Upon thinking about all the things we covered in the cafe about melancholy and sadness, I couldn’t help but wonder what type of role gender played in the perception and depiction of melancholy, especially in the works we observed.

For example, in Vertigo, Madeline contributed to the “aesthetic” of melancholy by appearing beautiful and somber through the gaze of the main character, a male. She serves to solidify the relationship that beauty has with melancholy that dates all the way back to Shakespeare. In Hamlet, Ophelia’s melancholy is seen as overwhelmingly beautiful and peaceful. In fact, many serene, tranquil, and melancholic paintings have been inspired by the scene of her death, demonstrating the infatuation with this image.  I kept thinking that these scenes of melancholy are framed through the perspective of the male gaze. The male gaze, a term penned by Laura Mulvey, is the idea that  various modes of art are predominantly structured through the male lens. With this in mind,  I reached the conclusion that the male gaze in these works serve to reinforce the connection between melancholy and beauty.

How would melancholy be portrayed in film or in literature in a perspective that is not androcentric? How would these pieces change if they were shown from the perspective of the female characters?

Something that came to my mind immediately was the portrayal of melancholy in The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gillman. In addition to making a female the central character of the story (a radical move for the time), the main character subverts norms by manifesting a vastly different melancholic female character that has no obligation to be aesthetically pleasing and beautiful for the observer. Instead, this story depicts very real and very visceral emotion through its imagery. Since the imagery is far more unpleasant, dark, and unafraid to go there, the female character experiences melancholy in a vastly different way than those in Vertigo and Hamlet. In this way, Gilman’s piece pushes up against the trope of the beautiful and melancholic female.

In terms of cinema, I am sure there is a film that represents a perspective of melancholy that contrasts the androcentric lens we see Madeline through in Vertigo (and Ophelia in Hamlet). However, there is not one that comes to mind. Perhaps this is reflective of the fact that cinema still largely portrays stories through an androcentric lens today.