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
editBachelard 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
editFederico García Lorca explored the image of water and a despairing sexuality, epitomised in the Ophelia complex, throughout his writings.[4]
Exteriorised adolescence
editA 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 façade self.[7]
See also
editReferences
edit- ^ A. Thompson ed., Hamlet (Arden 2016) p. 26-7
- ^ G. Wisker, Rites of Passage in Postcolonial Women's Writing (2010) p. 241
- ^ P. Brooker, A Practical Reader in Contemporary Literary Theory (2010) p. 34
- ^ The Weeping Brook
- ^ D. Lester, Katie's Diary (2004) p. 93–5
- ^ K. Douglas, Life Narratives and Youth Culture (2007) p. 160
- ^ D. Lester, Katie's Diary (2004) p. 95
Further reading
editG. Bachelard, L'Eau et les reves (Paris 1942)