Ophelia’s Madness: Critical Sources

Shakespeare

________ uses the character of Ophelia to critique the gender roles that existed in Elizabethan times and to affirm the double standards that were conceived about the responsibility and emotional sensitivity of each gender.

Ophelia

________ is controlled by the men around her throughout the plot, she does not seem to have a sense of life beyond functioning around her father, brother, or Hamlet.

Hamlet

________ is portrayed throughout the plot as intelligent and calculating, and while he goes through a period of grief at the loss of his father and beloved, he never suffers actual madness or is seen as a madman to be strapped into a straitjacket.