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Although Arthur Hughes
may casually allude to Redgrave's painting in his Ophelia
(1852) with the trunk of the tree and the bank of the stream, the resemblance
ends there. Hughes depicts Ophelia as a sickly, pale, almost girlish figure
who looks down into the water and idly drops blossoms into the stream. Elaine
Showalter's distaste for the work is obvious; the painting "shows a tiny
waiflike creature--a sort of Tinker Bell Ophelia--in a filmy white gown,
perched on a tree trunk by the stream. The overall effect is softened,
sexless, and hazy, although the straw in her hair resembles a crown of
thorns." Ophelia is a "juxtaposition of childlike femininity and
Christian martyrdom" (84-5). But then perhaps Hughes, like most
Victorian men, preferred his women childlike, ill, and therefore dependent,
as Bram Djistra suggests as he evaluates the painting: we find Ophelia
"at the edge of the brook where Shakespeare placed her. In a state of
madness and anguish, she has crowned herself with reeds as she watches the
flowers she drops in the water float away in anticipation of her own imminent
fate. She is emaciated and tubercular and therefore has all the requisite
attributes of the icons of illness. Consumptive fever has heightened the
contrast between the pallor of her skin and her red lips and the deathlike
shadows around her eyes. In the issue of The Art Journal
in which the engraving . . . was first published, an enthusiastic commentator
remarked on Hughes' singular success in bringing a 'look of vacancy' into
Ophelia's 'sweet, child-like face'" (43).
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