Abstract: The article examines, in a diachronic and comparative perspective, the fortune of female suicide by drowning on stage. Shakespeare’s Ophelia (whose death is only told) continues to feed Western fantasy, raising numerous issues at stake. The subversive potential of female drowning is in particular analyzed through 20th- and 21st-century feminist versions of the plays. What is at stake is a discourse of revolt where the issue of suicide remains central to the story as well as to its staging.
