Ophelias for Victorian Girls

Victorians firmly believed in the relevance of Shakespeare’s cultural inheritance, particularly for women. Abridgements, adaptations, and appropriations mediated the cultural relationship that girls or young women established with Shakespeare’s works. In this essay I will provide an overview of the characterization of Ophelia in several Victorian and Edwardian retellings aimed mostly at a female audience. I will contrast narrative abridgments in the short-story format with Mary Cowden Clarke’s longer and more imaginative version, The Rose of Elsinore (1850-52), a prequel that, unlike the adaptations in the tradition of the Lambs, offers an explanation for Ophelia’s behaviour by exploring her distressing and traumatic past. Clarke’s work creates a unique proto-Freudian connection between Ophelia’s childhood and the character we encounter in Shakespeare’s play. While abridgments simplify the narrative by offering clear justifications for characters’ words and actions, Cowden Clarke’s version introduces an added layer of complexity by subtly linking the struggles of early modern heroines to those faced by Victorian young women.