Hamlet’s Sweetheart: Millais’ Ophelia

paleness. She is depicted to be singing and chanting to “snatches of old tunes,” ignoring her tragic fate. The hopeless romantic is “incapable of her own distress” and would soon succumb to her “muddy death.”

The Tin Bath

speare’s heroine’s untimely death.

“Fallen Women”

By Sydney Hsieh Graphic Design Editor

“To Muddy Death”

With gentle steps and a broken heart, Ophelia mounts a willow tree. Disheartened by unrequited love from Hamlet and by her father’s death, the “poor wretch” drowns in a brook when the sound of a branch snap resounds. The poetic death of Ophelia in Hamlet IV, Scene VII, is one of the most famous subjects ro- manticized by Victorian-era painters, namely, the Pre-Raphaelites. One of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, John Everett Millais, spent five summer months in 1851 depicting every ripple of nature, including flowers and leaves, that refer to the cycles of life and death. Floating on a river and surrounded by fresh garlands, the vibrant scene is in contrast to Ophelia’s

According to the Tate Museum, the boyish appearance and crimson-red hair of Elizabeth Siddal attracted the Pre-Raphaelites to make her their muse. Owing to her youth and beauty, she posed for Millais in a chilling bath for several months. For hours, Millais inspected the gleams of her pale complexion and the movements of her copper hair. Even when the small candles beneath her tin bath died out during freezing winters, she remained still and lifeless. Although Millais failed to notice, Siddal passed out with a cold and contracted pneumonia. The traumatic experience would cause permanent health damage to the young beauty, who would die at the early age of thirty-two. The story of Siddal drew parallels with Shake-

Victorian morality glorified women in their roles as mothers and respectable wives. Working women, especially artist models, were looked down on as less worthy. Often depicted with tragic ends in art and literature, “fallen women” frequented the streets as homeless squatters, threw themselves from bridges, and drowned in polluted rivers. The Victorian women “falling” out of grace described those who deviated from social norms and the domestic sphere. In the painting, the polluted river is transformed into a serene country stream, and the archaic gown is a symbol of Ophelia’s unfulfilled dreams of marriage. In connection to Ophelia’s tragic fate, Siddal experienced a miscarriage and suffered the many infidelities of her husband, Rossetti. She was abandoned and later died of an overdose. Millais’ imagination entwined the fates of Ophelia and Siddal as victims of love, both subjected to the worst that the heart has to offer.