For the world of painting, Ophelia is the perfect symbol of beauty; for the literati, she is an intriguing complexity to explore. Although she is not a prominent character in Hamlet, Shakespeare created her so special that people have been thinking about her and her experiences for years, inspired by her, writing articles about her, singing songs and painting pictures dedicated to her. The most important of these is Ophelia painting by John Everett Millais in 1851.
Millais depicted the moment of death of Ophelia, who went mad after the man she loved killed her father and fell into the water when the branch she stepped on broke while picking flowers by the river one day. The expression on Ophelia's face, who makes no effort to save herself after the fall and continues to sing, has caused controversy, and according to some critics, the expression, which represents sexual pleasure, represents the relief and numbness of leaving herself in the arms of death. Whether her death was suicide or not is a complete mystery and is still debated. However, "Although questions about Ophelia's death are not clearly answered in the play, Carol Thomas Neely states that drowning was the most common method used by women in England at the time to commit suicide."
Contrary to what may seem at first glance, the character who is mostly silent and submissive in Hamlet, is the result of a criticism of society. According to some, Ophelia is a character suppressed by men and Shakespeare criticizes the point of view of the period with various directives and inconsistent chastity advice given to her. Besides all this, Ophelia is a good observer and is aware of the vices and inconsistencies that everyone else does. However, she does not express any of these until before she goes mad. After her madness, she starts to talk about all the facts with her sarcastic sentences and her poetic language is replaced by songs and prose.
