Ophelia's invisibility
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5902/2176148556344Keywords:
Shakespeare, Ophelia, Rhetoric, GenderAbstract
This article focuses on the opaque image of Ophelia - her relative “invisibility” within the tragedy - in order to show the subtle and implicit elaboration of Ophelia’s character, which Shakespeare weaves between the lines of other characters’ speeches. This implicit style requires a keen eye on the part of the reader, a requirement which has so far met with considerable resistance. The impossibility of seeing Ophelia herself is quite clear inside the play, in the critical approaches (with the exception of recent feminist theory) and in the reception of the play by painters. Most readers tend to wrap Ophelia in a halo of mythical beauty and a silent mystery. Using a series of recent studies that address the fate of female figures, we investigate the subtle plot of discourses and rhetoric that conceal what this character is or could have been, if she had managed to free herself from the discursive tutelage that fixed Renaissance women in the reduced and suffering space mapped out for them by patriarchal society.
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