What is an Opheliac?
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I assume someone like Shakespeare's Ophelia.
Why does Ophelia go mad? Imagine that you are a girl who has always been close to your family, but you are now in love with an older man who returned your affections - Hamlet. Your father (who is actually a big jerk) tells you that you can not see your love any longer (mostly because you might lose your virginity to him). You agree out of love for your father, and turn Hamlet away. Then one day he comes to you, holds you by the wrists and stares at your face, long and hard, before stomping out, leaving you a sobbing mess. Your father declares he's gone mad out of desire for you and stomps off to tell the king. Next thing you know, you're being told to talk to Hamlet, been convinced that if your love is what made him mad, your love might make him sane agian. So you try to speak with him and you're rejected coldly, and he screams "get thee to a nunnery!" (perhaps warning you agianst men, or perhaps using the slang for nunnery which meant a whorehouse). He faces you one last time to ask you where your father is (he's spying on the scene and you know it) and you, faced with the horrible choice, lie and say he's at home. Hamlet gives up on you (he actually knows or suspects about your father), enraged. The next time you see him, he sits beneath you and basically cracks nasty jokes about you for awhile. After all of this, you hear that Hamlet has killed your father. Your dearly beloved dad has been stabbed by the one you love.
No wonder Ophelia goes crazy.
The character of Ophelia can be interepreted many ways -- she can be interpreted as purely innocent, died because the ones she loved were gone -- a sad, pathetic little girl, basically. Or some believe that she was a highly intelligent, sexually experienced, but somewhat confused & naive (until the end) young woman who is actually a stronger character than Hamlet because she DOES what he only TALKS about (suicide, going mad).
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