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Hébert's portrait of
Ophelia is charged with a latent sexuality. The dark, hollow eyes stare
defiantly at the viewer and suggest a pain and betrayal beyond her ability to
cope. Dijkstra quotes the French magazine Je Sais Tout
which reproduced this picture with "an especially telling caption":
this Ophelia is "truly that helplessly abandoned ideal creature, whose
hallucinating eyes see nothing more than what is within, and who, hair
loosened and streaming down, will in a few moments enter gently into the
stream which will carry her--a cut flower among other cut flowers--away to
that world beyond whereof her madness is already an expression" (43).
This stark portrayal of madness and sensuality is among the most striking of
the various pictures of Ophelia.
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