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

If William Shakespeare’s Hamlet is “the most famous play in English literature,” his Ophelia is arguably the field’s most tragic female figure (Meyer 1588). Torn from her lover and bereft of her father, the young woman falls into grief-stricken madness that ends, in many literary and theatrical interpretations, in suicide. Critics and directors have characterized her as an innocent child, a passive daughter, compassion-inducing soul, and an undeserving victim. Yet her clichéd portrayal as “helpless, crazy wretch” gains a humanizing dimension when seen through the lens of modern psychological research: Ophelia is not insane, but traumatized. Ignoring scientific evidence that accounts for her madness dismisses her, and to a greater extent women, as not worth saving.

First her father slain:

Next your son gone; and he most violent author

Of his own just remove…. Poor Ophelia

Divided from herself and her fair judgment,

Without the which we are pictures, or mere beasts. (Shakespeare 1659)

In the wake of Polonius’s death, her behavior, illustrated by her speech and characters’ descriptions of her conduct, satisfies the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM)’s criteria for detecting PTSD. Because of this condition’s unique origin outside the mind, her diagnosis demonstrates that she in not irreversibly, wildly crazy but within the reach of others’ help. Instead of being an irrational madwoman, a symbol of suffering virtue, Ophelia becomes fully human, a multi-faceted teenager of conflicting emotions who understandably cracks under severe stress and trauma.

In the growing spectrum of mental disorders, PTSD is both new in age—the name gained popularity in the 1970s, though the medical field did not acknowledge the term until 1980—and novel in concept (“When Trauma Tips You Over”). While other psychosomatic illnesses may originate inside someone’s mind, PTSD requires a sufficiently shocking event to traumatize its sufferers. According to Professor Cathy Caruth of Emory University, the disorder distinctively develops “the truth of the traumatic experience … It is not a pathology of falsehood or displacement of meaning, but of history itself” (5). Victims of trauma process this shock in their own ways; therefore, some people escape the ailment while others may develop chronic PTSD. Dr. Chris Brewin, professor of clinical psychology at University College London, noted that research has not yet revealed a biological way to test for PTSD, so “diagnoses are based on constellations of signs that the observer can see…and symptoms that the patient can report” (23). Risk factors before, during, and after an ordeal affect one’s chances of feeling emotional damage. Although some of these factors lie out of sufferers’ control, PTSD consistently shows “a mental and physical response that…has nothing to do with any personal weakness or vulnerability” (Brewin 1). Thus, Ophelia’s reaction to her father’s death is not due to a biological flaw, but set up by the preexisting high-risk conditions in which she lives.

At the top of the play, Ophelia reads as a standard teenage girl, not the personality-less maiden that centuries’ of literary criticism describe. She talks back to her brother, exchanges love letters with a boy, and argues with her father. However, details of her life and background, both far and recent past, exhibit numerous factors associated with a high possibility for developing PTSD after a trauma. Some causes are genetic: women are most at risk than men (Brewin 50). Others originate in “having experienced previous trauma… or other childhood adversity” (50). Her mother is notably missing from the play and has likely passed away. The mortality rates for women during Shakespeare’s life were high; childbirth, household accidents, and illness preyed on wives, mothers, and daughters. Not one character mentions a maternal figure, giving an audience the impression that Polonius’s family avoids speaking about her as anyone might after losing a loved one. Since Ophelia is only a teenager, her mother’s death could only have happened recently or in her childhood. As research reveals, such an early experience “of separation and loss [seems] to push the subject toward developing avoidant behavior…and an increased feeling of insecurity” (Miller 148). More specifically, studies have shown that there is “a significant relationship between death of the mother and panic disorder” (146). Ophelia’s lack of a maternal relationship predisposes her to suffering later.

As in many single parent households, the remaining spouse must assume both partners’ responsibilities. Polonius, whose demanding job under the king requires constant attention, took over his daughter’s upbringing and security. The father of a teenage girl, he seems not to understand the transformation his “green girl” is undergoing (1603). Ernest Jones, a student of Freud’s ideas and methods, said that because she is midway through developing, “Ophelia should be unmistakably sensual… she is very aware of her body” (qtd. in Showalter 235). Her father, however, sees only the child he wants to see. Instead of encouraging her growth, he insists that she “think [herself] a baby,” a stage of her life that he remembers and can handle (Shakespeare 1604). She tries to defend her love of Hamlet before her father’s disapproving eye:

My lord, he hath importuned me with love

In honorable fashion…

And hath given countenance to his speech, my lord,

With almost all the holy vows of heaven. (1604)

Habituated to protecting his daughter from men, Polonius commands she reject her lover, to which she dutifully responds, “I shall obey, me lord” (1604). She might be growing up, but in her paternally run house, her father has the last say.

Polonius’s overprotective nature does more than ignore the important transition his daughter is facing; his controlling attitude bears negative consequences, as seen in her reaction to his violent and mysterious death. One series of psychological tests explains that “patients suffering from anxiety neurosis scored both their parents as significantly less caring and more overprotective than matched normal controls did” (Miller 148). By denying his daughter’s maturation, Polonius appears to exert control without offering her love. Whatever his good intentions, Ophelia’s father acts in a manner that sets her up to fall before the pressure of PTSD.

These factors—being female, having experienced a previous childhood trouble, living with an overprotective father—precondition her to PTSD after her father’s murder. However, another risk arises during the trauma: Ophelia finds herself with no one to help her cope. This dearth of support is not a result of her failure to make friends. Ophelia’s brother’s departure during Act I, Scene III reveals their affectionate relationship. In their first bit of dialogue, Laertes urges his sister to write while he is abroad, “And, sister, as the winds give benefit / and convoy is assistant, do not sleep / but let me hear from you,” to which she quickly replies, “Do you doubt that?” (Shakespeare 1601). Ophelia finishes his line of iambic pentameter much like loving siblings may complete one another’s sentences. After Laertes verbosely cautions his sister against Hamlet’s advances, she turns his own advice on him to behave well in France. Though the younger, obedient sister, Ophelia demonstrates that she can think clearly and speak wittily, perhaps with a tinge of amusement in her voice:

But, good my brother

Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,

Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven

Whiles, like a puff’d and reckless libertine

Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads

And recks not his own rede. (1602)