Ophelia brothel. Polonius instructs Ophelia to stand in the lobby of the castle while he and Claudius hide. Hamlet approaches Ophelia and talks to her, saying "Get thee to a nunnery." Hamlet asks Ophelia where her father is and she lies to him, saying her father must be at home. Hamlet realises he is being spied upon. He exits after declaring, "I say we will have no more marriages." Ophelia is left bewildered and heartbroken, sure that Hamlet is insane. She knows that ultimately it is she that broke him because she lied. She was the woman he had loved and
Ophelia complex Ophelia complex Ophelia complex is the term used by Gaston Bachelard to refer to the links between femininity, liquids, and drowning which he saw as symbolised in the fate of Shakespeare's Ophelia. Bachelard traced in Romanticism a nexus of ideas linking the dissolution of the self - male or female - with immersion in the feminine element of water, as symbolised by Ophelia's drowning. Federico García Lorca explored the image of water and a despairing sexuality, epitomised in the Ophelia complex, throughout his writings. A later, and unconnected use of the terms Ophelia complex/Ophelia syndrome was introduced by Mary Pipher