Ophelia 1889

John William Waterhouse painted ‘Ophelia’ in England, sometime between 1889 and 1917. Ophelia is a character from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, driven mad by her father’s murder at the hands of her lover. Victorian England was fascinated with Shakespeare, and with images of women in states of heightened emotion, especially when those emotions lead to tragedy. Waterhouse’s painting is therefore part of a larger cultural phenomenon that saw women as especially vulnerable to strong emotions. It is worth noting that during this period, women's access to education and professions was severely restricted. To understand the work better we might consult playbills to see what was popular on the stage, or contemporary medical texts to see how madness was understood at the time. By situating Waterhouse’s Ophelia within its social context, we can better understand the cultural forces that shaped its creation and reception.