers. If nature represents a woman, how can they be condemned as whores? Society must change their views. To save the life of one innocent flower only requires attention and love, something Ophelia did not receive.
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