Act 4 Scene 7 There on the pendant bows her coronary weeds clamoring to hang an envious silver broke. When down her witty trophies and herself fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide and mermaid-like, a while they bore her up. But long it cannot be so that her garments heavy with their drink pulled the poor red from her melodious sleigh to muddy death. Ophelia is the daughter of Polonius and the love interest of the play's main character Hamlet. Her loyalty to her father and brother, along with her intense love for Hamlet, lead to ultimate tragedy for her in the end. Her lover murdered her father. The death of her father drives Ophelia to insanity which leads to her committing suicide by drowning herself. The painting was constructed by English painter Sir John Everett Malias from 1851 to 1852. Malias was recognized as being a main founder of the pre-Raphaelite artist movement. This movement focused on breaking away from traditional Renaissance and classical art to focus on spiritualism, artistic freedom, and connection to nature. Malias, along with other pre-Raphaelite painters, William Holman Hunt and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, almost had an obsession with Shakespeare's works and often painted several scenes from his plays. During Shakespeare's time, as well as the time the painting was constructed, women were expected to live up to a standard of perfection, or, in other words, to fit the mold of the ideal woman, with characteristics being purity, piety, and submissiveness just to name a few. These characteristics can be noted in the two paintings compared side by side. Painters of the pre-Raphaelite era perpetuated this false mold and standard of women by the many paintings which focused on these ideal attributes. Pre-Rapha also constructed images of the impure woman, shining a negative light on their essence, portraying them as promiscuous and overly sexualized as seen here in Dante Rossetti's Venus Rhetocordia. The woman is nude and looking directly at the audience with an enticing and seductive look in her eyes. Also upon a media look at the painting, we notice the main color throughout as a bright vivid red as seen in her hair, lips, and most importantly the flowers, which represent passion and desire. One can also see the apple she is holding which relates back to the story of Adam and Eve in the Bible, in which Eve was tempted by the snake to indulge. This painting perfectly captures the lust of the flesh or the impure woman. Women embracing their sexuality was highly frowned upon at the time. The times called for the extreme categorization of women as being either pure or on the other end of the spectrum a whore with no in-betweens. Prior to her committing suicide, Ophelia's character portrayed the proper woman, purity, innocence, submissiveness, and piety. Another extreme portrayal of women during this time was that of being mad or suffering from hysteria, which was actually considered an illness. It's found in my research this condition was considered from two perspectives, the church viewing it as demonic and medical professionals believing it was an actual illness. Interestingly enough, this disease was thought to be cured by abstaining from sex or engaging in sex, tying back to the pre-bath movement, an impure woman or a pure woman. In this image Ophelia is pictured, distraught and disheveled, suffering from hysteria after learning her father was killed at the hands of her lover. The last and most positive occurrence during the late 19th century in Great Britain was the woman's suffrage movement, in which women fall for their rights, but most notably, the right to vote. This started the beginning of women breaking free from the mold they were put into by most men prior. Of the painting, viewers are drawn to Ophelia lying directly in the middle of the river, as she is the focal point, and the implied line which follows her eyes straight up, and the negative space surrounding her and the water. The overall weight of the two-lead painting is symmetrically balanced with the plants and shrubbery being evenly distributed throughout. Because of the setting in nature, organic lines are found practically everywhere, including the branches above Ophelia and in the plant and the water toward her head. Also, to perfectly capture the color scheme found in nature, Malias uses a neutral and local color palette. Malias adds extra close attention to detail, making the painting extremely real and true to nature due to his brush strokes and making Ophelia seem as lifelike as possible due to her body movements and the color, cool colors found in her skin. Perhaps the most important aspect of the painting is the symbolism or iconography of the flowers. In her right hand and also with the base of her dress, she holds many flowers, but the most important ones being poppies and daisies which represent death and innocence respectively. This also ties into the storyline of Hamlet, but the poppies representing her father's death and now hers and the daisies that in the sensed head before Hamlet drove her to insanity and the notion of the proper woman thought of as pure. Ophelia is an image which channels the effects of gender and madness through which Malias captures her essence as well as symbols during the time and emotions perfectly. The painting titled Ophelia is an oil paint on canvas with its dimensions being 762 by 1118 milliliters. It can be found at the world renowned Teat Art Museum located in Great Britain.