Thanksgiving can be a complicated holiday here in America. For many, it’s a day of gratitude, connection, and familiar rituals; for others, it carries the weight of history, mythmaking, and stories that have been smoothed over until they no longer resemble the truth.
The holidays arrive as a season of gathering for some, a warm anticipation of family and tradition, while for others it sharpens the quiet ache of the loved ones who are no longer here to share the table.
The Convalescent, Portrait of the Artist’s Wife, Ford Madox Brown
I’ve been thinking about this duality lately. It’s a tension between celebration and clarity, and I found myself turning, as usual, to the Pre-Raphaelites.
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood were many things. Rebels, idealists, dreamers. But above all, they were committed to seeing clearly.
They painted nature not as polite background decoration but as something fierce, vivid, and honest. Every leaf in Ophelia, every seed in Proserpine‘s pomegranate, every folded petal in the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood’s luminous portraits was rendered with an almost devotional attention.
For Pre-Raphaelite artists, beauty was not an escape from truth but a companion to it.
Proserpine, Dante Gabriel Rossetti
It strikes me that this approach might serve us well during Thanksgiving.
Rather than mythologizing the holiday, perhaps we can approach it the way the Pre-Raphaelites tried to approach the world around them: with honesty, reflection, and a desire to see clearly.
Seeing clearly doesn’t mean rejecting the comfort of the day. It simply means holding the whole picture, with its history, its contradictions, its beauty, as an invitation to pause.
It means acknowledging that gratitude and grief often share the same table.
Giving ourselves permission to feel the complexity of the season without flattening it to a single, tidy story.
And once we do that, we can practice a deeper gratitude. One that isn’t performative or perfunctory, but real:
Appreciation for the people who gather with us, whether in the flesh or in memory.
Gratitude for the small, ordinary beauties that sustain us.
Thankfulness for the true, complicated, and human stories that broaden our empathy and connect us to others across time and distance.
Autumn Leaves, Sir John Everett Millais
In this way, Thanksgiving can become less of a myth and more of a moment: a quiet place to stand, much like the figures in Millais’ Autumn Leaves, watching the old year burn down into embers and letting ourselves feel both the melancholy and the hope of what comes next.
This year, I’m choosing a Pre-Raphaelite Thanksgiving, not in decoration, but in spirit.
I want to move through the holiday with openness, clarity, and a willingness to sit with complexity, to notice the beauty in the smallest details, and to approach the day with artfulness, intention, and a kind of gentle, honest reverence.
Creation, Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones
May your Thanksgiving be whatever you need it to be this year: a gathering, a pause, a healing, a remembering.
I pray it will be full of truth, tenderness, and the courage to see clearly.
And may you find, as the Pre-Raphaelites so often did, that honesty and beauty are never at odds. They illuminate each other, even in the deepest season of the year.
History remembers a killer; it forgets the women he targeted. In this post, I want to bring their names, lives, and humanity forward, beyond the myth of the Ripper and into the clear light they were denied.
Attempting to solve the mystery of Jack the Ripper has been a cottage industry for over a hundred years. But, until now, there has never been a concerted effort to truly understand the women he killed.
Dedicated Ripperologists have long pored over books, crime scene descriptions, and witness accounts to form theories about methods, motives, and the identity of the first serial killer to dominate the world’s imagination.
The shadowy Ripper himself has, of course, been relentlessly analyzed. But his victims are referenced only insofar as they relate to him, much like several of the female artists and models in the Pre-Raphaelite circle. After all, would we even know their names if they not been involved with successful male artists who could assist their careers? Or in the case of the Ripper’s victims, would we care about them had their names not become associated with deadly mystery and intrigue?
There are valid and understandable reasons for us to attempt to understand murderers and what makes them commit such heinous atrocities. But our endeavors should never be solely about the killer. All victims, regardless of their background, deserve to have their stories told with truth and respect.
When a voice has been silenced so cruelly and selfishly, someone should speak for that soul. It does not matter to me if that voice was extinguished one day ago or hundreds of years ago.
Perspective matters. Representation matters. Truth matters.
These women did not begin their journeys in Whitechapel, and Rubenhold does what most Ripper historians have neglected to do: help us understand how they got there.
Through The Five, we get an in-depth look at their family lives, education, and relationships. Rubenhold explores their joys and sorrows, all the while giving us historical context.
I was riveted once I started reading Rubenhold’s account of Mary Ann “Polly” Nichols, the first canonical victim. Sadly, her story is a familiar one.
Married at age twenty-two, she and her husband William had five children together, only to separate after he was unfaithful with a neighbor. Her life after that became an unfortunate cycle of workhouses, poverty, and vagrancy.
The details of her life were identical to those of many unfortunate women. Her only distinction was that her fate led her to be cruelly murdered by the first serial killer to grip sensational headlines.
My heart aches for the way we view people whose choices and experiences are fraught with struggles like Polly’s, especially in a societal system with a framework designed to hold women down. It’s a framework with recognizable patterns that persists to this day.
Annie Chapman
Second victim Annie Chapman’s story is equally gripping and tragic. A soldier’s daughter, her childhood was plagued with the illnesses and deaths of her siblings, leading to the suicide of her alcoholic father, who slit his own throat.
My compassion for Annie surged again and again as I read about her struggles and inability to stay sober, despite a devoted husband who tried to help her as much as he possibly could. Her family had suffered so much in their lives due to addiction; Annie and her loved ones deserved a better ending than the fate they were delivered at the hands of the Ripper.
Elizabeth Stride, born Gustafsdotter, embodies an international tale of a girl held down by circumstances. Stricken with syphilis at an early age, she seemed to find a promising path when she became a domestic servant in England after immigrating from Sweden. Another scandal soon followed, after which she supported herself by falsely claiming to have been a shipwreck victim.
It’s a cruel twist that, for over a century, Elizabeth has been famous for being one of the most famous victims in the world. Still, she deserves more than to be seen as an inconsequential bit player in the Ripper saga.
The life of Catherine Eddowes ended on the same night as Stride’s. Eddowes lived her life adventurously. She wrote her lover’s ballads into chapbooks that they sold as they travelled. They faced the world hand-in-hand as a team, each reportedly sporting a tattoo of the other’s initials.
Finally, there’s Mary Jane Kelly – the most mysterious victim, as well as the most brutally eviscerated. She was the only unfortunate soul slaughtered indoors. In the privacy of her home, the Ripper took his diabolical time.
The crime scene photo is the most famous and has been reproduced so much that we’ve possibly become desensitized to it. Yet, there she is, laid bare and vulnerable for generations of Ripperologists to analyze. Rubenhold continues to shine here especially, speaking for a woman who never got the chance to speak for herself.
On some level, we are all guilty of treating the victims as props in The Jack the Ripper Show. Their killer dehumanized them, but so did society and the generations of armchair detectives who followed.
We repeatedly reach for the popcorn and thirst for more lurid particulars. Who can resist the beckoning invitation of those gaslit streets, the foggy London nights, and the phantom killer we may never name? It’s the greatest crime drama of all time and we follow the case with baited breath, trying to piece together that deliciously bloody Victorian puzzle.
Then, far too late but just in time, Hallie Rubenhold shines a light in a different direction, showing us that what we’ve focused on isn’t the only aspect of the story, or even the most important.
There are layers of history that have been largely ignored, and exploring them should concern us more than merely whodunit. Our humanity depends on it. It’s not only about the victims’ voices, but our own. We choose the tone we contribute to the world, and when we are gone, something of that remains long past the words we used. How we choose to approach and discuss crime is a part of that.
While we’ve all been enchanted by Jack the Ripper’s smoke and mirrors, there are five souls who deserve to have the spotlight illuminate their truths, their struggles, their experiences.
I will still enjoy discussing everything from conspiracy theories, DNA, and even possible escape routes the Ripper may have followed, but in the midst of that speculation, I never want to forget the realities these Victorian women faced, the class system and misogyny that weighed down their lives, and how all of these things can and should influence the way we view societal conditioning and women’s rights today.
The Five is a compelling, paradigm-shifting read. I appreciate the gravitas and respect I find in Rubenhold’s work. She researched the lives of Polly Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elisabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly meticulously, and her hard work and dedication are palpable throughout the book.
At long last, each woman has a voice, and dignity, in death.
Somewhere along the way, “Pre-Raphaelite” became shorthand for a look: abundant hair, pale skin, some moody greenery. A woman who seems to have wandered out of a medieval daydream and into your Pinterest feed.
I understand the appeal, but when we reduce the Pre-Raphaelites to solely an aesthetic, or a vibe, we miss the thing that made their work so unnervingly alive.
The Pre-Raphaelites weren’t a hairstyle. They were a worldview.
Their work shows us that attention is a form of honesty. That to really look at the details of, say, at a leaf, a thread, a stone, a face, was a form of truth telling. They treated nature not as backdrop but as a living language. A river wasn’t scenery; it was fate. A flower wasn’t decoration; it was biography. Objects carried consequence. Rooms held secrets. The world itself seemed to press in with meaning.
Myths, legends, Shakespeare, Arthurian romance, these weren’t merely escapism. They were serious material, charged with warnings and longings. Their paintings don’t merely “illustrate” a tale; they interrogate it. Who is being sanctified? Or being punished? Who is being turned into a symbol instead of allowed to be a person?
That last question matters more than ever, because the visual internet trades in symbols. A tragic girl. The beautiful woman framed as a mood, “Opheliacore,” the languid gaze, the hair like a halo. The Pre-Raphaelites gave us many of those visual templates.
Which is why we shouldn’t throw the aesthetic away. We should wake it up.
If we love Pre-Raphaelite beauty (and of course we do!) we can love it with our eyes open, looking past the hair and ask what the painting is teaching you about desire, virtue, power, punishment, and the cost of being seen. Let the art be both gorgeous and complicated. Roses with thorns.
John Everett Millais’ Ophelia (1851–52) is one of the most iconic paintings of the 19th century. Its legacy is profound, and touches on both art history and popular culture..
Ophelia captures something timeless. It’s a beautiful tragedy suspended in nature. It’s not merely a pretty painting of a Shakespearean character; it’s a masterclass in layered storytelling, emotion, and visual tension.
Pre-Raphaelite Realism and Technical Brilliance
Ophelia is a quintessential work of Pre-Raphaelite realism. With its hyper-detailed setting and luminous palette, the painting holds to the Brotherhood’s commitment to vivid color precise observation.
Millais painted the background outdoors by the River Hogsmill, giving the work an authenticity. Every leaf and flower is painted with care, creating a visual world that feels alive even as it frames death.
This attention to natural details set a new standard for Victorian art and influenced generations of artists.
Cultural and Emotional Resonance
Ophelia draws its power from Hamlet and the tragic fate of a young woman undone by betrayal and political intrigue.
In the Victorian imagination, Ophelia’s story embodied the romanticized grief and fragility that defined ideals of beauty and virtue. Her image became a visual shorthand for the ‘madwoman in the river,’ a tragic archetype that still resonates.
Ophelia’s drowned form is simultaneously horrifying and serene. This contradiction, a death so exquisitely composed that it feels poetic, helps explain why her image has endured. It taps into rocky psychological terrain: our fetishization of beauty in death, and our fascination with the silent, suffering woman.
Kirsten Dunst in Lars von Trier’s Melancholia
Ophelia in Film, Photography, and Popular Culture
Millais’ Ophelia has inspired a visual archetype that splashes across popular media. The floating woman in water, half submerged, pale, adorned with flowers, appears again and again in film, music, and photography. This image is not only cinematically lush but symbolically potent, blending beauty, madness, and mortality into a single evocative frame.
Ophelia’s ghostly aesthetic lingers, reimagined in chilling new forms.
Literary Echoes
The influence of Ophelia extends into literature, where writers invoke her to explore themes of distress, femininity, and artistic silence. In novels like Possession by A.S. Byatt or The Collector by John Fowles, characters identify with Ophelia or are framed in her image, signaling madness or marginalization.
T.S. Eliot, Sylvia Plath, and Virginia Woolf each channeled Ophelia’s presence in their writing to symbolize psychic unraveling. Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own critiques how Shakespeare’s women, including Ophelia, were denied complexity and interior life. Writers like Margaret Atwood and H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) have since reclaimed these silenced figures, transforming them from tragic victims into subjects with voice and agency.
A Symbol Endlessly Interpreted
Ultimately, Ophelia endures because she can be read in so many ways. She is a muse, a martyr, a metaphor. She becomes the silent woman aestheticized by male artists. Or the rebellious figure reclaimed by feminist thinkers. Beyond that, she lives on as a dreamlike image in popular culture and the emotional core of countless retellings.
Millais’ Ophelia began as a triumph of Pre-Raphaelite technique and vision. Over time, it has grown into something much larger: a cultural mirror. She reflects our shifting ideas about gender, grief, beauty, and madness. Whether she is sinking, surviving, or speaking back, Ophelia continues to drift through our imagination…haunting, beautiful, and endlessly reinterpreted.
