Juliet and Ophelia:  Active and passive, passion and softness

It is possible to see a relation between two of the most famous plays, and more specifically tragedies, by William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet. Such relation takes into account the factor of the woman in the play (which is, in some way, wicked since no women performed the role of women in plays in that period). 

Juliet is merely a girl when the play starts. Nevertheless, it has been argued that she grows over the development of the play and, in contrast to Romeo, she progressively matures. The child is no longer so: she is a person able to make decisions and to decide what is it that she wants and pursues it. She goes with the flow of things but in an active way since she knows where things are headed to.

Ophelia, the woman I refer to in Hamlet, is sadly totally the opposite. She is shown as downtrodden, submissive and welcoming, in contrast to the character of Hamlet, aggressive and passionate in nature. She follows the will of others, for example Laertes or Polonius. The girl is given little - if none - voice in the play except when she finally loses her mind after Polonius death, and that voice, or room for her to speak, is full of nonsense and madness. In act 4, when her father is accidentally killed, her craziness is unleashed. Therefore, Ophelia is a character to be pitied.

Despite having a totally different attitude toward events, they both, Ophelia and Juliet, have something in common; they both are dragged to their fatal destiny because of a man. Hamlet and Romeo are the ones to be blamed for the downward spiral Ophelia and Juliet undergo. Juliet, actually, dies the same as Ophelia. Is it notorious that their deaths have a different nature, though: Juliet dies by a knife being “sheathed” in her skin, which could be considered as aggressive, dying almost by phallic icon; meanwhile, Ophelia dies by water, in a sort of soft way, surrounded by a welcoming entity such as water, she fades into the depths; so now I wonder: Would the way they die have something to do with their personalities?