{"id":832,"date":"2018-11-19T14:27:11","date_gmt":"2018-11-19T19:27:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/?p=832"},"modified":"2018-11-19T14:29:34","modified_gmt":"2018-11-19T19:29:34","slug":"the-sexual-awakening-of-ophelia-in-john-grays-on-a-picture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/2018\/11\/19\/the-sexual-awakening-of-ophelia-in-john-grays-on-a-picture\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sexual Awakening of Ophelia in John Gray’s “On a Picture”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cOn a Picture\u201d by John Gray conjures the image of Sir John Everett Millais\u2019s painting entitled \u201cOphelia.\u201d By reading this poem through Christopher Craft\u2019s \u201c\u2019Kiss Me with Those Red Lips\u2019: Gender and Inversion in Bram Stoker\u2019s Dracula,<\/em>\u201d which is included in the Norton Critical Edition of Bram Stoker\u2019s Dracula, this poem\u2019s treatment of Ophelia can be read as twisted by images of deviant sexuality.<\/p>\n

The poem begins by placing Ophelia in \u201cthe river\u2019s arms,\u201d which are described as \u201csteadfast\u201d (Gray l. 4). This stagnant position evokes a sense of entombment in her watery grave, as Dracula is when in his box. Ophelia, however, is surrounded by the \u201c[p]ale petals [that] follow her in very faith\u201d (Gray l. 5). Flowers are, in themselves, representative of sexuality and sensuality in their hermaphroditism (flowers have both pistils and stamens, both reproductive parts), which leads to the supposition that Ophelia may be enveloped by the intersection of sexualities or gender norms. Her \u201cmaidly hands,\u201d which carry the connotation of youth, femininity, and possibly innocence, \u201clook up, in noble sloth \/ To take the blossoms of her scattered wreath,\u201d and thus reach towards this androgynous sexuality (Gray l. 7-8). Even in her \u201cnoble sloth,\u201d one of the seven deadly sins that may be viewed as \u201cnoble\u201d because of its languorousness, her reach for the \u201cblossoms\u201d is as if to grasp and accept the sexuality sprinkled around her that is marked as her property, as it\u2019s \u201cher scattered wreath\u201d (Gray l. 7-8). The androgynous sexuality belongs to her, and she yearns to embrace it.<\/p>\n

In her immobile state, though, \u201c[n]o weakest ripple lives to kiss her throat\u201d (Gray l. 9). In Craft\u2019s article, \u201cDracula\u2019s authorizing kiss, like that of a demonic Prince Charming,\u201d is what \u201ctriggers the release of this latent power and excites in [Mina and Lucy] a sexuality, so mobile, so aggressive, that it thoroughly disrupts Van Helsing\u2019s compartmental conception of gender\u201d (p. 452). This quote describes the kiss as the inciting incident to Mina and Lucy\u2019s mobility, whereas Ophelia experiences the additional step of needing the \u201cweakest ripple\u201d to occur before she can achieve this liberating kiss, a kiss from mobility itself. In Dracula<\/em>, Craft writes that this kiss results in a \u201csudden sexuality\u201d for Lucy, who \u201cgrows \u2018voluptuous\u2019 (a word used to describe her only during the vampiric process), her lips redden, and she kisses with a new interest\u201d (p. 452). Here, the sequence of events places Lucy\u2019s sexual emergence as after the kiss upon her throat, which has, presumably, not yet happened to Ophelia.<\/p>\n

In the last stanza, the narrator\u2019s voice fades while recognizing that \u201c[u]ntil some furtive glimmer gleam across \/ Voluptuous mouth, where even teeth are bare, \/ And gild the broidery of her petticoat\u2026\u201d (Gray ll. 12-14). This seems to reflect that while the narrator knows that a change will occur after \u201csome furtive glimmer\u201d glances across her, they\u2019re not sure or unwilling to write what the presumed change will be. This disruption of the status quo segues to the new, overtly sexual description of Ophelia: \u201cVoluptuous mouth, where even teeth are bare\u201d (Gray l. 13). Craft defines the mouth \u201cas the primary site of erotic experience in Dracula<\/em>,\u201d noting that it \u201c[lures] at first with an inviting orifice, a promise of red softness, but [delivers] instead a piercing bone\u201d (p. 445). More, \u201cthe vampire mouth fuses and confuses\u2026 the gender-based categories of the penetrating and the receptive\u201d (Craft p. 445). In having this hyper-sexual mouth that represents the intersection of traditionally masculine and feminine sexuality, Ophelia is marked as already corrupted by the intersection she seems to reach in the flowers that surround her. If Ophelia is already sexually fluid, then, why highlight the \u201cbroidery of her petticoat,\u201d which seems like such a delicate, traditionally feminine thing, directly after noting her sexual mouth (Gray l. 14)? Maybe this points to the ability of traditional femininity and sexuality to coexist. If that, can they only coexist in death, as Ophelia remains in her watery grave, or is the \u201cpetticoat\u201d simply a remain of her life before her sexual awakening?<\/p>\n

\""Ophelia"by
“Ophelia”by Sir John Everett Millais, 1851-1852 https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ophelia_%28painting%29<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cOn a Picture\u201d by John Gray conjures the image of Sir John Everett Millais\u2019s painting entitled \u201cOphelia.\u201d By reading this poem through Christopher Craft\u2019s \u201c\u2019Kiss Me with Those Red Lips\u2019: Gender and Inversion in Bram Stoker\u2019s Dracula,\u201d which is included in the Norton Critical Edition of Bram Stoker\u2019s Dracula, this poem\u2019s treatment of Ophelia can … Continue reading The Sexual Awakening of Ophelia in John Gray’s “On a Picture”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3613,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[125359],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2018-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3613"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}