Why Is Hamlet Wooing Ophelia

A dainty and beautiful woman, Ophelia is introduced as an obedient and frail character. Only listening to her father and brother, she is condemned to a life of purely following orders. The trait that is favorable in the Elizabethan era, will be her downfall
Right from Act one, readers find out that Hamlet has been wooing Ophelia. However being born into a lower class than Hamlet, Ophelia is forced to give up their relationship when her father finds out. Being a woman of a lower class, she cannot be with Hamlet, and she cannot decide for herself whom to be with.
Despite her love for him and her feeling of his love, she restrains from seeing him further. Her obedience prevents her from being happy and being with the one she loves. Her father even goes to the point of demeaning her, comparing her as worthless next to Hamlet. Since Ophelia is dutiful to her father, she has given up the one thing in the play that she desires – Hamlet. Had she not been complied with her father’s request, she may have been happy with Hamlet. Gertrude
even mentions after her death, that she would have been a lovely wife for Hamlet. Now she no longer has the choice.
After she is told by her father not to see Hamlet anymore, Ophelia avoids contact.
But when Hamlet asks where Polonius in Act 3, she lies that he is at home.
Hamlet knows that she is lying, but he cannot pinpoint where Polonius is. Not knowing that it is Polonius who hides behind the arras, Hamlet stabs blindly and murders Polonius. Ophelia unintentionally causes Polonius’ death. If she did not lie to Hamlet about her father, Polonius’ death may have been avoided.
Hamlet feels no remorse and even jokes about where the body is the next day, how no one will find it. Only one day when the stench of rotting flesh is smelled, then Polonius will be found. Hamlet does not care for person who is not loyalty. Ophelia’s lower status is further dramatized. Ophelia’s lower socioeconomic class plays into how she is treated. At a lower class, the prince has the ability to treat her as inferior. Her lover kills her father who shows no signs of
regret.
By Act 4, Ophelia was gone mad. Ophelia’s guilt consumes her. She now has no one to guide her in her decisions, and her loyalty to her father’s instructions led to his death. Her madness shows how severe Hamlet’s crimes are. Not only has he demeaned her by saying that he never loved her, and that she is nothing but a whore, he has killed her father. Further, her character is more tragic since her madness is just a tool for another character – to show the severity of Hamlet’s crime. Her madness shows what she is without her father to instruct her. Even in her madness, she is just an object to describe another male character.
Shakespeare did not write Ophelia in this way just to match the Elizabethan era of women’s roles, but also to create a more tragic character. Ophelia is not just a love interest to Hamlet, but the most tragic character. The aspect that most women were forced to have in the Elizabethan era was one of loyalty to men in their lives. They could not even act on stage. Although Shakespeare does reflect this character in Ophelia, she is also written as innocent characters who finds her demise because of the men in her life.