Reviving Ophelia Analysis

The book, Reviving Ophelia, is about the hardships girls go through when they are growing up and trudging through puberty. As the author Mary Pipher states it, adolescent girls tend to lose their “true selves” in order to fit in and comply with the standards that society sets for women. Pipher, a practicing therapist, uses her own case studies to show how pressures put on girls forces them to react in often damaging ways. In most case studies she tells the audience how she helped these girls heal and regain control of their lives. It seems that her primary goal is to warn people of what certain effects can have on girls and what not to do. The one thing that Pipher tends to overlook is what parents can do right to raise healthy

Ophelia is accustomed to having her father speak on her behalf, as well as being dependent on him for emotional support. Her absolute dependence means Ophelia does not know how to cope and reason on her own. Being left to grieve alone, she does not have an objective perspective or someone to bring her back to her senses, and therefore becomes overwhelmed by her emotions. Having no control over the intensity of how to feel and act is a very unhealthy way to cope. Her grief makes her speak “nothing”, and those who hear her are left to doubt and “think there might be thought”, although they cannot be sure about what she really means.

In classic works of literature, all characters have certain flaws, and Shakespeare’s tragedies’ characters in particular have faults that ultimately lead to their ruination. In Hamlet, Ophelia’s flaws eventually kill her.

Thesis Statement: The origin of Ophelia’s madness is rendered through examination of her relationships with her father Polonius, her brother, Laertes, and her lover Hamlet.

In William Shakespeare’s tragic play Hamlet we are introduced to the young prince’s lover, Ophelia. Ophelia is a young noblewoman of Denmark. She is a very beautiful young woman who’s in love with the prince Hamlet and a potential wife for him. She is the daughter of the chief counsellor of the king, Polonius. She is also siblings with Laertes who dies trying to avenge his father's death and protect his family's name, by killing Hamlet who he wounds with a poisoned sword. With no mother to guide poor Ophelia, she becomes dependent on what the men who surround her, Laertes, Polonius, and Hamlet, tell her. She ends up going mad, singing songs about flowers, and finally drowning in the river surrounded by the flower garlands she had gathered. Ophelia was an obedient and was lovestuck on prince Hamlet in this tragic play. She happened to just need some help or advice in this fairly mere of a romance she had going on in her life.

Have you ever heard of the song “What is Love?” by Haddaway? The one that’s then followed by the line “Baby don’t hurt me! Don’t hurt me!” Well, in the movie Reviving Ophelia, Elizabeth has just gotten into her first “serious” relationship. The way she describes her new relationship with a boy from school, Mark, is as if she was discovering for the first time in her life what it means to truly have love. However, this quickly turned for her an illusion of an amazing relationship into one of an abusive relationship.

Dr. Pipher remembers her cousin Polly as a young girl. She describes her as energy in

When one gazes at the posed risqué photos that the photographer E. J. Bellocq took during the Storyville era many questions arise as to, who the female models were, where did they work, and why? Storyville was a legalized red light district in New Orleans. Storyville was the answer to the ongoing crime problem in New Orleans back in the late eighteen to early nineteen hundreds. After the closure of Storyville, the so called embarrassment was almost wiped from history. Bellocq’s photos, a couple of rundown buildings, and very few tales about Storyville are left today. Natasha Trethewey gave these forgotten women a voice in her collection of poems Bellocq’s Ophelia. She granted her readers a gaze into a forbidden world in a time that is long

Adolescent girls growing up in today’s society endure many more hardships than in previous years. Adolescence is no longer a time of endless sunny days spent on the back porch with a glass of country time lemonade and a smile extending ear to ear. Adolescence for girls is now generalized as a dark and depressing period of life that often seems hopeless and never ending. Mary Pipher PH.D tries to illustrate just how drastically life has changed over the years for teenage girls through her best selling book “Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls”. Although Mary Pipher was once a clinical psychologist, she articulates very well for everyone to clearly understand her ideas and perspectives. One way

     Mary Pipher, author of the book Reviving Ophelia, has made many observations concerning young adolescent girls in our society. She wrote this book in 1994, roughly eleven years ago. Although some of her observations made in the past are not still accurate in today’s world, there are many that are still present in 2005. The primary focus of Pipher’s comments is to explain how young girls are no longer being protected within our society.

Young maidens are often described as lush and virtuous. They mind their manners, they focus on etiquette, and above all else, they do not pursue a physical relationship with a man outside of marriage. The consequences of being caught in such a union were severe, including social shunning amongst verbal floggings. Some had it even worse. Those few who were unlucky enough to conceive out of wedlock would be doomed. The psychological and social repercussions would be overwhelming, and often led to suicide. This can be seen in Shakespeare’s Hamlet in his character, Ophelia. It is evident in Hamlet that Ophelia is pregnant and that this pregnancy may have contributed to her death.

Would Hamlet be different without Ophelia? This question could refer to both the character of Hamlet and the actual play. Ophelia’s role in Hamlet has been discussed by numerous critics, and many of them have questioned the necessity of Ophelia. While she is undoubtedly a lesser character compared to Gertrude, Claudius, or Hamlet, her eventual madness and demise provides an interesting discussion for Shakespeare’s critics. Although some critics believe that Ophelia only plays a miniscule role in Hamlet, she is nevertheless an essential component of the play. Ophelia serves as a foil to Gertrude, adds another feminine perspective, advances the theme of madness, and establishes the foundation for the final bloodbath with her premature death.

This is the woman she might have become – warm, tolerant and imaginative. Instead she becomes jagged, benighted and imaginative. . . .Ophelia is made mad not only by circumstance but by something in herself. A personality forced into such deep hiding that it has seemed almost vacant, has all the time been so painfully open to impressions that they now usurp her reflexes and take possession of her. She has loved, or been prepared to love, the wrong man; her father has brought disaster on himself, and she has no mother: she is terribly lonely. (73-74)

character. Ophelia’s dependence on others is, sadly, what lead to her death. She could not

Ophelia is piece of art that was painted by Sir John Everett Millais. It was painted in the Tate Britain and completed in 1852 (Lewis par. 2). The painting shows a fictional actor from Shakespeare’s theatre piece the Hamlet. William Shakespeare’s work was a great inspiration for Sir John Everett (Lewis par. 2). The fictional character is called Ophelia. This painting by Sir John has since been celebrated for its uniqueness and attention to detail particularly nature. Ophelia has a value of £30 million.