Oh, Ophelia. Your character and your tragedy is one that has been most misinterpreted of Shakespeare’s works. For centuries, Ophelia has inspired artists, poets, musicians, and critics alike, each breathing life back into her story with their own respective creative works: ranging from singers like Taylor Swift and Natalie Merchant to painters like John Everett Millais and John William Waterhouse. But, many people still view the character of Ophelia as shallow and underdeveloped or simply as a plot device to tell Hamlet’s story.

For starters, the most recent interpretation of Ophelia’s demise being, flopping superstar, Taylor Swift’s own vision. “Fate of Ophelia” was on her horrendous twelfth studio album, “The Life of a Showgirl.” Swift paints this lackluster, quite misogynistic, picture of an unrequited love, with Ophelia as the damsel-in-distress type. Not only that but Taylor goes further, comparing herself to Ophelia, which is a whole other conversation. Like, did Tay Tay even read the play?

Let me remind you of what Ophelia’s tragedy entails. Throughout acts one and two Ophelia’s father, Polonius, believes Hamlet’s madness is driven by the lovesickness he has for Ophelia, but in the first scene of the third act Hamlet rejects Ophelia and her affection completely. He tells her he never loved her, demands she be sent to a nunnery, then denounces women’s dishonesty and the breeding of sinners. Not only that but three scenes later, Hamlet then murders her father. Slowly, she transforms from an innocent, obedient noblewoman into a defenseless victim of madness.

Having explained her tragedy, do you see how Swift’s damsel-in-distress storyline comes off as careless, absent-minded, and sexist? In my opinion, a song that beautifully tells her story, while also relating her character into modernity, is “Ophelia” by Natalie Merchant. The opening line, and the intimate echoing of Merchant’s voice, immediately paints the somber picture of Ophelia’s despair; “Ophelia was a bride of God.” Although Ophelia isn’t depicted as a nun as in Merchant’s imagery, she compared Ophelia to the modern-day woman and how Ophelia’s story isn’t just something in a Shakespeare play but, in all meanings, reality.

“Ophelia was the mistress to/A Vegas gambling man.” She goes on to compare Ophelia to a ringmaster, a demi-goddess, a cyclone. These are all accurate depictions of a woman and her rage.

Now that Flop Swift no longer rules the world (no word of her at the Grammys thank GOODNESS), we can truly appreciate Ophelia’s story and all the other beautifully profound interpretations there are in the world. Ophelia is the face of every woman’s suffering. Ophelia is the face of love’s rage.