From early modern tragedy to Victorian visual culture, Ophelia's representation has reflected shifting paradigms of gender, aesthetics, and emotion. During the Victorian era, Pre-Raphaelite reinterpretations of this Shakespearean heroine made her into an emblem of tragic femininity. These images not only aestheticized death and idealized feminine fragility but also operated within a broader visual representation that conflated the female body with aesthetic and moral transcendence.
