kayla🎀

🪷

this painting depicts a character in Shakespeare’s play of Hamlet; where Ophelia is attacked for her womanhood, falsely accused of being impure, insulted by her lover. Here, she can be pictured cleansing herself in a stream surrounded by flowers; likely to be representative of her sweet and gentle nature which she tries to convey to Hamlet who has driven her into depression and a state of insanity. Hamlet also murders her father whom she was close with and this artwork shows her drowning herself in a ‘seemingly peaceful’ country stream.

to me, it represents the romanticisation of female depression and grief through the eyes of men (ie., Hamlet) and also represents the beauty within her that is drowned in the dark depths of the stream which could be symbolic of her depression. She is pictured with tears in her eyes as we are unsure as to what she could be thinking or feeling as she immerses herself in darkness. The silver adorned dress that she wears is an analogy to women only being a pretty jewel in men’s eyes and of her having no real purpose to Hamlet. She clutches onto a bunch of flowers while others drift down stream, this could be symbolic of the colour or light in her life (e.g her happiness, her love towards hamlet, her father as he was killed etc.) suggesting it is slipping away from her grasp as she desperately clings onto it in her last moments.

i could literally stare at the painting for hours!!

thank u for reading about my thoughts 💌