American Literature

In some plays, playwrights do not just write them for the sake of entertainment, some of them convey a subtle, if not implicit message and this is manifested by the characters.  The settings of the play should help provide the audience clues on the personality of the characters and how the society they live in influences them.  This is consistent to the norms of society and such characters underscore or reflect how society influences them.  In this particular case, this study would like to look into two of the characters from these plays.  This study will focus on two such characters whose personalities are influenced by their respective societies  Ophelia from Shakespeares Hamlet and Ellen Sewell from The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail by Robert Edwin Lee and Jerome Lawrence.

Ophelia. She is the daughter of Polonius and the love interest of Hamlet.  Besides being attractive, she is characterized as being demure and nave which also is her weakness in the sense  that it makes her malleable to the will of others, particularly her father when he told her not to see Hamlet for which she made an affirmation

No, my good lord, but, as you did command,I did repel his fetters and deniedHis access to me. (Act II, Scene I)

What this underscored is that she lacked the will to assert herself, even to the extent of defending her relationship with Hamlet which would explain why he has gone insane and Hamlet would tell her this later on how her fickle mind has caused him to be upset already made worse as he is still mourning the death of his father.  When she is made an unwitting pawn by both her father and Claudius to determine if Hamlet is going insane and she did this by returning the tokens she claims Hamlet gave to her a sign of his love for her. It was for this reason that Hamlet, apparently stung by her dishonesty and seeming deceitfulnesss, suggested she go to the nunnery rather than be a breeder of sinners.  As Hamlet left, the following scene reveals how Ophelia possesses a heart of glass

And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,That suckd the honey of his music vows,Now see that noble and most sovereign reason,Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harshThat unmatchd form and feature of blown youthBlasted with ecstasy O, woe is me,To have seen what I have seen, see what I see(Act III, Scene I)

It can be inferred here that Ophelia felt she had made things worse.  It is as though she thinks Hamlet has completely gone insane and it is all because of her.  She is greatly hurt by Hamlets rather harsh words, especially by that remark on becoming a breeder of sinners which is something a woman of her stature would resent or would not want to hear.  Her frailty and weakness was also revealed in Act IV when her father died (at the hands of Hamlet) and Hamlets apparent disappearance.  These incidents showed how attached she is to men and depended on them, another flaw in her character, and their loss made her feel her world has completely fallen apart, causing her to sink into depression, lose her sanity and ultimately take her own life.

Ellen Sewell. She is different from Ophelia as far as her character is concerned.  Although she comes from a conservative family like Ophelia, the play depicts her as a woman though having feminine qualities, shows a much stronger personality compared to Ophelia.  Where Ophelia is frail and malleable, Ellen is open-minded, as shown by her interest in transcendenatalism, a school of thought (Henry) Thoreau and his brother John subscribe to.  Her father forbids her to consort with either of the brothers and yet rather than obey her father, she dared go where she was forbidden to go, into the world of transcendentalism as shown in the scene where she is in the boat with Thoreau where he discusses with her what transcendentalism is all about.

Henry What if all of it is totaled up in this face here, in front of me  and I am empty enough to think Im seeing one face
Ellen Thats Transcendalism
Henry If you like.
Ellen I dont think it is wicked. I think its rather nice. (Lee  Lawrence 36)

After which she asks Thoreau to take her back to shore but when Thoreau delays since he continued to discuss Trasncendentalism to her, she blurted out, Im not one of your fish, nor one of your birds, Mr. Thoreau. So I can neither swim nor fly back to dry land. I must simply sit here and hope that you are gentleman enough to row me ashore (Lee  Lawrence 38).  She dared to speak her mind to Thoreau although he is older than her as she showed some feistiness, demanding to be taken back to shore and she did that by challenging Thoreaus character whether he is a gentleman or a scoundrel.  On the other hand, she was very keen on knowing more about Transendentalism and one can say she was enlightened.  She understood now how it goes when she heard about Johns demise.

Bu further analyzing both women, one can see both come from conservative families.  It can even be said they are also nave to a certain extent.  In the case of Ellen however, she displays a sense of independence.  Unlike Ophelia, she is not so attached to her father to the point of being dependent on him for guidance.  Her inquisitiveness shows that she is exercising her free will to learn more about Transcendentalism and she would probably leave her father if he threatened to disown her for disobeying him.  She has the initiative to find out for herself, in this case, what Transcendentalism is.  Her conversation with Thoreau dispelled any misconception she had about it, coming from her father.  As for Ophelia, she lacks that strong will and open-mindedness that would have enabled her to see through Hamlets alleged insanity.  Her sense of obedience and naivete prevents her knowing the true condition of Hamlet.  She took everything at face value and she allowed her emotions to get the better of her and this led to her downfall.

All in all, there are things Ophelia and Ellen have in common as far as family backgrounds are concerned.  In personality, both are feminine to an extent as far as Ellens case is concerned as she shows more courage to go beyond what her father commands her as opposed to that of Ophelia who was very compliant to her father. One can say that between the two women, Ellen is the one who grew in character.  But in understanding why she is capable of moving on while Ophelia did not, it is because of the situation and the time.  Ophelia lived somewhere along the Middle Ages where society was very conservative whereas Ellen lived in 19th century America which was already democratic and signs of liberalism among women was beginning to emerge during this time.  If Ophelia would have lived in the same century as Ellen, she would have never had to suffer a sad fate.