Since Hamlet, the name Ophelia has been pseudonymous with despair and tragedy in every form of media which makes Bellocq’s Ophelia all the more interesting. The ideas of discomfort, hiding oneself, objectification, race, and gender are prevalent throughout the piece.
Within the book, Ophelia is not her own until she herself becomes a photographer and even then she struggles because of her identity, a mixed-race woman. The title itself hints at the idea she is not her own. She’s Bellocq’s Ophelia and she follows in his footsteps becoming a photographer herself. Before that, she’s called Violet at the brothel where she works. She has to disguise herself as white enough and black enough, stupid enough and smart enough. She’s well educated and a hard worker but where she finds herself she must hide parts of herself and become just enough to meet people’s expectations.
My personal favorite poem was Countess P–’s Advice for New Girls. In it, the use of fragments creates a strange but understandable picture for new girls of the house. Each paragraph flows independently and is tied together by broken sentences. It gives the poem, and the actions described within it, a natural feel independent and it definitely connects but, at the same time, it feels broken and like it’s moving at an odd pace. The actions described are made out to be both natural and doable but also unnatural and uncomfortable to do.