The Immortalisation of a Tragic Heroine: Ophelia by John Everett Millais
By Laura Day
The first glimpse of Millais’ Ophelia is an easily captivating sight. Deep vibrant greens and wild flora lure you in, ensnaring you with the mystery of the floating figure, an entanglement of nature and human beings. Yet, despite this ethereal scene, the impossible paradox of serenity and the sinister undertone of Ophelia’s torment lingers over the initial beauty. Millais manages to capture the harrowing complexities of Ophelia’s anguish. The acts that in Shakespeare’s Hamlet initially read merely as hysteria, but to a modern audience reads as a woman struggling and in desperate need of help never given, in this haunting depiction of her tragic ending.
Ophelia, produced over the course of a year in 1851-2, is based on the poetically described death scene of its namesake: Shakespeare’s heroine Ophelia. In Hamlet, Ophelia is driven to madness by the betrayal of her beloved, and by her father’s murder at his hands. Her death is never directly shown, but rather the audience learns about it through the words of the Queen, who compares Ophelia to ‘a creature native and indued / Unto that element.’ Altogether, this piece is a mastery of art, endowed with tender emotion, both of harmony and that of ghostly pain, as attested by the longstanding regard this depiction of Ophelia’s suicide has received.
Shakespeare’s use of flowers as signifiers is weaved throughout many of his writings, but none are so stark as the flowers of Ophelia’s lament prior to her death. Strikingly vibrant in colour, Millais uses flowers to surround his floating figure, reminiscent of Shakespeare’s own. The deep, rich red of a poppy, the symbol of death, stands harshly against the earthy greens and browns dominating the piece. A garland of violets can be seen shrouding Ophelia’s neck, invoking the image of innocence, whilst also symbolising her faithfulness.
Ophelia has always been a character that holds a certain allure to me, and this painting not only captures the feelings of awe and beauty I hold for the character, but also began another interest of mine: the prevalence of dead women that permeates the art world.
The lifeless stare, the perfectly parted lips, and the delicately spread hair all combine to create an image of perfect seduction – but why is such a pose so often associated with female death? Why is this idea of a dead woman, one without choice, paired so closely with the image of female sexuality? The romanticisation of the relationship between female sexuality and insanity is a topic endlessly fascinating and is an example of the ways patriarchal systems work to demean the suffering of women and fetishize their pain.
The archetype of a beautiful young girl, surrounded by water, in her dying moments a picture of beauty and sensuality, is abundant in examples, with Ophelia perfectly encapsulating this idea. There is no apparent origin for this phenomenon, but there is certainly something about the desire held by men to unremittingly destroy the women they claim to long for, to punish them, that is inextricably sinister. Something reminiscent of the religious condemnation of women as the root of mankind’s sin. Perhaps that is why they consistently choose to drown her; a twisted mirror of baptism, forever immortalising her sexuality, whilst simultaneously punishing her for being an object of lust. Millais’ Ophelia forever contains the moment of her death, and we as the onlooker, become a part, however unwillingly, of the spectacle of female punishment.
The model for this painting was Elizabeth Siddal, the woman who would go on to become the face of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. To depict the scene as accurately as possible, Millais had Siddal lie in a bathtub filled with water for hours on end. One day, the water was so cold that she fell ill, and it is speculated that this illness was the stem of Siddal’s opioid addiction – an addiction which would become her ultimate cause of death just a decade later. Over the course of her short life, Siddal produced no less than a hundred pieces of art and she was even commissioned by John Ruskin. And yet, she is almost never mentioned outside conversations surrounding the men who painted her.
The character of Ophelia is never given a life outside of her connection to Hamlet. In Shakespeare’s play, she is not even given a death of her own, only a death through the words of others. This painting is the beginning of a reclamation of Ophelia, a reclamation of her story separate from her relationships to men. The mirroring of Siddal’s own life with the story of Ophelia layers this piece with a subtle irony – the most significant muse of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, an artist in her own right, has been reduced and forever linked to the male artists inspired by her, just as the character she modelled has always been conceived in connection to her male counterparts. Millais’ painting, a masterpiece of the Pre-Raphaelite era, full of intensity and natural beauty, with his Ophelia in a pose often attributed to depictions of martyrs, immortalises this tragic heroine, celebrating the devastating intricacies of her character that are often overlooked.
[Editor’s Note: John Everett Millais’ Ophelia is currently on display at Tate Britain in London. An image of the painting can be viewed here.]