Millais’ Ophelia depicts Hamlet’s Ophelia at the brink of her poetic death. Painted singing afloat on the Denmark River, Ophelia is the embodiment of the “tortured female.”  As Shakespeare’s tragedy progresses, Ophelia begins losing her mind, haunted by inner demons. At the time Hamlet was written, medical professionals believed that melancholy was a disability of the intellect expressed in males. Women with similar symptoms were assumed to be afflicted by not melancholy, but erotomania, a type of delusion in which the person affected truly believes that another person is in love with him or her. Millais might be alluding to this presumption in the facial expression of Ophelia.

Mouth agape in 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. She sinks into a garden of foliage, immaculately painted by Millais. Each flower adds to the meaning of the painting—the poppies signal the coming of death, the white flowers possibly referring to the song Ophelia sings to Hamlet about a maiden loosing her virginity. Influenced by the foliage on the riverbanks of London and Shakespeare’s words, Millais’ Ophelia has inspired many other works following its creation, such as the song “What the Water Gave Me” by Florence and the Machine and the cinema poster for Lars von Trier’s Melancholia, featuring Kirsten Dunst in a similar Opheliaesque pose.