Part 48: From Maurice Hunt, "Impregnating Ophelia," 2005
...getting playgoers and readers to imagine a pregnant, or carnal,
Ophelia amounts to a dramatic benefit because, at some point
(usually a retrospective moment), the recollection of this identity
obviously compounds the pathos of her personal tragedy.
At the same time, those contemporary consumers of Hamlet aware
of an Elizabethan aesthetics of the pregnant imagination are likely to
question their reconstruction of Ophelia’s sexual status, simply be-
cause they know that her supposed pregnancy could be the result of
the operation of their pregnant minds on the elements of
Shakespeare’s play.
In other words, Shakespeare calls attention to the challenging plastic
quality of mind that he generally seems always to require of his
educated theater readers and playgoers.
Every play in the Shakespeare canon, virtually every Shakespearean
character, becomes richly enjoyable and instructive to the degree
that pregnant minds animate them.
Shakespeare’s urging the pregnant mind to make Ophelia physically
pregnant thus amounts to a singularity in the canon: the signature
Shakespearean dynamic of appreciation of meaning becomes material
in Ophelia’s character. And yet it does not when the viewer realizes
that his or her pregnant imagination has made her so.
Rather than joining Spenser and other purportedly gynephobic early
modern male English authors in making a female character a
scapegoat for masculine ills, Shakespeare on the occasion of
Ophelia’s characterization in Hamlet encourages playgoers and
readers to gain a perspective on the insubstantiality of all
imaginative constructions produced by drama, and literature in
general.
- Maurice Hunt, from "Impregnating Ophelia" [1]
Hunt’s essay is good, but like others (too?) influenced by Freud, he neglects Ophelia’s political loss of innocence — and the way Shakespeare’s use of ambiguity perhaps manifests mystery as a presence of God, in the face of which the appropriate response might be that of Moses with the burning bush: Take off your sandals: step bare-footed and reverently…
NOTES: [1]
Maurice Hunt, from "Impregnating Ophelia" (658-659).
Neophilologus 89, 641–663 (2005).
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11061-005-5284-0
IMAGE: FRANCES MACDONALD MACNAIR (SCOTTISH 1874-1921),
‘GIRL WITH BLUE BUTTERFLIES' (1898) (sometimes (mis-?) titled "Ophelia")
The Taffner Collection
Signed and dated lower centre right FRANCES E MACDONALD 1898.
Public domain (author's life plus 70 years or fewer) via Lyon & Turnbull auction website
https://www.lyonandturnbull.com/auctions/the-taffner-collection-370/lot/62
Also available via Wikipedia:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5b/Frances_MacDonald_-_Ophelia_1898.jpg
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INDEX OF OPHELIA POSTS:
My 2023 series on Ophelia, and earlier Ophelia posts:
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2023/10/index-of-ophelia-posts-2023-series-and.html
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A marvellous piece of interpretation! Thank you, Paul. What is your attitude to the visual representation of pregnant Ophelia on stage? e.g. Andrei Tarkovski tried to focuse his spectator's attention on the tragedy of love and showed Ophelia pregnant
ReplyDeleteThank you, Natalia. Like Maurice Hunt, I agree that it's certainly possible that Ophelia is pregnant, but Shakespeare does make pregnancy much more explicit in other plays:
DeleteIn Measure for Measure, Juliet is pregnant with Claudio's child;
in Love's Labour's Lost, Jaquenetta is pregnant with Armado's child.
So I tend to think that if Shakespeare leaves it a mystery, whether Ophelia is pregnant (or not), then the mystery may have been a more important point
than claiming certitude one way or another...
Regarding visual representations of pregnancy on stage -
Some might argue that the timeline of the play might not support as prominently pregnant some Ophelias are shown to be...
How much time do we assume the play covers?
That's an important question. How much would she be "showing"?
I'm fine with it if the production does a good job with the other aspects, if it makes sense overall in a production - each production should strive to do something for its own time and historical context.
What does a director and production company want to emphasize?
Who is the father? Hamlet?
Or Claudius (as some have claimed)?
Or is Ophelia a victim of incest, by Polonius, or her brother Laertes?
These possibilities may seem far-fetched to "purists" trying to stick with what the texts seem to be certain about:
But what if you're producing the play in a country where there was recently some scandal about a president or prime minister getting an unwed staff person pregnant? Then implying that Ophelia is pregnant - by Claudius - might be appropriate, and "hold a mirror up to the age" as Hamlet tells the players.
But I do like Hunt's emphasis on how Shakespeare enlists the "pregnant" imaginations of the playgoers to suggest, but never fully resolve, the possibility that Ophelia is pregnant.
Hamlet's Denmark is distorted by lies about King Hamlet's death (the lie: death by accidental snake bite). Lies enlist the help of all who are willing to believe them, and perhaps especially those who stubbornly believe them.
But Hamlet insists that his friends should not assume they can pluck the heart of his mystery, and I think Shakespeare uses the play to tempt us to pluck the heart of a variety of mysteries:
Is Ophelia pregnant?
Did she die in faith, after an accidental fall, as Gertrude claims?
Or was that a merciful fiction from Gertrude?
Does Gertrude suspect a poison cup?
As I wrote at the end of the post, I think the presence of mystery is, in a way, perhaps a presence of God (or potentially so):
Just like the presence of a beggar at the Rich Man's door may be a presence of God,
or the presence of a beggar at the baker's door (in Ophelia's reference) may be God, etc.
So for those reasons, I prefer ambiguity more than an Ophelia who has advanced many months in her pregnancy between the time of viewing "The Mousetrap" with Hamlet, to her mad scenes...