Home An Ophelia for the Anthropocene: Floral Agency and the Rewriting of Ophelia’s Victimhood in Hamlet
Article
Licensed
Unlicensed Requires Authentication

An Ophelia for the Anthropocene: Floral Agency and the Rewriting of Ophelia’s Victimhood in Hamlet

  • Francisco Javier Navarro Prieto EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: November 5, 2025
Become an author with De Gruyter Brill

Abstract

This paper examines how the perception of plants as ornaments or passive resources – central to the logic of the Anthropocene – has shaped interpretations of Ophelia’s use of flowers in Hamlet as meaningless or mad. Focusing on Act 4, Scene 5, it explores how both criticism and film adaptations have erased the presence and agency of real plants on stage, thus reducing Ophelia to a powerless, incoherent figure. In contrast, this article proposes a phytocritical reading that takes seriously the material and symbolic presence of flowers in her hands. Drawing on early modern herbals and new materialist ecocriticism, it argues that Ophelia acts with deliberate botanical knowledge, offering plants as both remedy and accusation. Her gestures, often misread as nonsense, are reframed as a radical form of ecological and political agency. In doing so, this reading reimagines Ophelia not as a victim but as a prophetic figure – one who speaks from the margins of court and text, and who challenges the intertwined forces of patriarchal control and environmental neglect.

Works Cited

Balding, Mun, and Kathryn J. H. Williams. “Plant Blindness and the Implications for Plant Conservation.” Conservation Biology 30.6 (2016): 1192–9. doi.org/10.1111/cobi.12738. Accessed 14 July 2025.10.1111/cobi.12738Search in Google Scholar

Barad, Karen. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2007.10.2307/j.ctv12101zqSearch in Google Scholar

Bennett, Jane. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2010.10.1215/9780822391623Search in Google Scholar

Branagh, Kenneth, dir. Hamlet. Castle Rock Entertainment, 1996.Search in Google Scholar

Bruckner, Lynne Dickson, and Dan Brayton, eds. Ecocritical Shakespeare. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, 2011.Search in Google Scholar

Calvo, Paco. “The Quest for Cognition in Plant Neurobiology.” Plant Signaling & Behavior 2.4 (2007): 208–11. doi.org/10.4161/psb.2.4.4470. Accessed 14 July 2025.10.4161/psb.2.4.4470Search in Google Scholar

Chamovitz, Daniel. What a Plant Knows: A Field Guide to the Senses. Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2012.Search in Google Scholar

Cvrčková, Fatima, Viktor Žárský, and Anton Markoš. “Plant Studies May Lead Us to Rethink the Concept of Behavior.” Frontiers in Psychology 7 (2016), art. 622. doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00622. Accessed 14 July 2025.10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00622Search in Google Scholar

Depuydt, Steven. “Arguments for and against Self and Non-Self Root Recognition in Plants.” Frontiers in Plant Science 5 (2014), art. 614. doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2014.00614. Accessed 14 July 2025.10.3389/fpls.2014.00614Search in Google Scholar

Egan, Gabriel. Green Shakespeare: From Ecopolitics to Ecocriticism. New York, NY: Routledge, 2006.10.4324/9780203300770Search in Google Scholar

Ellacombe, Henry Nicholson. The Plant-Lore and Garden-Craft of Shakespeare. London and New York, NY: Dover Publications, 2017.Search in Google Scholar

Gerard, John. The Herbal or General History of Plants. Vol. 3, Book 2, Part 2. Ex-Classics Project, 2019, exclassics.com/herbal/herbalv3.pdf.Search in Google Scholar

Gerard, John. The Herbal or General History of Plants. Vol. 4, Book 2, Part 3. Ex-Classics Project, 2020, exclassics.com/herbal/herbalv4.pdf.Search in Google Scholar

Gerard, John. The Herbal or General History of Plants. Vol. 5, Book 3 and Appendices. Ex-Classics Project, 2020, exclassics.com/herbal/herbalv5.pdf.Search in Google Scholar

Haraway, Donna. “Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin.” Environmental Humanities 6.1 (2015): 159–65. doi.org/10.1215/22011919-3615934. Accessed 14 July 2025.10.1215/22011919-3615934Search in Google Scholar

Haraway, Donna, et al. “Anthropologists Are Talking – About the Anthropocene.” Ethnos 81.3 (2016): 535–64. doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2015.1105838. Accessed 14 July 2025.10.1080/00141844.2015.1105838Search in Google Scholar

Hekman, Susan, and Stacy Alaimo. Material Feminisms. Bloomington, IL: Indiana UP, 2008.Bais, Harsh P. “Shedding Light on Kin Recognition Response in Plants.” The New Phytologist 205.1 (2015): 4–6. doi.org/10.1111/nph.13155. Accessed 14 July 2025.10.1111/nph.13155Search in Google Scholar

Iovino, Serenella, and Serpil Oppermann, eds. Material Ecocriticism. Bloomington, IN and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana UP, 2014.10.2307/j.ctt16gzq85Search in Google Scholar

Kerr, Jessie. Shakespeare’s Flowers. New York, NY: Crowell, 1969.Search in Google Scholar

Kordecki, Lesley. “Like a Creature Native: Ophelia’s Death and Ecofeminism.” Literature and Ecofeminism: Intersectional and International Voices. Eds. Douglas Vakoch and Sam Mickey. London: Routledge, 2018. 9–24.10.4324/9781351209755-1Search in Google Scholar

Laroche, Rebecca. Medical Authority and Englishwomen’s Herbal Texts, 1550–1650. London: Routledge, 2009.Search in Google Scholar

Laroche, Rebecca. “Ophelia’s Plants and the Death of Violets.” Ecocritical Shakespeare. Eds. Dan Brayton and Lynne Bruckner. London: Routledge, 2011. 235–46.Search in Google Scholar

Leonard, Kendra Preston. “The Lady Vanishes: Aurality and Agency in Cinematic Ophelias.” The Afterlife of Ophelia. Eds. Kaara L. Peterson and Deanne Williams. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. 101–17.10.1057/9781137016461_7Search in Google Scholar

Mentz, Steve. “Tongues in the Storm: Shakespeare, Ecological Crisis, and the Resources of Genre.” Ecocritical Shakespeare. Eds. Dan Brayton and Lynne Bruckner. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, 2011. 179–96.Search in Google Scholar

Moss, Stephanie, and Kaara L. Peterson, eds. Disease, Diagnosis, and Cure on the Early Modern Stage. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, 2004.Search in Google Scholar

Olivier, Laurence, dir. Hamlet. Desmond Dickinson, B&W, 1948. Prime Video, primevideo.com/detail/0LOEQIWRPID4N19C0B701I51Z3. Accessed 14 July 2025.Search in Google Scholar

Peterson, Kaara L., and Deanne Williams, eds. The Afterlife of Ophelia. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.10.1057/9781137016461Search in Google Scholar

Quealy, Gerit. Botanical Shakespeare: An Illustrated Compendium of All the Flowers, Fruits, Herbs, Trees, Seeds, and Grasses Cited by the World’s Greatest Playwright. New York, NY: Harper Design, 2017.Search in Google Scholar

Ryan, John C. Plants in Contemporary Poetry: Ecocriticism and the Botanical Imagination. New York, NY: Routledge, 2018.10.4324/9781315643953Search in Google Scholar

Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016.10.5040/9781911501831Search in Google Scholar

Showalter, Elaine. “Representing Ophelia: Women, Madness, and the Responsibilities of Feminist Criticism.” Shakespeare and the Question of Theory. Eds. Patricia Parker and Geoffrey Hartman. London and New York, NY: Routledge, 1985. 77–94.Search in Google Scholar

Steffen, Will, et al. “The Anthropocene: Conceptual and Historical Perspectives.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 369 (2011): 842–67. doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2010.0327. Accessed 14 July 2025.10.1098/rsta.2010.0327Search in Google Scholar

Zeffirelli, Franco, dir. Hamlet. Warner Bros., 1990.Search in Google Scholar

Published Online: 2025-11-05
Published in Print: 2025-11-04

© 2025 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Downloaded on 7.11.2025 from https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/arcadia-2025-2014/pdf
Scroll to top button