"And I of Ladies Most Deject and Wretched": Diagnosing Shakespeare's Ophelia with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Finally, the change in conduct must wreak “clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning” (Brewin 8). The young woman’s reaction to her father’s murder has transformed more than her eloquence to an “unshaped use” of speech (Shakespeare 1558). She has become a liability the king and queen cannot afford. Horatio argues that Gertrude must see the girl “for she may strew dangerous conjectures in ill-breeding minds” and spread gossip and interest into the castle’s internal affairs (1658). Once the center of several men’s lives, whether for love or political advancement, Ophelia is now a social pariah considered “divided from herself and her fair judgment” (1659). She dies not long later, a tragedy that, if suicide, proves she could not function in the most necessary “area”: maintenance of the will to live.

Ophelia’s diagnosis with PTSD humanizes a character that audiences have pitied for centuries, but with whom they could not empathize. Unlike many psychological ailments, this disorder does not connote “insanity,” to which many viewers cannot relate. Between 70 and 80 percent of people experience severely jarring ordeals that passing months have soothed (Brewin 8). Instead of being stark mad, this young woman simply suffers from “a failure of time to heal all wounds” (Van der Kolk, McFarlance, and Weisaeth 8). Since PTSD may affect anyone, Ophelia loses the label of “madwoman” to audiences, and becomes approachable, lively, endearing. Audience members may place themselves in her shoes more fully and see through her eyes more clearly. Her descent into traumatized depression is more, not less, heartbreaking because viewers know and love her. Shakespeare’s classic play literally takes on a new life in this modern interpretation for modern spectators.

Moreover, women audience members may find this understanding of Ophelia as liberating for themselves as for her. The deaths of Hamlet’s only female characters, combined with the absence of a mother figure, have hereto indicated that women are all disposable. Whether innocent or guilty, crazy or conniving, women do not deserve to be rescued, even from preventable tragedy. Ophelia’s treatable diagnosis, however, demands attention and care more than hopeless delirium does, demonstrating that she as a woman has a right to aid and comfort. Since her illness partially derives from needing a mother, she proves that women are essential to maintaining mental and physical health. By identifying Ophelia’s madness as PTSD, women read as more than fragile, unnecessary pawns of men. Like Ophelia, they become fallible yet lovable humans: sometimes shaken by trauma, but always worth saving.

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Works Cited

Brewin, Chris R. Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Malady or Myth? New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.

Caruth, Cathy, ed. “Introductions.” Trauma: Explorations in Memory. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995.

Meyer, Michael, ed. The Bedford Introduction to Literature. 8^th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2008

Miller, Thomas, ed. Clinical Disorders and Stressful Life Events. Madison, CT: International Universities Press, 1997.

Shakespeare, William. Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. The Bedford Introduction to Literature. Ed. Michael Meyer. 8^th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2008. 1589 – 1686.

Showalter, Elaine. “A Feminist Perspective.” Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism: Hamlet by William Shakespeare. Ed. Susanne Wofford. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1994.

Van der Kolk, Bessel, Alexander McFarlane, and Lars Weisaeth, eds. Traumatic Stress: The Effects of Overwhelming Experience on Mind, Body, and Society. New York: The Guilford Press, 1996.

“When Trauma Tips You Over: PTSD Part One.” All In the Mind. Prod. James Carleton. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. 9 Oct. 2004.