Imagining Ophelia
Bianca Winataputri, NGA Assistant Curator of International Painting, Sculpture and Decorative Arts explores how Ophelia’s fate is entwined with Pre-Raphaelite Elizabeth Siddal.
‘Therewith fantastic garlands did she make
Of crowflowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples, …
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide,
And mermaid-like awhile they bore her up,
Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes,
As one incapable of her own distress …’
Queen Gertrude in Hamlet, Act IV, Scene VII
Ophelia’s drowning in Shakespeare’s Hamlet is not performed on stage and can only be imagined through the words of Queen Gertrude. Driven mad after her father is murdered by her lover, Hamlet, Ophelia drowns. Her death, it seems, is an instance of beauty, focusing above all else on the flowery setting and her ‘mermaid-like’ garment. This aestheticised portrait of her drowning renders Ophelia as an object of beauty, and her death a romantic tragedy.
Existing through the words and imagination of others, Ophelia’s death has been interpreted in many ways: suicide, madness, existential crisis. But at every instance her death is given meaning by everyone but herself. Caught between the expectations of her father, brother and lover, Ophelia’s character throughout the play is always defined by those around her. As Gabrielle Dane in Reading Ophelia’s madness 1998 observes ‘With her identity constructed always in reference to another, Ophelia is, in essence, nothing, an empty cipher waiting to be infused with … meaning.’
John Everett Millais’ famous painting of Ophelia 1851–52 pictures the beautiful and tragic death of the Shakespearean character. Gently floating amongst brightly coloured flowers in her beaded silver dress, Ophelia is characteristic of the Victorian ideal of women as delicate, fragile and feminine creatures.
Posing for the painting is Elizabeth Siddal, a Pre-Raphaelite model, artist and wife of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Described as having red hair like ‘dazzling copper’, she captured the attention of the Pre-Raphaelites and modelled for many paintings. Apart from the portraits made by Rossetti, Siddal rarely seems herself. Adapting to the requirement of a Pre-Raphaelite model she continuously changes personas, from literary to mythical to the relatable character of Ophelia. Siddal’s long relationship with Rossetti resulted in a marriage of only two years before her tragic death. She was Rossetti’s muse — his inspiration, obsession and dream. Rossetti’s sister Christina’s poem In an artist’s studio described Siddal as ‘Not as she is, but as she fills his dream’. Like Ophelia, Rossetti seems almost to have considered her as a vessel for his dreams. Siddal struggled with deteriorating health and depression and died at 32 after an overdose of laudanum. Her death, like Ophelia’s, was also read in many ways. Though officially stamped as an accident, accounts of suicide quickly circulated.
Ophelia and Siddal had a lot in common. They were both defined by the men around them and struggled with their inner conflict, dying tragically. But to compare Siddal and Ophelia is not to make them as identical characters. One is very real and the other fictional. Comparing the two figures allow us to reflect on societal perceptions and expectations of women as imagined spaces, that perhaps things haven’t changed much over the centuries — many women still struggle to find and claim a voice in society.
Love & Desire: Pre-Raphaelite Masterpieces from the Tate including John Everett Millais’ Ophelia 1951–52, for the first time in Australia, is showing at the NGA from 14 December 2018 – 28 April 2019.
