Ophelia complex is the term used by Gaston Bachelard to refer to the links between femininity, liquids, and drowning which he saw as symbolised in the fate of Shakespeare's Ophelia.[1]

Main theme

Bachelard traced in Romanticism a nexus of ideas linking the dissolution of the self[2] - male or female - with immersion in the feminine element of water, as symbolised by Ophelia's drowning.[3]

Literary offshoots

Federico García Lorca explored the image of water and a despairing sexuality, epitomised in the Ophelia complex, throughout his writings.[4]

Exteriorised adolescence

A later, and unconnected use of the terms Ophelia complex/Ophelia syndrome was introduced by Mary Pipher in her Reviving Ophelia of 1994. There she argued for a view of Shakespeare's character as lacking inner direction, and externally defined by men (father/brother);[5] and suggested that similar external pressures were currently faced by post-pubescent girls.[6] The danger of the Ophelia syndrome was that of abandoning a rooted childhood self, for an apparently more sophisticated but over-externalised facade self.[7]

See also

References

  1. ↑ A. Thompson ed., Hamlet (Arden 2016) p. 26-7
  2. ↑ G. Wisker, Rites of Passage in Postcolonial Women's Writing (2010) p. 241
  3. ↑ P. Brooker, A Practical Reader in Contemporary Literary Theory (2010) p. 34
  4. ↑ The Weeping Brook
  5. ↑ D. Lester, Katie's Diary (2004) p. 93-5
  6. ↑ K. Douglas, Life Narratives and Youth Culture (2007) p. 160
  7. ↑ D. Lester, Katie's Diary (2004) p. 95

Further reading

G. Bachelard, L'Eau et les reves (Paris 1942)

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