On the 16th January 2024, Buckingham Palace released a statement that Catherine, Princess of Wales, had undergone a planned abdominal surgery, and that the Princess herself was going to be recovering out of the public eye until Easter. However, despite the princess acting much as this original statement detailed, the internet, news outlets and people across the globe seem apparently obsessed with discovering the ‘true’ reason for Kate’s ‘disappearance’ – only exacerbated by an incident of dodgy photoshop. Conspiracy theories circulated online ranged from the shocking, to the scandalous, to the frankly absurd. All these theories do seem to be largely nonsense, founded on blurry photos and pure conjecture, however, they all signal to something greater – not a grand plot to remove the Princess of Wales, but a societal obsession with female tragedy.
For hundred of years, our society has been obsessed with tragedies – deep pain played out for our sadistic pleasure of stage for a feeling of cathartic gratitude with our lives – yet the dominance of the fascination with female tragedy is highly notable. And not just any female tragedy – a kind of romanticised tragedy that features conventionally attractive women, with long tangled hair, large teary eyes and ‘hysterical’ or frantic demeanours. Think of one of the most famous examples of literary female madness – Ophelia from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Ever since the publication / appearance of the tragedy in the early 17th century, Ophelia’s madness has been romanticised and re-imagined a thousand times – envisioned in every medium, from song to art, that all focus on the beauty of her death, thanks to the natural imagery that Shakespeare chose to dwell on to describe her body being found offstage. The reality is that there is very little beauty in Ophelia’s story – she is still practically a child, at fifteen, who is abused by her controlling father and her erratic boyfriend: pressures that eventually cause her snap. Yet society chose to frame it as something eerily attractive – and this ‘Ophelia effect’ is seen throughout our popular culture, not just for female characters, but also for women in the public eye.
It is fitting, that Ophelia, a stage character, is emblematic of a wider societal perspective on female tragedy, as male patriarchal society perpetuates a kind of voyeurism when looking at female mental health. Ophelia was so striking in her female ‘hysteria’ that her character heavily influenced how male psychologists later viewed women – one psychologist, Dr. Hugh Diamond, dressed his patients as Ophelia for photographs and encouraged actresses, as well as other members of the public to come and view them for themselves. In the mainstream, psychologists specifically linked women’s mental health to their sexuality; ‘hysteria’ the prevailing diagnosis for all female health issues, from post-partum depression to anxiety was believed to be a disease caused by the reproductive system. The womb, doctors believed, if ‘barren’ was prone to cause women to act irrationally. In Shakespeare’s time, the womb was believed to actually ‘wander’ through the body, causing symptoms of hysteria. By the 19th century, doctors understood that the womb always remained fixed in place but believed that there was inextricable link between women’s nerves and their reproductive system – mental health did not ever exist in isolation away from the shadow of a fear of female sexuality.
‘Hysteria’ as a diagnosis fell out of fashion by the 20th century, but the ideas of sexualising female mental illness did not. Within half a decade, the world had fallen in love with Marilyn Monroe. Despite being actress with a vast filmography, her legacy became inextricable with her tragic death. The ‘bombshell’ who killed herself, after struggling with mental health for apparently most of her adult life. Her sexuality and her death seem to go hand in hand in her legacy – made clear by the biopic ‘Blonde’ (2022), which many feminist critics condemned as being made solely for the male
gaze, being more preoccupied with her rumoured affairs and her tragic end, than her acting abilities. By dying young, she remains perpetually in the public eye as the ‘bombshell’ she was famous for being in life. By experiencing mental health issues throughout her life, she retains her vulnerability – it is perhaps this personable experience that keeps her relevant – she isn’t simply an untouchable celebrity, she was a woman that struggled, and was either relatable, in need of protection. Similar treatment was also laid on to Princess Diana. Her tragic story of struggling with an eating disorder in an unhappy marriage attracted unbridled attention when she revealed her experience in her 1995 BBC documentary. Her death in 1997 also accrued never-before-seen attention, and like many tragic stories became instantly shrouded in conspiracy, fuelled by a desire to see women as victims by the media.
In Diana’s time, and after, the paparazzi were instrumental in further exaggerating and increasing this attention, adding layers of mystique and gotcha journalism to female tragedies in the public eye – in turn pitying and judging the women they covered – Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, the list seems endless. However, the longer they stayed in the spotlight, the media instead turned on these young women, labelling them merely as ‘crazy’ or ‘out-of-control messes,’ particularly when they started speaking out against the treatment in the media, or went against the rigid beauty standards the media expected from them. Patriarchal society exploits ‘tragic women’ for their own gain, before tossing them aside when they stray outside of the role of simple victim, reclaiming their humanity.
In the 2010s, the ‘Sad Girl trope,’ became common on the internet. Women streaked with mascara from crying after listening to too much angsty music became an online trend, a frequently seen image – perhaps one that was even funny to the casual observer. But the trend hinges on harmful stereotypes, not only insinuating that women are potentially emotionally out of control and irrational, but it also rests on consumerist patriarchal, Eurocentric standards of beauty for women. It suggested to its impressionable audience that on some level women are vulnerable and should rely on men for support, but also romanticises and eroticises mental health, stripping women of humanity and support, instead reducing them simply to their attractiveness. It also teaches to women that do not fit standards of conventional Western beauty that their mental health difficulties are not important, as they cannot be exploited for patriarchal, capitalist gain.
It is therefore unsurprising that the Princess of Wales’s time out of the public eye has been met with such scrutiny and treated with such spectacle. Speculation that the Princess is indeed hiding out of a deeper, more shocking, more titillating reasons seem to be yet another way that the internet loves to sensationalise women’s experience – whether founded in fact or fiction.
