Ophelia complex is the term used by Gaston Bachelard to refer to the links between femininity, liquids, and drowning which he saw as symbolised in the fate of Shakespeare's Ophelia.A. Thompson ed., Hamlet (Arden 2016) p. 26-7
Main theme Bachelard traced in Romanticism a nexus of ideas linking the dissolution of the selfG. Wisker, Rites of Passage in Postcolonial Women's Writing (2010) p. 241 – male or female – with immersion in the feminine element of water, as symbolised by Ophelia's drowning.P. Brooker, A Practical Reader in Contemporary Literary Theory (2010) p. 34
Literary offshoots Federico García Lorca explored the image of water and a despairing sexuality, epitomised in the Ophelia complex, throughout his writings.The Weeping Brook
Exteriorised adolescence A later, and unconnected, use of the term Ophelia complex was introduced by Mary Pipher in her Reviving Ophelia of 1994. There she argued for a view of Shakespeare's character as lacking inner direction and externally defined by men (father/brother),D. Lester, Katie's Diary (2004) p. 93–5 and suggested that similar external pressures were currently faced by post-pubescent girls.K. Douglas, Life Narratives and Youth Culture (2007) p. 160 The danger of the Ophelia syndrome was that of abandoning a rooted childhood self for an apparently more sophisticated but over-externalised façade self.D. Lester, Katie's Diary (2004) p. 95
See also
Notes
References
Sources G. Bachelard, L’Eau et les rêves: Essai sur l’imagination de la matière (Paris, 1942). M. Pipher, Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls (1994; 2011)
External links Ophelia and Isabella