John Everett Millais, Ophelia, 1851

"There on the pendant boughs her coronet weeds
Clamb'ring to hang, an envious sliver broke,
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide,
And mermaid-like awhile they bore her up,
Which time she chanted snatches of old lauds,
As one incapable of her own distress
Or like a creature native and endued
Unto that element. But long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death." Hamlet, William Shakespeare

Similar to Lemoyne’s Narcissus, Millais’ Ophelia depicts a subject haunted by demons of the mind. While Narcissus suffered from an insatiable love, Ophelia suffered from a fantastical love. It has been argued that Ophelia was not melancholic, but was afflicted with erotomania, a type of delusion in which the person affected truly believes that another person is in love with him or her. In Millais’ painting, Ophelia rests on the brink of drowning, mouth agape in the pleasure of the release that accompanies death. Millais’ Ophelia evokes comparison with Bernini’s St. Theresa in Ecstasy. In addition to her erotic facial expression, Ophelia lies in a position that is almost saint-like: arms elongated, palms upward toward the heavens. For Ophelia, the water is an escape—an escape from her inner demons and her harsh reality. She moans in pleasure for she has become unbound from her mortal body and the water is her source of delivery. She sinks into a garden of foliage, a free woman embracing purely feminine scenery. Drowning, in this work, is not a death. It is a rebirth, a passage from the waking world to one that is entirely Ophelia’s own.