Alexandre Cabanel's Ophelia
Death is a conclusion and a commencement; it is a moment of realization and sovereignty. Hamlet by William
Shakespeare illuminates the beauty in Ophelia’s death and the freedom that she experiences. Alexandre Cabanel illustrates Ophelia reaching for the light with her facial expression showing that she does not care anymore. She is reaching for heaven and is done lingering in darkness which is why the lighting in the portrait focuses on her while everything in the background is dark. Artist John
Everett Millais depicts Ophelia holding a bouquet and faintly letting them go which represents her liberty from Hamlet and Polonius firm hold on her life and the bondage in her heart being broken. Although there is no context, the picture means a
thousand words. The people in her life never fully appreciated her decisions and tried to understand her internal feelings. Her death has allowed her to never need to worry about Polonius telling her who she could and could not love. Hamlet on the other hand betrayed her love. He asserts,
“I loved Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers could not, with all their quantity of love, Make up my sum, (5.1.255). The word “loved” shows that Hamlet’s love for her was only in the past and relative. Ophelia was strung along and never got to actually be her own woman until she died. Millais illustration shows that she is floating away from her misery and sadness and the flowers represent the love that was finally time to let go. Her death revolved around the question
Hamlet asked himself earlier in the novel of “Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or to take arms against a sea of troubles And by opposing end them?” Although it is still a mystery,
Ophelia’s death conveys a powerful message about the freedom of choice and the beginning to a new end.
Shakespeare illuminates the beauty in Ophelia’s death and the freedom that she experiences. Alexandre Cabanel illustrates Ophelia reaching for the light with her facial expression showing that she does not care anymore. She is reaching for heaven and is done lingering in darkness which is why the lighting in the portrait focuses on her while everything in the background is dark. Artist John
Everett Millais depicts Ophelia holding a bouquet and faintly letting them go which represents her liberty from Hamlet and Polonius firm hold on her life and the bondage in her heart being broken. Although there is no context, the picture means a
thousand words. The people in her life never fully appreciated her decisions and tried to understand her internal feelings. Her death has allowed her to never need to worry about Polonius telling her who she could and could not love. Hamlet on the other hand betrayed her love. He asserts,
“I loved Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers could not, with all their quantity of love, Make up my sum, (5.1.255). The word “loved” shows that Hamlet’s love for her was only in the past and relative. Ophelia was strung along and never got to actually be her own woman until she died. Millais illustration shows that she is floating away from her misery and sadness and the flowers represent the love that was finally time to let go. Her death revolved around the question
Hamlet asked himself earlier in the novel of “Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or to take arms against a sea of troubles And by opposing end them?” Although it is still a mystery,
Ophelia’s death conveys a powerful message about the freedom of choice and the beginning to a new end.