Innervations of Ophelia; How Shakespeare’s Ophelia creates the Madwoman Trope, and Why she Endures in Contemporary Femininity

This paper explores the cultural development of the literary madwoman trope, arguing it is iconicized by Shakespeare’s Ophelia and traceable through the maladaptive evolution of her identity through history, in which she is objectified and othered through patriarchal institutions of psychiatry, art, literature, and music. Through this objectification and othering, this paper summates that the madwoman trope has come to be defined by this erasure of identity that Ophelia endures, and contemporary womanhood is thus defined by one’s ability to inhabit the perfect intersection between madness and beauty.