just because he’s so creeped out by the idea of a guy in his mother’s bedroom.”
Some of the class snickers and I feel my face get a bit warmer. I can’t tell if they think I’ve made a funny point proving that Hamlet is a bit of a wacko, or at least a mama’s boy, or that I have revealed myself to have a mind prone to finding weird sexual situations where they do not exist.
I really need to stop getting myself into these situations. But I’m in one now and there’s no graceful way out. And no wrecking ball to come and knock me safely into the next classroom, so I continue, “He’s a guy out for revenge who destroys a lot of people-himself included. But that doesn’t make it ‘noble,’ just because he takes himself out, too. I know she’s not a hero, and not ‘tragic’ in Aristotle’s definition, but Ophelia is tragic in every other sense of the word.”
Now Michael snorts a bit and his smile twists at this absurdity. He says, “She’s confused, and goes off the deep end– no pun intended.” Some of the guys laugh. “I’ll give you that.”
“Oh, thank you.”
Ms. Ehrman rubs her glasses on her sweater for a moment before prompting, “Okay, Georgiana, what is tragic about Ophelia?”
I sigh but forge ahead.
“She’s used by all the men in the play. She’s just a tool to them. No matter how she feels about them, they just see her as an instrument.”
“True that,” Shondra agrees and there are a few other murmurs.
“Her dad does seem to want to use her for his own political advancement,” Michael admits.
“He practically throws her at Hamlet,” Shondra tells him and I smile at her, a big sappy grin of gratitude, before I continue, reinforced.
“And her brother uses her, too. Ophelia and Laertes are all jokey, typical brother and sister making-fun-of-dad in Act One,” I say, “and then, when she dies, Laertes might genuinely grieve for her, but he seems more bent on getting revenge to prove what a noble guy he is. Just like Hamlet.”
“Hamlet doesn’t ‘use’ her, exactly,” Michael argues calmly. “She’s more like … collateral damage.”
“She loves him,” I practically cry out, too caught up in my irritation now to police my own response to Michael’s confidence in his own brilliant analysis. “That’s evident from her speech in – what is it? Act One? She calls him ‘the very mold of form and glass of fashion’? She thinks he’s noble, that’s true. And then he uses her to make his own `I’m-no-threat-because-I-am-a-mad-dog’ scheme seem plausible. She’s been loyal to him, it seems, cared for him as a person, loved him for who he is-then she gets placed in his path by her dad to be used by him, so he can shock everyone by calling her a whore! She’s a tool for her dad, maybe for her brother, and for the guy she loves. Who wouldn’t go batty after that happened to them? What else can she do? She’s a girl in medieval –or whatever – Denmark. She’s property, a pawn.” I finish with a sort of sigh. “Maybe she’s not crazy. Maybe she’s just really pissed off, but she can’t do anything about it. She’s not the prince of Denmark. She’s not a man.”
After a pause Ms. Ehrman says, “I think Georgiana makes a very compelling feminist argument.”
At the word “feminist” there are some hisses and hoots, as if I had announced my intention to castrate everyone in the room with a penis.
“Michael?” she asks.
He swallows and chooses his words carefully.
“I think what Georgia says makes a lot of sense, especially considering the time when Shakespeare was writing. But I also think that Hamlet is under some constraints himself because of where and how he grew up. He keeps debating whether to kill Claudius not because he’s a coward, but because he doesn’t want to do it. He doesn’t want to kill anybody.” He looks at me with a faint smile. “The guy Ophelia loves and looks up to isn’t a killer. He’s a thinker. But he knows that as a young man and as a prince –as his dad keeps coming back from the dead to remind him –he has an obligation to avenge his father’s death. That’s what a guy is supposed to do.”
“Yeah, quit your male-bashing, Georgia,” Callam from the lacrosse team laughs, and Michael rolls his eyes and looks at me almost apologetically.
“Another fine point,” Ms. Ehrman tells Michael. “Your group