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{{trope}}
[[File:
{{quote|''"Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself,''
''She turns to favour and to prettiness."''
|'''Laertes''', ''[[Hamlet]]''}}
In [[Real Life]], of course, mental illness is rarely pretty. But in fiction, there's just something about a lovely young woman, often with [[Messy Hair|long, disheveled hair]], running around [[Talkative Loon|babbling lyrically]] about the strange visions flashing through her deranged mind, singing creepy little rhymes, [[Flower Motifs|scattering flowers]] and occasionally [[Ax Crazy|bashing people's heads in.]]
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There's often a surprisingly artistic bent to '''The Ophelia''''s madness, she may sing, dance wildly, or try to paint her delusions. She is often [[Closer to Earth|tied to nature]] (including [[Does Not Like Shoes|walking around barefoot]], [[Flower in Her Hair|wearing flowers]], etc.), particularly water, probably as a nod to the original Ophelia (in [[Shakespeare]]'s ''Hamlet'') who winds flowers in her hair before drowning herself. That last bit can overlap with [[Instant Oracle, Just Add Water]] if she's also a [[Waif Prophet]] and/or a [[Mad Oracle]].
The Victorians fell crazy (so to speak) in love with this trope and Ophelias in the form of wronged maidens and deranged brides go pirouetting and flower-strewing through art, poetry and literature of the period while the "mad scene" for the soprano heroine became a staple of opera. Insanity was linked to [https://web.archive.org/web/20120417014753/http://www.herstoria.com/discover/madness.html female sexuality and desire for independence]. (Not coincidentally, the vibrator was invented in this same period as a treatment for hysteria in women.) In fact, psychiatrists at that time used to encourage female patients in madhouses—especially if they were youthful and pretty—to dress the part and carry sheaves of flowers.
If a male character is shown the same way, odds are good he's very [[Bishonen|feminine and delicate-looking anyway]].
Compare/contrast with [[Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant]], [[Cloudcuckoolander]], [[Fainting Seer]], [[Strange Girl]], [[Axe Crazy]], [[Mysterious Waif]], [[Waif Prophet]], [[Hysterical Woman]]. For the (usuaully) "harmlessly kooky" variant see [[Strange Girl]], [[Manic Pixie Dream Girl]] and [[Perky Goth]].
{{examples}}
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
* Ophelia ([[Meaningful Name|duh]]) from ''[[Claymore]]'', who became obsessed with getting revenge on her brother's murderer (Priscilla). Her polite exterior disappears real fast when people interrupt her.. [[Leave No Witnesses|fun.]] Her death scene after turning into a [[Scaled Up|snake-like awakened being]] naturally occurred in a lake with her usually-braided hair flowing freely around her.
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** Axe crazy psycho for hire? Heck, he started out {{spoiler|as a girl}}.
*** And none of that stops him from being a [[Draco in Leather Pants]].
* {{spoiler|Charlotte}} from ''[[Rose of Versailles]]'', after she cracks from the pressure on her and right before she {{spoiler|commits suicide}}.
* {{spoiler|Casca}} from ''[[Berserk]]'' becomes a nearly mute version of this after she [[Go Mad
* ''[[Full Metal Panic!]]''. Kaname acts like this during her Whispered moments, including hallucinations and self-inflicted [[Clothing Damage]].
* Nina Fortner from ''[[Monster (manga)|Monster]]'', when we first meet her. Overlaps with [[Creepy Child]].
* Kagami Mikage's mother in ''[[Ayashi no Ceres]]''. Kagami himself is a cruel [[Magnificent Bastard]], but his interaction with his mom is pretty much the only [[Pet the Dog]] side we see of him.
* Diva from ''[[Blood
* {{spoiler|Shannon}} from [[Umineko no Naku Koro ni]]. She seems perfectly normal until Will asks her to bring {{spoiler|Kanon}} into the room with her, at which point she quite literally [[Heroic BSOD|short-circuits]]. The entire seventh arc is spent showing just how [[Split Personality|broken]] [[Break the Cutie|this cutie]] is since she is forced to realize that {{spoiler|she ''is'' Kanon, or rather, he's her alternate personality --[[Mind Screw|to put it mildly]].}}
** By extension, not only is {{spoiler|Shannon}} The Ophelia, but also her creator, {{spoiler|Beatrice, also known as Yasu}}.
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* ''[[Gundam Seed Destiny]]'''s Stella Loussier blissfully dances her way through her first scene of the series... And, minutes later, [[Knife Nut|shanks]] her way through the second. [[Psychopathic Manchild|It only goes downhill from there.]]
* Cordelia Glauca from ''[[Tantei Opera Milky Holmes]]'' is a humorous take of this trope, complete with flowers. [[Flower in Her Hair|Which unexplainably appears on her hair]].
* An [[Ax Crazy]] version is {{spoiler|Crimson Miroku}} from the [[Sakura Wars]] TV series. After {{spoiler|Sumire kills her and Satan Aoi brings her [[Back
* Rei Asaka from ''[[Oniisama e...|Oniisama E]]'' has her moments as this, and ''specially'' when she's drugged.
* In [[Fullmetal Alchemist (anime)|the 2003 anime version]] of [[Fullmetal Alchemist (manga)|Fullmetal Alchemist]], {{spoiler|Rose Thomas}} is either drugged or hypnotized by {{spoiler|the [[Big Bad]] Dante}}. In addition to [[Break the Cutie|the other terrible events]] that traumatized her, this makes the poor woman nearly catatonic, vacant, and either completely still or dancing. {{spoiler|But she gets better.}}
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==
* ''[[Bleach]]''{{'}}s Ichigo gets this treatment in ''[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7124350/1/Like_Clockwork_A_Steampunk_Tale Like Clockwork: A Steampunk Tale]''. Considering that he is just as [[Badass]] powerful as in canon...
* In the ''[[Pony POV Series]]'', Diamond Tiara's mother Golden Tiara - a.k.a. "Screwball" - is like this, a former [[Blithe Spirit]] whose mind broke years ago under the pressure of cutthroat high society. However, we later learn that there's a [[The Mad Hatter|lot]] [[Crazy Awesome|more]] [[The Determinator|to]] [[Mama Bear|her]]...
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* Delirium from ''[[The Sandman]]'' is sometimes portrayed this way.
{{quote|[Some] say that Delirium has no tragedy, but here they speak without reflection. For Delirium was once Delight. And although that was long ago now, even today her eyes are badly matched: one eye is a vivid emerald green, spattered with silver flecks that move. The other eye is vein blue. Who knows what Delirium sees, through her mismatched eyes?}}
* Ginny, the post-traumatic fairy in ''Aria''. Her cousin Kildare, the protagonist, refers to her as "beautiful and damaged" (or some permutation).
** [[I Thought It Meant|Somehow I doubt that's the same]] ''[[Aria]]''.
* Subverted in the ''[[Yoko Tsuno]]'' story "The Prey and the Shadow". {{spoiler|Everyone ''thinks'' that Cecilia, the local [[Ojou]], is one of these after the death of her mother... but she's actually ''sane'', and it's her [[Evil Uncle]] who makes everyone think otherwise so he can set her up for an "accidental" death.}}
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* Rachel Weisz plays twin sisters in ''[[Constantine]]'', one of whom is a sort of peripheral Ophelia - confined to a mental hospital, she commits suicide by leaping from a building, plunging through a ''roof'' and into a ''swimming pool'' (a ''cross-shaped'' one to boot) where, naturally, she can float all flowing-haired and dead. The other twin begins to manifest aspects of the trope - visions and immersion in water - without actually losing her mind.
* Crazy Cora in the Tom Selleck movie ''[[Quigley Down Under]]'' goes between this and being more or less sane. She has very long hair which is sometimes down and tangled, though no flowers or water motif as it takes place in the Australian Outback.
* Kirsten Dunst's character Justine in [[Melancholia]] could be a variation of this trope. She has few of the above mentioned traits, but a certain aesthetic scene in the movie is a clear reference to her. Justine is also mentally ill, but this is portrayed in a much more realistic and thus even more heartbreaking way.
* Lucy Barker from ''[[Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (film)|Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street]]'' after {{spoiler|her [[Driven to Suicide|attempt at suicide]], brought on by being raped and having her daughter taken away}}.
* The Italian film ''[[The Best of Youth]]'' centers around the lives of two brothers. A pivotal moment at the beginning of the film that ultimately influences their life choices is when the brothers meet Giorgia, a mental patient who has been subjected to electrotherapy. One of the brothers, Nikola, comments that they were both kind of in love with Giorgia at the time.
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* Subverted with Elfine in ''[[Cold Comfort Farm]]'' by Stella Gibbons—Elfine runs around in a green cloak "like a Pharisee of the woods" (i.e., a faerie), making cryptic remarks, until the main character, Flora, gives her a makeover and sets her up with a cute guy. Then she's normal.
* In the YA novel ''Black Jack'' by Leon Garfield, the hero finds himself falling in love with Belle, a fragile young girl who's first encountered in a wood, having a vision of "A white tower with a shining top." She's been swinging between gentle strangeness and violent hysteria since an illness in childhood. Much of the drama turns on whether her madness is the result of an illness exacerbated by neglect and isolation (in which case it's assumed to be curable) or hereditary (in which case it's not).
* Margaret Atwood has [https://web.archive.org/web/20090220013013/http://www.owtoad.com/ophelia.pdf an interest in the trope] and deconstructs it in ''The Blind Assassin''. The narrator's sister, Laura, is a beautiful, intensely spiritual young woman given to loopy statements, odd activities like painting "the colour of people's souls" onto old photographs and falling/jumping into rivers. She seems incapable of fending for herself and is revealed on the first page to have driven a car off a bridge, killing herself, at the age of twenty-five. However it later appears that it's only in the arid context of pre-war upper class society that she can't function, and there are people who have a vested interest in discrediting her insights as mere insane babble.
** Charis in ''The Robber Bride'' has also exhibited symptoms of this, the more so during her university days. Arguments can be constructed on both sides of the crazy/not crazy spectrum.
* ''[[The Warlord Chronicles]]'' takes a moment out of deconstructing the [[King Arthur]] mythos and pulling it into [[The Dung Ages]] to deconstruct this trope in the person of Olwen the Silver, an insane [[Cloudcuckoolander]] first used by Merlin, (her etheral beauty, a little paint and special effects convinced people that she was a spirit and Merlin was summoning the old gods back to Britain) and later by Merlin's [[Knight Templar]] former pupil Nimue.
* In Mary Jo Putney's ''The Wild Child', the titular heroine appears to be mutely insane or at least mentally handicapped, but in the pretty, well-groomed way. However it turns out she's just really stubborn and unsocial.
* In [[Harry Potter]] {{spoiler|Ariana Dumbledore, minus the [[Talkative Loon]] part.}}
** Luna Lovegood has shades of this.
* ''[[Jonathan Strange
** Adding to it, {{spoiler|once one of her friends is taken away to Faerie to join the dances she attempts revenge on the man responsible with a pistol, though she fails.}}
* Odiana in the ''[[Codex Alera]]'' is something like this trope... as well as most of the others listed under "compare/contrast". She's also an [[Unhappy Medium]], a powerful empath driven [[Ax Crazy|completely nuts]] by slavery, gang-rape, and brainwashing. She's gorgeous, [[The Mad Hatter|cheerfully open]] about her own insanity, and ''way'' [[Cloudcuckoolander|out there]].
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** The ensouled Spike has his own moments of Male Ophelia Syndrome. ''This is my place! You need permission to be here! You need a special slip with a stamp!''
** And frankly, ''Restless'' turned the entire cast of Buffy into this.
* In the ''[[Doctor Who]]'' episode "The Doctor's Wife", Idris/ {{spoiler|the TARDIS}} is this when she's put into human form. Of course, experiencing your own past, present and future at the same time would make anyone a bit mad.
* "All the Sinners, Saints", a thoroughly depressing, [[Shoot the Shaggy Dog]] episode of ''[[Without a Trace]]'', features Katie, a beautiful young woman who's suffered from a severe and apparently untreatable mental illness for years and believes she's possessed and vanishes after suffering visions of a murder. {{spoiler|after discovering that she ''committed'' the murder in question, she slits her wrists in a bath, fulfilling the trope's association with water.}}
* Anorexic Cassie of ''[[Skins]]'' is an Ophelia who just about manages to function socially, except for when she... doesn't. When thoroughly out of it {{spoiler|as she attempts suicide}}, she is seen dancing ethereally in floaty clothes on a hilltop bench against the setting sun.
** Subverted in the second series. The Ophelian tendencies go out of the window and it's just plain ''disturbing'' when she's out of it.
*** Effy straddles the line between "pretty" and "disturbing" during the fourth series.
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* [[The Addams Family|Morticia Addams]]' older sister (also played by Caroline Jones in the series; seen for about two seconds in the movies) fits much of this trope. She wears flowers in her hair (if you try to pluck one, her leg lifts up); she's vague at least, though not babbly; and [[Waif Fu|she's very good at karate]], not noticing that it hurts when she flips men to the ground. Oh, did I mention her name is Ophelia?
* In an episode of ''[[Xena: Warrior Princess]]'', Xena is driven mad by the Furies. Oh, she can still kick butt(in a Three Stooges style) but she suddenly wants to weave daisies in her hair.
* ''[[CSI New York]]'' has a suspected murderer, who seems dazed and begins babbling about law procedings. As it turns out, she's just a sleepwalker that only just woke up. Bonus points for her name actually being Ophelia.
* Annie from ''[[Community]]'', especially back in her Adderall days.
* Daisy on ''[[Being Human (UK)]]''. Bit of an [[Actor Allusion]], as the actress Amy Manson also played Lizzie Siddal, the model of the famous pre-Raphaelite painting ''[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3e/Millais_-_Ophelia.jpg Ophelia]'' on [[Desperate Romantics]].
* In ''[[Game of Thrones]]'' , this combination of prettiness and madness makes the [[Royally Screwed-Up]] Visyrus slightly sympathetic, even though he's both bratty and horribly abusive towards his sister. Lysa -who is not stunning but very well kept for somebody so insane- might also fit. Then there's Dany. who generally holds herself well, but definitely has a touch of her family's madness.
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* The basis for the [[Emilie Autumn]] album ''Opheliac'', which was described by Autumn as "being another drowning story". And as the album is somewhat autobiographical, the attractiveness part is arguably passed too.
* [[Yoshiki Hayashi]] in both stage persona and [[Real Life]] is a male example of the trope, though somewhat less, both as he's gotten older and as therapy for the conditions from which he has suffered has improved from what it was. Arguably, from Yoshiki's autobiography, Yoshiki's father was also a [[Real Life]] male Ophelia, one whose life sadly ended from suicide at 33.
* Florence + The Machine used this idea in at least The Drumming Song off Lungs. Other songs also feature this idea.
== [[Opera]] ==
* "Mad Scenes" were a popular convention of early 19th Century French and Italian opera, frequently afflicting the soprano heroine.
** Lucia in ''Lucia di Lammermoor''. {{spoiler|She [[Ax Crazy|stabs]] her [[Arranged Marriage|forced bridegroom]] Arthur to death, then shows up babbling (re: singing) madly in the middle of the wedding party - [[Blood-Splattered Wedding Dress|blood splattered dress and all]], few before she passes away as well.}} (In the original novel, Walter Scott's "Bride of Lamermoor" which was [[Very Loosely Based on a True Story]], Lucia's madness is surprisingly un-aestheticised, so doesn't count).
** Linda in ''Linda di Chamounix'' has the unusual good fortune of getting over it and having a happily-ever-after.
** Margeurite in Gounod's ''Faust'' goes mad after falling pregnant and committing infanticide, and sings, of course, about flowers.
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== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
* In ''[[Vampire: The Masquerade]]'' we're provided with an entire vampire clan of these, courtesy of the Malkavians. Subverted, in that while some of them are genuine Ophelias, just as many are [[Ax Crazy]] or [[Psychopathic Manchild]]ren, or have less obvious kinds of crazy like personality disorders or compulsions, and a fair number are just pretending to be The Ophelia to put the rest of the world off their guard.
* Then, there's Dolores [[Big Screwed-Up Family|Whateley]] in ''[[Deadlands]]''. Ethereally beautiful? Check. Long, raven-black hair? Check. Access to [[Brown Note|mind-breaking knowledge]]? Check. Dancing through the graveyard at night singing nursery rhymes to her "friends" in the graves? [[Shout-Out|Ooh. That's a big check.]] In the short-lived ''[[Deadlands]]'' [[Collectible Card Game|CCG]], she provided some of the best Flavor Text, such as the quote on the "Event Card" where every [[Deadly Euphemism|aced]] character became playable again for exactly one round.
{{quote|''Everyone's coming out to play!''}}
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* Probably inspired by Shakespeare's example, any young woman in Renaissance drama who enters "with her hair about her ears" (i.e. down).
* [[Shakespeare]] himself parodied this type with the Jailer's Daughter in ''[[The Two Noble Kinsmen]]''.
* Mary Tyrone in the final scene of ''[[Long
* Some productions choose to go down this path with post-[[Villainous Breakdown]] [[Macbeth|Lady Macbeth]].
* Blanche DuBois in ''[[A Streetcar Named Desire]]''.
** Tennessee William's use of this trope is believed to be inspired by his own life. Williams was very close to his sister Rose, who was described as a "slim beauty". She was diagnosed with schizophrenia and spent much time in mental hospitals before having a lobotomy that incapacitated her. Williams never got over it and it is believed to have played a part in his drug addiction and alcoholism.
* Some productions of ''[[Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (theatre)|Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street]]'' do this to Johanna.
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== [[Real Life]] ==
* Besides the aforesaid iconography of mentally ill Victorian women as Ophelia, theater legend tells of an 18th-century actress accustomed to playing Ophelia, who went insane after being jilted. She escaped from the nuthouse, went to the theater where ''Hamlet'' was playing, and took the place of that night's Ophelia, literally running onto the stage ahead of her. Reviews said she was fine. Unfortunately she died a few weeks later.
* Lucia Joyce, daughter of [[James Joyce]]. Schizophrenic. Institutionalised. Pretty (rather Flapper-like), with an artistic temperament: she was a skilled dancer in her youth, good enough to train with Isadora Duncan.
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[[Category:Seers]]
[[Category:The Ophelia]]
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ophelia, The}}
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