The Ontology of Silence: Being, Nothingness, Representation, Time, Memory, and Surrender in Ophelia

BIOGRAPHY

I was born in 1995 in Erzurum, Turkey. I graduated from the Fashion Design Department at Istanbul Okan University and subsequently completed my thesis-based master’s degree in the Sculpture Department at Atatürk University. In 2022, I was awarded second place in the Young Designers Competition in Turkey with a collection created using the culturally significant and registered fabric of my hometown, a material I continue to work with in my designs. I write articles on the sociological, philosophical, and psychological dimensions of art and share them across various platforms. By bringing together the disciplines of fashion and sculpture, I create designs in sculptural forms as well as textile-based sculptures. I have participated in various exhibitions in Turkey, particularly with textile sculptures produced in the context of sustainability, and I continue to do so. Throughout my academic career, I have presented papers and contributed to scholarly discussions at numerous national and international congresses, including the INTERNATIONAL URBAN LANDSCAPE AND ART CONGRESS-V (ULA-2024). In addition to my academic work, I have organized personal exhibitions, and through my brand, NESLİHAN HACIÖMEROĞLU Haute Couture Wedding Dress Brand, I continue to produce and present my designs in both Turkey and Qatar, strengthening my presence in the international design arena.

Abstract

This article presents a multilayered literary, philosophical, and artistic analysis of Ophelia, a character from William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Ophelia oscillates between being and nothingness, reason and madness, subject and object; her representation is shaped through form, silence, time, and memory, standing at the thresholds of surrender and aesthetic expression. John Everett Millais’s 1851–52 painting Ophelia transforms this ontological fragility into a visual and aesthetic network of memory woven with visual time. Additionally, comparative readings of artworks by Alexandre Cabanel, John William Waterhouse, Arthur Hughes, Jules-Joseph Lefebvre, and Konstantin Makovsky explore themes such as silence, visual representation, temporality, and memory, offering a new interpretation of Ophelia’s ontological position.

Introduction: Ophelia as the Voice of Silence

“We know what we are, but know not what we may be.” — Hamlet, Act IV, Scene 5

Sometimes when language fails, silence speaks. And this silence is not merely a pause, but an existential echo. When being becomes alienated from its own phenomenon, essence turns not toward form, but toward void. Ophelia is a figure who exists at the threshold of this void: she is neither fully subject nor wholly object; neither alive nor dead; neither in reason nor in madness. This liminal condition universalizes her tragedy.

The aesthetic and philosophical fascination with Ophelia is not solely about a tragic character but about an expression of an ontological state. Thus, “to want to be Ophelia” is not merely a melancholic condition but a courageous approach to the boundaries of subjectivity.

1.  Ophelia as a Representation of Fragility and Dissolution

At first glance, Shakespeare’s Ophelia appears passive, innocent, and delicate. Yet this appearance is an illusion tied to the position of women in a patriarchal system. Ophelia functions as a kind of openness—male characters’ desires, ideologies, and power struggles are played out upon her.

In the context of Michel Foucault’s theory of knowledge-power relations, Ophelia’s body and mind become an epistemological field. As Elaine Showalter points out, Ophelia’s madness is an expression of the suppression women have historically endured. This madness becomes a counter-language that challenges patriarchal rationality. In this sense, Ophelia is not a “void,” but a bearer of a form of knowledge outside male-dominated epistemology — namely, “feminine experience” and “bodily memory.”

2.  The Ontology of Silence: In the Footsteps of Blanchot and Heidegger

Ophelia’s silence is not mere muteness but a mode of being. Maurice Blanchot’s idea of silence as “a writing interrupted by death” or “the impossibility of speech” finds concrete form in Ophelia. She becomes the representative of the unspeakable.

In connection with Heidegger’s concept of Dasein, Ophelia’s silence is an openness where being reveals itself through nothingness. At this point, Ophelia becomes the poetic subject of Nothingness. Her madness is not a collapse of reason but an experience that exists at the limit of meaning. As Heidegger states: “Nothingness is the light of being.” Ophelia’s fragmentation is the darkest yet clearest expression of this light.

3.  A Psychoanalytic Perspective: Lacan and Ophelia’s Mirror Stage

Jacques Lacan’s theory of the mirror stage offers a compelling tool for interpreting Ophelia’s identity dissolution. She is reduced to a reflection in the eyes of others — her father, Hamlet, and the royal court. These gazes function as mirrors, in which Ophelia endlessly fragments and multiplies, never reaching her own subjective identity.

Her madness signifies the collapse of this imaginary realm. The question “Who am I?” loses its meaning because the self has become nothing but a collection of fractures. In connection with Lacan’s concept of the Big Other, Ophelia’s surrender represents a falling outside of the symbolic order.

4.  Freedom Within Surrender: Stoicism, Taoism, and Ophelia

Ophelia’s death in the river is not merely a physical end but can be read as an existential choice. Here, death is not passive fate but becomes, when interpreted as a form of surrender, a Stoic apatheia — freedom from passions. The desire to live in harmony with nature, as seen in the philosophies of Zeno and Epictetus, resonates again in Ophelia’s drifting in the water.

Also akin to Taoist thought, letting go (wu wei) is the most direct mode of existence. Ophelia’s letting herself be carried by the water is not just a collapse, but a relinquishment of the effort to create meaning — a reintegration with nature and a transcendence of subjective boundaries.

5.  Aesthetic Death, Visual Time, and Memory: The Formal World of Millais

John Everett Millais’s painting Ophelia does not depict the moment just before or at death; instead, it portrays her singing on the water’s surface, her body surrendered to nature’s flow. This “frozen moment” is a visual pause, poised between life and death. Nature, flowers, lightshadow contrasts, and the water’s flow form representations of visual time in Millais’s work. Flower symbols (violets, forget-me-nots, poppies) refer to Victorian flower language traditions and form a visual memory bridge to the text’s floral imagery and Hamlet’s flower metaphors.

Millais’s detailed and realistic observation of nature—the plants at the water’s edge, the interplay between underwater and surface light, and fabric’s geometric and formal deformation by water contact—makes time palpable in the visual form: the slow ripple of water, flowers passing through it, changing light angles, and the waiting silence of death.

6. Other Artists’ Representations of Ophelia: Shared Artistic and Philosophical Themes

Alexandre Cabanel’s Ophelia (1883) captures a dramatic “threshold moment” just before Ophelia falls into the water. The body leans on a branch; eyes gaze toward the dark forest and water; the expression reflects hesitation and anticipation. The pose is theatrical, blending idealized beauty with tragedy. The color palette is soft but shadowed, evoking the expectancy of death. Flower symbols evoke purity, innocence, and biblical nature references. Surrender here is dramatic, with silence felt as the anguish of a halted movement. The strong memory component activates viewers’ recollections of the textual flowers, Ophelia’s flower distribution scene, and the death narrator. Cabanel evokes silent traces of the past visually.

John William Waterhouse’s Ophelia (1894) offers a more introspective approach to the “death-threshold moment.” Ophelia stands by the water, connected with nature; her simple yet noble dress contrasts with the environment. Flowers serve both decorative and symbolic roles. Natural elements such as water plants, reeds, and surface stains signal layers of time— traces of past, the tragic present, and anticipated death. Surrender is silent; Ophelia’s spiritual world dialogues quietly with nature. The mode of representation establishes empathy with viewers: Ophelia is both observed and a figure remaining in viewers’ memories. Memory elements—flower language, natural setting, prior experiences with Shakespeare’s text, Millais’s painting, and artistic traditions—interact and reshape.

Arthur Hughes’s Ophelia (1852), influenced by the Pre-Raphaelite movement, presents Ophelia’s tragedy amidst nature in a dark and marshy setting. Sitting by the water with a sorrowful expression, Ophelia evokes deep melancholy alongside natural surroundings. Hughes emphasizes Ophelia’s inner world and tragedy.

Jules-Joseph Lefebvre’s Ophelia (1863) dramatizes Ophelia’s tragedy by depicting her in water, surrounded by flowers, wearing a white dress. This representation glorifies her innocence and tragedy aesthetically.

Konstantin Makovsky’s Ophelia (1884) similarly dramatizes her tragedy, portraying Ophelia in water amid flowers, emphasizing her innocence and tragedy in an aesthetic form.