Societal transformations and anxiety about shifting gender dynamics preoccupied many during the long reign of Queen Victoria. By reevaluating selected examples in art and literature, such as Shakespeare's Ophelia, I examine the place of lovesickness and how it expressed issues of female sexuality, identity, and inequality in nineteenth-century England. Thus, my dissertation demonstrates how Victorian visual culture reflected moral, cultural, and medical beliefs on the inferiority of women through the trope of the lovesick woman.