s intentions were not of a sexual nature, and that she, being the sexual being that she is, got the wrong idea. Of course, he then expresses his own feeling on the matter, for it’s “a fair thought to lie between maiden’s legs.” (3.2, 116-117) As if Ophelia hasn’t already been frustrated by the accusations of impurity from her father, brother, and lover, she is now not allowed to show any signs of sexual thinking or independence, whereas Hamlet can say what’s on his mind and no one think the worse of him. She has been brought down by the expectations and implications of her sex once again.To make matters worse for this poor girl, her father is slain by the man who she loves. She is placed into an interesting situation, for, even though her father did love her and care for her, he never treated her as a person. Instead, she was just some pet that he had to teach right and wrong to. She did, though, love her father, as any good child should, and obeyed him when she was told. Any person could easily become distraught over losing the person that has brought them up, and taught them right from wrong. We never met, or heard of Ophelia’s mother, so it is implied that she is either dead or left. All she is left with is her father and her brother, and when one is away and the other brutally slaughtered, what else is she to do but go mad? Then, there is the fact that the man she had once believed to have loved, in madness and rage, killed her father. Undoubtedly, she has not lost her feelings for Hamlet, but was crushed when he was among those to have accused her of the sins of her sex. He had told her, to her face that he loved her not, and the only love she had ever known in her life was now denying that there had ever been love between them.Coupled with the mental distress of losing her father to her love, accusations of impurity, missing her brother, and her only love denying that there was...
