The Ophelia Archetype

Savannah Villar-Beach

Dr. Allyson Williams

Nineteenth-Century European Art

20 April 2021

The Ophelia Archetype: Creating and Breaking 

The piece I have chosen for my research paper is Ophelia, painted by Sir John Everett Millais in 1851-2. This piece is one of the most well-known artworks from Britain and speaks to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood mission, of which Millais was one of the founders. You may find this artwork now in the Tate Britain Gallery in London, England. The first of the two articles I will be analyzing is Pre-Raphaelite Painting and the Medieval Woman written by Erin Frisch in April 2013. The second is Ophelia and Victorian Visual Culture: Representing Body Politics in the Nineteenth Century By Kimberly Rhodes in 2017. I chose this work of art because I have always liked looking through the art of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood since I was young, although I had never learned deeply of the history and missions of the art group. I also think the Victorian time was very interesting in the way it romanticized so much of a nostalgic past in the face of all the new technology and culture. When this painting was being worked on Millais lived in Surrey and London. 

Sir John Everett Millais was an English painter born in 1829 in Southampton, he was considered a child prodigy and came to work in London in 1838. By the age of nine, he was already winning awards for his outstanding work. In 1848 Millais, William Holman Hunt, and Dante Gabriel Rosetti formed the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The PRB sought a return to meticulous detail, moral lessons, vibrant color, and compositions about Quattrocento Italian Art. The subject of the painting Ophelia comes from the play Hamlet by Shakespeare. The background was painted first, outside by the Hogsmill River at Ewell in Surrey, and Ophelia was modeled after Elizabeth Siddal in his London studio where she posed in the bathtub. We see a woman driven to suicide by her madness and witness her final moments as she lays in the stream surrounded by lush nature. The painting is 2.5 ft x 3.6 ft and although the majority of the painting is taken up by the winding of the branches and the flowers in bloom, the eye is drawn to Ophelia as she lies in the center. Ophelia's body takes up the center of the painting horizontally, enclosed by the fallen tree, the moss and large bushes creating a setting of intimacy. Immediately rich green catches one's eye, the splashes of color that when looked at closer are small flowers scattered along the river and throughout Ophelia's body. The main colors are the green of the vegetation, brown of the tree and muddy water and white of her skin. One can assume her dress used to be white but now has become muddled. The very alive green and blooming colors of the flowers highlight the paleness and earth tones of Ophelia's hair, skin, and dress. This is also how the eye is drawn to her face and upturned hands, as well as that her face lies directly below the large, protruding willow tree that branches out in all directions. Each section of the painting is given precise attention to detail, each flower shown directly from observation, making all parts of the painting equally important. The artist uses overlapping of the river plants to show some plants lie behind the woman, others reach in front of her and others are behind her, creating an illusion of space. The forms are neither fully rectilinear nor fully curved, rather a blend of the diverse shapes that occur in nature. The strong plants sturdy in form enclose the more delicate Ophelia and the flowers around her. We can see the artist used many small brushstrokes to get an almost exact copy of what he saw in nature. Her face is equally illuminated on all sides, there is not a grand sense of shadow other than that which creeps in the middle left under the willow tree. A texture of softness becomes the artist's brushstrokes, bringing to life the veracity of Ophelia. 

This painting is one that depicts a medieval subject with great realism, applauded by Victorian England. Learning from the negative reviews of his previous painting Christ in the Carpenter Shop, Millais took a different approach to this painting in both his style and subject manner. He combined idealism and realism to create a work of art in service to aesthetic pleasure and attention to detail. Victorian England was the culture of Gothic revivalism and romanticizing the past in the face of the ugliness and materialism of the 19th century. The Morning Chronicle in 1852 stated that “Ophelia is startling in its originality. The beholder recoils in amazement at the extraordinary treatment, but a second glance captivates and a few moments’ contemplations fascinates him”. Like with e any art that brings new technique, negative reviews were made as well saying that the vegetation overwhelms Ophelia, reducing her anguish. Both these reviews are from the time it was first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1852, where it received mixed reviews, but now is revered for its beauty and influence on future generations of artists. 

The first document I read for my research was Pre-Raphaelite Painting and the Medieval Woman by Erin Finsch where she brings in contextual evidence of society and culture, plunges into the symbolism of the painting, and highlights the message of Ophelia. Finsch brings information together to present that on one ha, nd Millais represented the breaking away of the Royal Academy’s formal traditions that the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood stand for. On the other hand, the message of Ophelia states that women who attempt to denounce the traditions of society are bound to a life of decay and misery, with the greatest example being the story of Ophelia. The author considered Victorian ideals at the time and noted that most were familiar with all of Shakespeare's plays and the symbolism held in his plays. Finsch provides a context of what it meant to be a woman in Victorian Britain and how the heroines from Shakespeare plays were the main role models for how to act and carry oneself, all besides Ophelia. Ophelia's main flaw that was expanded on in these victorian books, was that she was not there to be the angel for her man in distress, and that is why she was led to this young, unfortunate death.  Finsch contrasts Millais Ophelia with others by Arthur Hughes and Richard Redgrave, where their Ophelia is an innocent child, sitting on the willow tree, seeming distant from a far-off land. In comparison to Millais’s rendition, with the off-scene moment being depicted, the muddy death, her untamed sexuality, and madness have driven her too. There is no child in this picture, but a gorgeous young woman who has cast herself adrift. The major way that Millais takes a radical turn away from accepted depictions of Ophelia is by portraying this moment where she is dying, where everything is so real from her dress that has Victorian resemblance, the exact botanicals mentioned in Act IV Scene 7, such as nettles, forget me not, weeping willow, which all act to enclose Ophelia in a “coffin”, enacting the favored archetype of the Romantics, the beautiful madwoman. The Pre-Raphaelites were dedicated to portraying more serious images, with moral lessons which is perhaps why Millais took the risk of bringing Ophelia's death more visible to the viewers, for the moral of the story to hit harder. That as a woman, stay in your garden of domesticity, be level-headed, and tame your sexuality. 

The second piece of research is Ophelia and Victorian Visual Culture: Representing Body Politics in the Nineteenth Century By Kimberly Rhodes, where the author dives into Victorian culture and ideologies being enforced, concerning the model of Ophelia to young women, the many archetypes created by her character and the way Millais redheads to these and counteracts them. Rhodes uses historical evidence that many lines from Hamlet divulging the entirety of Ophelia's death were emitted from the restoration period to the end of the nineteenth century, which adds to why so many of the portrayals have her sitting on a stump, childlike and magical. This also connects to the understanding of why Millias' piece left such a shock to the audience; they had not been so familiar with the Ophelia who was a “wrench” who “ sank to her muddy death”. This painting becomes a manifesto of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, showcasing their romantic tendencies by depicting characters who they admired for their emotional truth, beauty, and oneness with nature. The inspiration from the romantics who were connected mostly with the French and their adoration for depicting dying, young, beautiful women ruffled many feathers at the time it was exhibited. Also, this painting brings out the feelings of death in people, as viewers are held at that moment when Ophelia's face is peeling and she sings her last breath, how can one see this painting without thinking of their death, death of their daughter, lover or death of their innocence? Millais knew this painting was walking against the status quo, and nowadays we can see the payoff as it’s one of the most famous paintings from the west. Rhodes returns again and again to the archetype of the fallen woman depicted explicitly in Millais’s paintings, a myth created in the Victorian era to serve as a moral warning to remind women of the disgrace and death of being a sinful sexual woman. This is the takeaway from her writing as well as Krischs. As Millais challenges the pictorial norms of how to visualize Ophelia and states the PRB belief in truth to nature and moral lessons in art, he also stays deep within his Victorian culture which emphasized the ideology of separate spheres and that women should follow in the archetypes of dutiful, beautiful daughter and wife.

After reading both these papers; viewing the way Ophelia was regarded in Victorian England the way it was considered such a disruption and caused lots of heads to turn in suspicion I can dissect deeper the impact of the painting in that moment. Ophelia to me has always pleased the aesthetics of being a woman alone in nature and swimming in flowers. Little did I know the whole history of, and that this is a moment of final breath, and ripe with symbolism. The many contrasts in the painting all allude to the temporariness of human life, of the lost innocence that leads to a scornful death. The way Frisch notices the singing of the red bird in the corner, and the way Ophelia is singing her last song, shows that this whole lively ecosystem will continue singing and blooming while her body decomposes. I disagree with the way Millais plays into these archetypes and stories of women, but I have always loved learning about them and exploring how they are enforced or made conscious through art (such as Cindy Sherman). I also understand that we are all a construct of our time. I was able to realize the chunks of the research concerning Millais and Ophelia, and I was able to place myself in Victorian England, see myself being handed a book on how to become a young woman and learning from Shakespearian heroines, and wander in the Royal Academy and taking note of all the Ophelias that were showcased. The message of the previous ones says I am beautiful, young, and vulnerable, I must protect that by fulfilling the duties of the home and my parents, and closing my mind away from sexuality. Then, I would have seen Millais’s painting and felt guilt and the power of being succumbed by nature, and that my own life story and flesh are only temporary, that if I go on a path of longing, desire, and attempt to feed my freedom, I will end up like the way Ophelia truthfully ended up, young and nowhere to turn but to death.