The objective of this thesis is to explore the construction of Ophelia's femininity in conjunction with her madness in the play Hamlet. More specifically, it tries to establish a more "Renaissance" version of Ophelia than that constructed by the many interpretations of her to be found outside the seventeenth century. To define Renaissance Ophelia, other Renaissance drama is analyzed along with major medical and religious discourse from the seventeenth century. The emphasis in this thesis is primarily on the limiting aspects of Ophelia's construction as a woman, how these limitations are sanctioned by some types of established patriarchal discourse, and how versions of these limitations manifest themselves in other Renaissance drama. Additionally, the study acknowledges the resistant elements in the text, especially those apparent in Ophelia's own mad discourse.;Intrinsic to this analysis of the limitations imposed on Renaissance woman is the notion of the double bind, which is used as a governing theory throughout this analysis. The double bind operates both to limit the mobility of the female body and to make rhetorically problematic whichever option the woman chooses in her attempt to establish autonomy and safety. In the case of Ophelia, while her mad discourse is potentially resistant, it is also easily dismissed as mad rhetoric, which robs it of some of its potency. The objective of this study is to show how Ophelia remains, to some degree, trapped in her own rhetoric, as well as to describe how that rhetoric accurately identifies the logical and ethical weaknesses in some aspects of seventeenth-century patriarchal structure. This structure, which this thesis describes, while not monolithic, works on many levels to limit Renaissance woman, and these limitations are particularly evident in the character Ophelia.
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