Reviving Ophelia Essay example

The character of Ophelia is an excellent element of drama used to develop interpretations of Shakespeare’s text. At the beginning of the play, she is happy and in love with Hamlet, who first notices her beauty and then falls in love with her. The development of Ophelia’s madness and the many factors that contributed to her suicide are significant parts of the plot. “Her madness was attributed to the extremity of her emotions, which in such a frail person led to melancholy and eventual breakdown” (Teker, par. 3). The character of Ophelia in Zieffirelli’s version is the personification of a young innocent girl. “Her innocence is mixed with intelligence, keen perception, and erotic awareness” (Teker, par. 13). This Ophelia is a victim

  In Shakespeare's tragedy, Hamlet, the audience finds a docile, manipulated, scolded, victimized young lady named Ophelia. Ophelia is a foil to Hamlet. Plays have foils to help the audience better understand the more important characters in the play.  The character of Ophelia is necessary so that the audience will give Hamlet a chance to get over his madness and follow his heart.

Furthermore, media surrounds teenage girls in today’s culture. It is impossible to escape the sight of media. The media’s constant idealistic beauty is ever present to a vast amount of self-conscious girls. This image of beauty causes girls to have low self-esteem (Clay, Vignoles, and Dittmar). Media defining this perfect body image causes many adolescent girls to feel dissatisfied with their bodies and become depressed. “Viewing ultra-thin or average-size models led to decreases in both body satisfaction and self-esteem in adolescent girls aged eleven to sixteen, with changes in self-esteem fully mediated by changes in body satisfaction” (Clay, Vignoles, and Dittmar).

Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls, is author, Mary Pipher’s attempt to understand her experiences in therapy with adolescent girls (Pipher, p. 11). In the text adolescence is described as a border between childhood and adulthood (Pipher, p. 292). In her quest to understand adolescent girls, Pipher attempts to answer these questions: Why are so many girls in therapy in the 1990s? Why are there more self-mutilators? What is the meaning of lip, nose and eyebrow piercings? How do I help thirteen-year-olds deal with herpes or genital warts? Why are drugs and alcohol so common in the stories of seventh-graders? Why do so many girls hate their parents? (Pipher, p. 11-12). These questions are answered through self-reflection, stories from clients, and interviews with adolescent girls at different levels of maturation.

The age of adolescence has become universally known as an awkward period of growth and socialization. The article “Saplings in the Storm,” by Mary Pipher, was published in 1995 and gives an interesting look into some of the issues faced by adolescent girls, but gives little evidence to support her claims or ways in which to encourage the self-confidence in adolescent girls. More recently, there has been further research looking into the reasons as to why girls become more depressed, endure a decrease in self-esteem, and lose their curiosity after puberty.

   Poor Ophelia, she lost her lover, her father, her mind, and, posthumously, her brother. Ophelia is the only truly innocent victim in Hamlet. This essay will examine Ophelia's downward spiral from a chaste maiden to nervous wreck.

     One thing that Pipher describes is how girls’ views change as they enter adolescence. Lots of girls bury their childhood, and submissively enter adult existence. These girls who are becoming young women, according to Pipher, stop thinking. The main focus on their minds is, “What must I do to please others?” This thought is true to a certain extent in some young girls. It is true that many of the things that some girls do are solely for the purpose of living up to a societal expectation. Many of the beauty magazines portray images of supermodels; something that young girls may interpret as what the society expects. Also, all of the television and movie actors are very pretty, and many young girls are dying to fill out that expectation that seems to have been set for them. Although it seems clear that not everyone has “movie star good looks”, this idea can be hard for a young immature mind to grasp.

With all the press people trying to live up to this standard in today’s society, this is why suicide and mental health issues is on the high. Recent research showed that, (e.g. Trust for the Study of Adolescence, 2000) states that despite the concept of ‘girl power,’ young women still have lower self-esteem in early adolescence, which they are unsatisfied with their bodies.

Joan Montgomery Byles’s view of Ophelia’s behavior in “Ophelia’s Desperation” and Sandra K. Fischer’s view of Ophelia’s behavior in “Ophelia’s Mad Speeches” contradict each other and present opposing explanations. Byles’s view is that Ophelia is defined by the male roles in her life (i.e. her father, brother, and lover). Fischer’s view is that Ophelia is simply grieving the loss of her father and fails to break the hold of the men in her life. These two analyses present opposing explanations because one author is saying that Ophelia simply cracked because she has lost her father and she just could not handle it and the other is stating that Ophelia went mad and committed suicide because she was tired of

Doyle sat with his back against a tree and his hands over his ears, it did no good, he could still hear her voice calling out to him to help her. He had been chasing that voice since he suddenly found himself alone, no matter how fast and long he ran, he never got any closer to it. He heard the everhungry roaring in the distance and then Ophelia's screams, he pulled himself to his feet, but before he took one step someone grabbed him by the arm. Doyle turned to look at the woman who held him, for a moment he thought it was Ophelia, because she wore the same clothing that Ophelia had donned back at the merfolk colony when she had reclaimed her human form.

Ophelia lay in bed on the verge of consciousness, she could hear the Professor talking in the background.

Jayna had recovered during the night and they were eating up the miles in a generally westward direction. Elmer, now actively trying to find Ophelia, was still unable to glean her whereabouts, all he could come up with was a general direction and he wasn't certain even of that. Never before had he been so blind to the future, it was as though someone had turned off the heavenly lights and he was feeling his way through a dark world, lit only by the occasional firefly. Elmer caught a glimpse of the great snake Python, and chose to avoid him if possible, so they changed direction and moved a little southward as they traveled. They hit the lake five miles south of Iftar's village about an hour before sunset and decided to make camp for the night, while Elmer tried to decide whether to go north or south around the lake.

Researchers have discovered that “ongoing exposure to certain ideas can shape and distort our perceptions on reality.” (Mintz 2007) Because young girls are subjected to a constant display of beautiful people in the media, they have developed a negative body image of themselves. Those who have a negative body image perceive their body as being unattractive or even hideous compared to others, while those with a positive body image will see themselves as attractive, or will at least accept themselves and be comfortable in their own skin. During adolescence, negative body image is especially harmful because of the quick changes both physically and mentally occurring during puberty. Also, young girls are becoming more and more exposed to the media and the media keeps getting more and more provocative. Young girls are looking to women with unrealistic body shapes as role models. It’s hard to find, in today’s media, a “normal” looking

The formation of a concrete sense of self is one of the milestones of adolescence. However, this task is anything but easy. The teenage years are full of turmoil and changes that can have a detrimental affect on a girl's sense of identity and

Ophelia is piece of art that was painted by Sir John Everett Millais. It was painted in the Tate Britain and completed in 1852 (Lewis par. 2). The painting shows a fictional actor from Shakespeare’s theatre piece the Hamlet. William Shakespeare’s work was a great inspiration for Sir John Everett (Lewis par. 2). The fictional character is called Ophelia. This painting by Sir John has since been celebrated for its uniqueness and attention to detail particularly nature. Ophelia has a value of £30 million.