Was Ophelia Ever There At All

Was Ophelia ever really there? I was suddenly struck yesterday that you could easily argue that this picture here, which I had just put up on my recent post about Ophelia because it's mildly interesting looking, gets to a potent point of the absence of the actual Ophelia.

Ophelia allowed her father to control her, then she went mad, and then she died off-stage. Where was Ophelia, and Ophelia's mind and will, in any of this?  It's almost like all there was to her was innocence, maidenhood, death by drowning, and her not being there and in control in any of the crucial moments of her life and death throughout everything we see of her in the play.

 When her father and her brother were around, she submitted her will and her opinions to theirs. When talking with Laertes before he goes away, she listens to his advice, and asks questions that help clarify what he thinks she should think and then when he is finished says, "I shall the effect of this good lesson keep / As watchman to my heart." (Act I, Scene III, ln.45-6 ) Now, this could be just a diplomatic way of listening to her brother and not picking a fight or of respecting his opinion as a man of what another man might be thinking, or it could be that she valued her own thoughts so little that she was willing to adopt someone else's opinion (even if it is the opinion of someone she respects) to completely displace her own ideas about the matter. But when she talks to her father it becomes pretty clear that she is willing to allow him to override her opinions and inclinations. "I do not know, my lord, what I should think," (Act I, Scene III, ln.104 ) she answers him when he asks her if she believes Hamlet when he says something affectionate. He then says "Marry, I'll teach you,"(Act I, Scene III, ln. 105) and proceeds to tell her exactly what to think and do concerning Hamlet. There's something called the Ophelia Syndrome based on Ophelia and this relationship, allowing or wanting somebody else to make your mind for you. This syndrome seems to be exactly the sort of thinking Professor Burton dislikes, seeing as he seems to be administering the suggested treatment to his students.

When her brother is gone though, and her father dies, she goes mad. Hamlet is not being helpful at the time, either, seeing as how he is either mad or pretending to be mad at the time. But it kind of begs the question, does she lose her mind because of shock and grief, or because she already put it away by allowing her father's mind, and to a lesser degree her brother's mind, and perhaps to a lesser still degree to Hamlet's mind, to rule what she thought and what she did. Did her lack of respect towards her own thoughts make them so weak by disuse that when the dominating minds of her father and brother were gone her mind couldn't handle the stress of suddenly being expected to think? Or perhaps was she still mimicking the strongest mind around that she had at one point allowed to influence her, and so she went insane in a weird sort of mimicry of Hamlet's insanity?

Ophelia herself is not present, on-stage, when she dies. We, the audience, hear about her her death through Gertrude, the Queen, who gives a lovely detailed description of what happened as though someone was watching... but is still a lovely description that has inspired many many artists for a long time perhaps because of the beauty of the description and perhaps because they feel the need to show this scene that is conspicuous through its visual absence in the play. Why did she die offstage?

I don't know, I can just summarize my thoughts again, about the curious absence of Ophelia in everything that has to do with her.

Ophelia allowed herself to fade away even before she drowned. She allowed someone else to control her life so completely that she was almost like a marionette doll to do what her father wanted her to... and then the strings got cut when her father died and she evidently didn't know what to do with herself. She had become a sort of mirror that reflected what the people around her wanted her to be, and so when she loses the connection she had with these people (Laertes, Hamlet, and her father) it's like she had nothing left to be her... and she's just like this dress. The white dress symbolizes her maidenhood, and innocence, the water symbolizes her death and also her submersion in other people's ideas before she ever drowned, and the emptiness can symbolize the curious absence of her opinions and sense of self from her actions and perhaps her mind even before she went mad, and that she herself wasn't there when her death comes up in the play.