Literary Ladies Cage Fight: The Not-So-Virgin Suicides

by Laura Sook Duncombe · July 20, 2015

Laura Sook Duncombe’s previous Literary Ladies Cage Fight columns for The Butter can be found here.

Greetings, mortals. I am Artemis, goddess of the hunt and hostess of the LLCF, along with my sister, Aphrodite. Each match, we bring you two women of literature and make them compete in five categories. The woman with the most points at the end of five rounds wins.

When we celebrate women, everyone’s a winner! Hey gal-pals, it’s your co-hostess Aphrodite. We’ve got an awesome match for you today—our first fight featuring ladies of the stage! We present the not-so-virgin suicides: Juliet from Romeo and Juliet versus Ophelia from Hamlet, both by William Shakespeare!

A note on our title this week: LLCF does not place any value on a woman’s virginity—we see it as a social construct. Our title is simply a play on a movie title. Also, if you or anyone you know is thinking about suicide, please call 1-800-784-2433 (1-800-SUICIDE) or visit www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org. There is help out there.

Round 1: Harry Potter House

Ophelia is the daughter of a nobleman and the sort-of girlfriend to Hamlet, crown prince of Denmark. We don’t know a lot about her, other than she really likes Hamlet, despite the fact he’s mostly a jerk to her and basically behaves like Edward Cullen—brooding and then belittling her. She shows a bit of backbone in denying her dad’s wishes to stay away from Hamlet—but that turns out to be a terrible mistake. Poor Ophelia, we hardly knew ye. Let’s call her a Hufflepuff.

Juliet is a little spunkier than Ophelia, but just as silly when it comes to boys. She also falls in love with a bad boy and defies her parents’ wishes. Her story is especially juicy because she’s basically engaged to major hottie Paris—who doesn’t want to marry ’90s Paul Rudd? While she does her fair share of weeping and lamenting, she also threatens to stab herself unless the friar helps her escape Paris, and that takes some serious moxie. This makes her a Gryffindor.

Winner: Juliet. Poor Ophelia doesn’t stand a chance…unless it’s a crying contest. She could kick butt in a crying contest.

Round 2: Sidekick

Ophelia suffers mightily from the lack of a girlfriend—someone who would be in her corner and yell at all the men in her life. Her dad and her brother are the closest she has to a sidekick, and they never seem to have her best interests at heart. They’re also not very interested in what she wants or needs. It’s not surprising she throws herself at Hamlet, the first guy to pay attention to her. If only she had been able to go to college, girl would have been a heck of a women’s studies major.

Juliet has a sidekick—the sassy, brassy nurse! She tells a lot of dick jokes and talks way too much, but she loves Juliet and stands up to her master in order to advocate for her. She’s like a mother and a sister to Juliet, helping her get messages to Romeo and arranging their secret wedding. It’s when the nurse goes against her own heart and tells Juliet to pick Paris over Romeo that things start to go from Bad to Worse.

Winner: Juliet again. Perhaps Juliet is stronger than Ophelia due to her strong female role model?

Round 3: Love Interest

Oh boy, Hamlet. The ultimate hipster, who was into existential depression way before it was cool. He does seem to love Ophelia, in his way, but he’s too self-involved in his war games to treat her right. He savages her with the famous “get thee to a nunnery” speech, which speeds her decline into her eventual suicide. Sometimes he makes lewd remarks to her, sometimes he’s mean to her, and sometimes he ignores her. Nothing in his behavior is an acceptable way to treat a loved one. Not cool, Hamlet, not cool.

Romeo looooooves Juliet soooo much! He starts out in love with Rosaline, but as soon as he sees Juliet, he’s over the moon for her. He climbs over her garden walls so he can talk to her, he marries her, and he dies for her. It’s so romantic! It’s the ultimate–

Winner: Sorry, Dita, but dying for your lover is not romantic. It’s stupid. They were teenagers. They needed supervision and possibly some cold showers. It’s really dangerous to set their impulsive behavior up as the paragon of True Love, and I refuse to perpetuate that any further. I know you’re the goddess of love, but it’s MY column and I call B.S. on Romeo. So, Ophelia, this round is for you. At least nobody pretends your death is anything other than a tragedy.

Round 4: Tragic Flaw

Whatever, Artie. You just don’t get it. But fine. So, Juliet’s tragic flaw is that she’s too impatient. She can’t see past what’s right in front of her and get some perspective on the situation. Like yeah, Romeo’s banishment was the worst, but maybe give it some time to see if you can become pen pals or something? There are solutions, girlfriend, but you went straight to Plan Z: Worst Case Scenario. And you paid for it with your life, which sucks.

Ophelia’s biggest flaw is likely her lack of agency—but is that really her fault? Is she, like Jessica Rabbit, not bad but merely drawn that way? A lot of smart people have a lot of great theories on Ophelia, and I don’t want to wade into the deep stuff. I just think it’s sad, ultimately, because she’s little more than a prop in Hamlet’s story when she could have been the star of her own. It’s hard to assign her any characteristics that aren’t in relation to the men of her life. Her whole existence basically fails the Bechdel test. I feel sorry for her. And sorry for women, who’ve been putting up with this shit for hundreds and hundreds of years.

Winner: Ophelia. She doesn’t deserve what she gets.

Round 5: Happy Ending

Look, everyone dies, okay? It’s terrible. Hamlet, Ophelia, Romeo, and Juliet all end up dead. Can we say somebody’s death is better than somebody else’s? They’re all super-duper sad. So I’d call this one a draw.

I hear you, sister, and I agree. But I think that Juliet has a slight edge here over Ophelia, simply because she got to live before she died. Throughout the play, she makes choices and tries to take control of her destiny. She makes some bad choices, but she does make them for herself. She dies onstage in the arms of her lover, while Ophelia dies offstage, unaccompanied and without fanfare.

Winner: Juliet.

So after five rounds, Juliet is our winner, barely. Shakespeare, we love ya, but let’s have more Portias and Beatrices and fewer Ophelias, okay?

Maybe that’s the point, though—fully realized women star in comedies, but when women are plot devices or furniture and the plays are ruled by men, it ends up being a tragedy.

There may be some truth in that, sister mine. Well, thanks for joining us, mortals. See you next time for a more uplifting episode of LLCF!

Tags: laura sook duncombe, literary ladies cage fight, plays, shakespeare, the butter

Laura Sook Duncombe

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17 Comments

nicoledieker +13 July 20, 2015 4:45 pm

I liked to imagine that Ophelia was just messing with everyone in that “mad scene.” That she knew exactly what she was saying, and that—unlike Hamlet—her acting was convincing.

But that was also because I was desperate to give some kind of agency to this character.

freshwaterpearl +12 July 20, 2015 5:10 pm

I’m trying to decide what to think about that interpretation. I guess it depends on what we think madness is, and Shakespeare had different ideas about that than we have now. But he never, to my knowledge, wrote a mad character who just spouted random nonsense. Whether Ophelia is mad or sane, her grief is so raw, and so desperately feminine at the same time. She isn’t a very canny player of the game, and never has been, so she uses the language she has: “I would bring you some violets, but they withered all when my father died.” It slays me every time.
Nikki +5 July 20, 2015 5:39 pm

Have you read the great Ophelia essay by B.N. Harrison The Toast published a while back? It’s so wonderful and made me think about Ophelia in a way I never had before.
literarysara +11 July 20, 2015 6:16 pm

I always appreciate a production that allows Ophelia to go buck wild in that scene. Like, everybody’s been telling Ophelia to be careful, to be modest, but hey your dad died and you have no friends, there’s no point in decorum anymore! Be reckless! Wheeee throw flowers at everyone, sing at the top of your lungs, rag on the king to his face! Who cares?! So yeah, I usually read that scene as defiant (thus, intentional).
depizan +5 July 21, 2015 4:32 am

One interpretation I’ve seen argued is that she probably wasn’t mad because of the way she passes out the flowers before her death. Fennel symbolized flattery and deceit; and columbine, ingratitude; and those are the ones she gives to Claudius. Rue was a symbol of repentance, which Ophelia gives to the queen and to herself. But Ophelia says that the queen is to wear her rue with a difference–rue was also used to induce abortions. So Ophelia’s desperation/madness may have been over an unexpected pregnancy and not so much over Hamlet himself.

Frumiosa +11 July 20, 2015 5:20 pm

You guys remember the Ethan Hawke/Julie Stiles version where the “get thee to a nunnery” line is delivered in the context of him giving her all of her stuff back, and it includes a rubber ducky, just sitting there on the table? I thought that was a great touch that really signified that we were dealing with dumb dramatic teenagers; don’t kill yourself/anyone else over this stuff, kids.

floridagal1 +2 July 20, 2015 6:11 pm

That sounds really good!
MoonPrismPower July 24, 2015 7:01 pm

I took a whole seminar in college on Hamlet and have seen, I’m pretty sure literally, every filmed version of Hamlet, and I adamantly maintain that the Ethan Hawke/Julia Stiles version is the best.

Apple +1 July 20, 2015 5:25 pm

There’s a very important “not” missing from your third paragraph.

Nikki +2 July 20, 2015 5:38 pm

Changed, thank you!!

floridagal July 20, 2015 6:11 pm

That sounds really good!

Sara Davis July 20, 2015 6:16 pm

I always appreciate a production that allows Ophelia to go buck wild in that scene. Like, everybody's been telling Ophelia to be careful, to be modest, but hey your dad died and you have no friends, there's no point in decorum anymore! Be reckless! Wheeee throw flowers at everyone, sing at the top of your lungs, rag on the king to his face! Who cares?! So yeah, I usually read that scene as defiant (thus, intentional).

LeastBittern +30 July 20, 2015 6:25 pm

We read Romeo and Juliet freshman year of high school. I remember being gobsmacked that Juliet’s parents went from “She a baby, an absolute baby, and Paris can marry her in a year or two when she’s not an infant anymore.” to “Yes darling, you’re getting married to Paris tomorrow! Like immediately, that’s when you’re getting married, won’t that be nice?” (That’s why plan pretend to be dead was a go; she did not have time to set up communications and maybe sneak away to join him, and also marrying Paris is bigamy and a mortal sin.)

I realized that there’s a third important family in the story: the Prince’s family. When Tybalt kills Mercutio, that is bad for the Capulets. When Romeo revenges himself on Tybalt, that is good for the Montagues – that’s why the Prince commutes Romeo’s death sentence for fighting into exile, because Romeo acted as if Mercutio’s life was so important that it was worth throwing away Romeo’s life. The Capulets are in a bad place: their kinsman has killed one of the Prince’s kinsmen, and their enemies are in the Prince’s good books. But they have this daughter who Paris – another member of the Prince’s family – really really wants to sleep with before she turns 14. Marrying her off immediately as a sacrifice is good for their fortunes.

I told my English teacher this, and she said “No, it’s because she was sad and crying, and they didn’t want her to cry anymore. Parents would never do that.”

Which a.) excellent job eliding the fact that medieval society was a shitshow for women, I am tots convinced b.) the fact that you are OBVIOUSLY lying to me makes me think that this is still going on, the only caring about teenage girls when parents are in a good place, and then sacrificing their hopes and future when it’s convenient for them, informative, and c.) you are really invested in the “teenagers are idiots” interpretation of this play, when Juliet had a pretty good plan that hinged on her parents loving her and keeping their word to her, and d.) I guess I’ll go back to my workbook with questions like “if Mercutio were an animal, what kind of animal would he be? Cut one out of a magazine and put it on this piece of paper.” and “if Tybalt were a car, what sort of car would he be? Cut one out of a magazine and glue it here.” and will also hate you for saying this decades later.

Lady_Honoria +4 July 22, 2015 7:08 am

I actually, genuinely hurt my eye from rolling it so hard at what your English teacher said. Oh my god. (also ow)

Thank you for this thoughtful write up which included things that I had not actually thought about because I have really enjoyed not thinking about R&J since i was a teen. I had the benefit of a really good English teacher, who in retrospect was herself a baby and just out of university (oh my god I can’t believe they unleashed us teens on those poor unsuspecting women) and she did a genuinely really good job that year with both To Kill a Mockingbird and also R&J, but she did make us watch the Zeffirelli movie and oh man I hated it. And also I think the whole plot is stupid, basically, and only made more palatable by more historical context and feminist readings of it, neither of which were in the curriculum.

We never got to study Hamlet but the next year we did Much Ado with my favourite teacher ever (oh man I love that play) and the year after that, Macbeth, with my same favourite teacher. I found the play mostly boring but I did get to read Lady Macbeth for the whole thing which was pretty rad.

This has been A History of My Study of Shakespeare. You’re welcome.

barbaricegplant +4 July 21, 2015 1:31 pm

My perception of Ophelia at this point is totally colored by Ryan North’s badass alternative-universe Ophelia (who is variously an inventor, an assassin or both and persistently has little to no patience for the bullshit of the men in her life) that it’s retroactively made me more positive about Shakepeare’s Ophelia, which gives her something of an edge.

AnneH +4 July 21, 2015 9:32 pm

I think it is hard to put women from plays against one another. Books are books, yes, when we read them we interpret, but plays are given from the playwright to the director to the actors to the audience. How can they cage fight with only their blue prints? I have seen some kick ass Ophelias and some weak ass Juliets. With what’s on the page, this is absolutely correct. But I HAVE to believe that Ophelia is secretly a Ravenclaw.

Lady_Honoria +3 July 22, 2015 7:10 am

SAME. But I don’t know why I think that? But also, frankly, she could be anything, because we never really get to see actual her, because her whole life was about being trained to be the Ultimate Hufflepuff. Which is unfair to everyone, including hufflepuffs.

nicoledieker +13 July 20, 2015 4:45 pm

I liked to imagine that Ophelia was just messing with everyone in that “mad scene.” That she knew exactly what she was saying, and that—unlike Hamlet—her acting was convincing.

But that was also because I was desperate to give some kind of agency to this character.
1. freshwaterpearl +12 July 20, 2015 5:10 pm
  
  I’m trying to decide what to think about that interpretation. I guess it depends on what we think madness is, and Shakespeare had different ideas about that than we have now. But he never, to my knowledge, wrote a mad character who just spouted random nonsense. Whether Ophelia is mad or sane, her grief is so raw, and so desperately feminine at the same time. She isn’t a very canny player of the game, and never has been, so she uses the language she has: “I would bring you some violets, but they withered all when my father died.” It slays me every time.
2. Nikki +5 July 20, 2015 5:39 pm
  
  Have you read the great Ophelia essay by B.N. Harrison The Toast published a while back? It’s so wonderful and made me think about Ophelia in a way I never had before.
3. literarysara +11 July 20, 2015 6:16 pm
  
  I always appreciate a production that allows Ophelia to go buck wild in that scene. Like, everybody’s been telling Ophelia to be careful, to be modest, but hey your dad died and you have no friends, there’s no point in decorum anymore! Be reckless! Wheeee throw flowers at everyone, sing at the top of your lungs, rag on the king to his face! Who cares?! So yeah, I usually read that scene as defiant (thus, intentional).
4. depizan +5 July 21, 2015 4:32 am
  
  One interpretation I’ve seen argued is that she probably wasn’t mad because of the way she passes out the flowers before her death. Fennel symbolized flattery and deceit; and columbine, ingratitude; and those are the ones she gives to Claudius. Rue was a symbol of repentance, which Ophelia gives to the queen and to herself. But Ophelia says that the queen is to wear her rue with a difference–rue was also used to induce abortions. So Ophelia’s desperation/madness may have been over an unexpected pregnancy and not so much over Hamlet himself.
Frumiosa +11 July 20, 2015 5:20 pm

You guys remember the Ethan Hawke/Julie Stiles version where the “get thee to a nunnery” line is delivered in the context of him giving her all of her stuff back, and it includes a rubber ducky, just sitting there on the table? I thought that was a great touch that really signified that we were dealing with dumb dramatic teenagers; don’t kill yourself/anyone else over this stuff, kids.
1. floridagal1 +2 July 20, 2015 6:11 pm
  
  That sounds really good!
2. MoonPrismPower July 24, 2015 7:01 pm
  
  I took a whole seminar in college on Hamlet and have seen, I’m pretty sure literally, every filmed version of Hamlet, and I adamantly maintain that the Ethan Hawke/Julia Stiles version is the best.
Apple +1 July 20, 2015 5:25 pm

There’s a very important “not” missing from your third paragraph.
1. Nikki +2 July 20, 2015 5:38 pm
  
  Changed, thank you!!
floridagal July 20, 2015 6:11 pm

That sounds really good!
Sara Davis July 20, 2015 6:16 pm

I always appreciate a production that allows Ophelia to go buck wild in that scene. Like, everybody's been telling Ophelia to be careful, to be modest, but hey your dad died and you have no friends, there's no point in decorum anymore! Be reckless! Wheeee throw flowers at everyone, sing at the top of your lungs, rag on the king to his face! Who cares?! So yeah, I usually read that scene as defiant (thus, intentional).
LeastBittern +30 July 20, 2015 6:25 pm

We read Romeo and Juliet freshman year of high school. I remember being gobsmacked that Juliet’s parents went from “She a baby, an absolute baby, and Paris can marry her in a year or two when she’s not an infant anymore.” to “Yes darling, you’re getting married to Paris tomorrow! Like immediately, that’s when you’re getting married, won’t that be nice?” (That’s why plan pretend to be dead was a go; she did not have time to set up communications and maybe sneak away to join him, and also marrying Paris is bigamy and a mortal sin.)

I realized that there’s a third important family in the story: the Prince’s family. When Tybalt kills Mercutio, that is bad for the Capulets. When Romeo revenges himself on Tybalt, that is good for the Montagues – that’s why the Prince commutes Romeo’s death sentence for fighting into exile, because Romeo acted as if Mercutio’s life was so important that it was worth throwing away Romeo’s life. The Capulets are in a bad place: their kinsman has killed one of the Prince’s kinsmen, and their enemies are in the Prince’s good books. But they have this daughter who Paris – another member of the Prince’s family – really really wants to sleep with before she turns 14. Marrying her off immediately as a sacrifice is good for their fortunes.

I told my English teacher this, and she said “No, it’s because she was sad and crying, and they didn’t want her to cry anymore. Parents would never do that.”

Which a.) excellent job eliding the fact that medieval society was a shitshow for women, I am tots convinced b.) the fact that you are OBVIOUSLY lying to me makes me think that this is still going on, the only caring about teenage girls when parents are in a good place, and then sacrificing their hopes and future when it’s convenient for them, informative, and c.) you are really invested in the “teenagers are idiots” interpretation of this play, when Juliet had a pretty good plan that hinged on her parents loving her and keeping their word to her, and d.) I guess I’ll go back to my workbook with questions like “if Mercutio were an animal, what kind of animal would he be? Cut one out of a magazine and put it on this piece of paper.” and “if Tybalt were a car, what sort of car would he be? Cut one out of a magazine and glue it here.” and will also hate you for saying this decades later.
1. Lady_Honoria +4 July 22, 2015 7:08 am
  
  I actually, genuinely hurt my eye from rolling it so hard at what your English teacher said. Oh my god. (also ow)
  
  Thank you for this thoughtful write up which included things that I had not actually thought about because I have really enjoyed not thinking about R&J since i was a teen. I had the benefit of a really good English teacher, who in retrospect was herself a baby and just out of university (oh my god I can’t believe they unleashed us teens on those poor unsuspecting women) and she did a genuinely really good job that year with both To Kill a Mockingbird and also R&J, but she did make us watch the Zeffirelli movie and oh man I hated it. And also I think the whole plot is stupid, basically, and only made more palatable by more historical context and feminist readings of it, neither of which were in the curriculum.
  
  We never got to study Hamlet but the next year we did Much Ado with my favourite teacher ever (oh man I love that play) and the year after that, Macbeth, with my same favourite teacher. I found the play mostly boring but I did get to read Lady Macbeth for the whole thing which was pretty rad.
  
  This has been A History of My Study of Shakespeare. You’re welcome.
barbaricegplant +4 July 21, 2015 1:31 pm

My perception of Ophelia at this point is totally colored by Ryan North’s badass alternative-universe Ophelia (who is variously an inventor, an assassin or both and persistently has little to no patience for the bullshit of the men in her life) that it’s retroactively made me more positive about Shakepeare’s Ophelia, which gives her something of an edge.
AnneH +4 July 21, 2015 9:32 pm

I think it is hard to put women from plays against one another. Books are books, yes, when we read them we interpret, but plays are given from the playwright to the director to the actors to the audience. How can they cage fight with only their blue prints? I have seen some kick ass Ophelias and some weak ass Juliets. With what’s on the page, this is absolutely correct. But I HAVE to believe that Ophelia is secretly a Ravenclaw.
1. Lady_Honoria +3 July 22, 2015 7:10 am
  
  SAME. But I don’t know why I think that? But also, frankly, she could be anything, because we never really get to see actual her, because her whole life was about being trained to be the Ultimate Hufflepuff. Which is unfair to everyone, including hufflepuffs.

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Laura Sook Duncombe

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