Text Style: Drama Script

Written By: Jean Betts

Jean Betts is the playwright of this script and is one of her political feminist theatre pieces. Betts grew up around theatre as both of her parents were a part of the Londen branch of Unity theatre in the theatrical wing of the Communist Party where she began to question women’s role in theatre and then, the world. As she grew up, she decided to write plays that challenged society’s views on a woman’s place in the world where she confronted her audiences but reminding them that men aren’t all monsters, it’s merely just how they’ve been raised to think and act. In Ophelia Thinks Harder, it’s a reinvented play of the original Hamlet except presented from her view with a feminist twist on it. She begins to question the societal views she grew up with until she finally breaks free of the cage that kept her in place.

Reading this for the first time, I was stunned with the bluntness of the messages being sent. I was able to see the prejudice against women to the extreme which made me question what I saw in my life that I just brushed over too. It challenged views accepted in society that got us to question, why do we accept the worst instead of going for the best? I saw how people with abusive partners sometimes don’t even realise it as they are expected to stay in those relationships and are stuck there with no escape. It showed a gruesome reality of some women’s lives that isn’t shown to the public. I initially felt shocked at what I was reading, until I saw that these were related to real stories from real women which speak volumes about what young men are picking up on and doing to women. It hurts me to know that related events are still going on, the controlling nature and unfair blaming of things out of her control. In scene 4, Hamlet is pretty much slut shaming Ophelia for confiding in a male friend and has made her feel guilty for it and demands that she, “Get thee to a nunnery!”. In order to “cleanse her soul from sins” she has to go to a nunnery where women are expected to be seen as pure and live a life of celibacy in order to be worthy of love. He lashes out at her when she finally does something for herself to make her life better before having all her progress washed away. However, I liked how untamed this piece of literature was as it didn’t shy away from the sensitive topics no matter how confronting it was. I could not find a single fault at the rewriting of one of Shakespeare’s pieces into a modern, women’s perspective life.

Jean Betts uses stereotypes to help get her message across to the audience. Ophelia at the start is the shy, naive girl who has had her life planned out and has no choice but to follow it. We see Hamlet throughout the play being a stereotypical toxic male who thinks they are above others which we don’t see a change in. The Queen comes across as femmer fatale who through her charm is able to manipulate others to get what she wants. From Ophelia’s stereotype, some might not understand why she doesn’t just leave the castle to escape the prejudices where as others are more understanding and can see how difficult it is to leave. But as we slowly see her grow, we slowly love her more and more. She grows into herself and we admire her because of it where our thoughts on her have changed so drastically throughout the play. After our first meeting with Hamlet we already despise him and what he stands for. When he says the line, “I can play you like a flute.” he’s telling the audience that women are nothing to men other than instruments for their pleasure which women have no choice in.  From the Queen, we see someone who gives in to society’s expectations on women but gives into them so that she can get something out of it. We are shocked at how easily she takes on the prejudices but see that she feels as if it’s the only way in that society won’t change its views so she’ll have to change her tactics to do well. Ophelia Thinks Harder is just holding a mirror to society to show us our prejudices that we have today. Society still thinks that women are lesser than men because we are meant to be in the kitchen, look after the kids and just be looking beautiful 24/7 for men’s pleasure no matter what we have to go through for it. An argument when people fight against these prejudices is that in the cave man days it was the men who hunted and the women who stayed home to look after the children, that it’s in our nature. If we look at Maori culture, this too happened but when the men left the village to fight it was the women who protected it and were a force to be reckoned with as they were strong, powerful, and absolutely terrifying to go against. Women are so much more than the prejudices against them. At the start it shows the women locked in cages held down tight by prejudice until they finally break free and take what they want to battle prejudice. Women have had to fight for their rights and freedoms but we are held back by stereotypes that keep women away from reaching the goals they want to achieve.

How often do we ignore signs of an abusive relationship in public or family and friends because it’s, “not our business”? Ophelia managed to break away from Hamlet and the toxic relationship she was in, but not without the help of those around her which I felt was important. She had help from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, as well as the Maid and the Queen to guide her along her journey of becoming her own person. This taught me that there are still domestic issues surrounding us today and that we have to take action to fix these issues so that women don’t get stuck in situations like this. We need more in our justice system to stop things like this from happening.

I think that Jean Betts definitely wanted to spark change in the New Zealand community around domestic abuse and what it means to be a woman. What she saw around her was that for women to succeed, they had to become a man which is addressed many times throughout the play, for example when talking about virginity with Hamlet he say that to be pure she has to forget women and become a man, and at the end of the play when Ophelia pretends to be a man to join the play group. This is what society was like then and now, women used to wear shoulder pads to have broader shoulders and appear more masculine and women wearing mens suits so that they appear more alike. We see that Jean Betts saw that the only way for a woman to make it in the world was to play towards the man’s world. We have a happy ending, but not the one we want. The maid is killed and Ophelia is finally free from Hamlet’s grasp at the expense of living the life of a man. Viewers are forced to ask why? Why is it that Ophelia can’t be free and a woman and instead can only be free as a man? Why does this have such a massive impact on women in New Zealand yet nothing is done to change this? We are faced with a truth from this that we can’t ignore and Jean Betts wants us to reflect on the world around us truthfully and see it for what it is. It’s not the man’s fault for the world we have but the education we give them that causes them to act this way.