Mad Girl

can you believe what they've done to you? wouldn't they stop when you asked them to leave you alone?= emilie was sexually abused in some way that really messed with her head. in all your faerie tales, how did the prince say he loved you?= emilie used to dress up as a faerie on stage and she loves faerie tales. she had an image in her mind of what love would be like and, instead, she was sexually abused. that was how her prince said he loved her. how did your father die? was he a good man?= emilie has said in the past that she didn't know her father in her life, that he was just... there. she doesn't know if he was a good man because she didn't know him. i love emilie autumn, our lives are in common in a lot of ways, and i absolutely adore her.

I also listened to TOC, which helped me sort out more of what this song might mean. She mentioned that, when she wrote it, she wasn't intending for it to relate to Ophelia from Hamlet; when she listened to it later on, however, she realized that there was a definite connection between the two.

A few days ago, I went to one of her live concerts and had VIP tickets, so, being in the front row, I could see every emotion on her face as she played this song near the end of the show. When she came to the part that went "How did your father die? Was he a good man?", I noticed that there was a subtle shake of her head, as if she was saying that he wasn't. It was barely visible, but when put alongside the emotion in her voice and the more hopeful tone that she had when singing "Maybe someday, you'll know", I remembered that her father had died of lung cancer a few years ago, in 2006, if I'm correct. On one of her forum posts regarding her father's death, she mentions that he wasn't a very close father, and that his attitude towards anyone, even Emilie, was cold and rather distant. She mentions that he wasn't a bad man, but it can be implied that he wasn't considered to be a good one, either.

Lastly, I find it strange that these connections can be made, since she made this song well before her father's death, but perhaps her own interpretation has changed from what it was originally, as she made the connection between the song and Ophelia's story, and also the later possible connection between the song and her own personal life. This, of course, is just what I've noticed, but is there anyone else who thinks the same as me?

--Vivian Erikson

I seriously doubt this is the meaning Emilie Autumn would've had in mind when she wrote this song but for me I imagine it to be about a woman who has grown up to be truly unhappy and some may even say mentaly unstable because of something that happened/ that someone did to her when she was younger. Possibly linked to the meaning of "Gothic Lolita"? Maybe.

Reminds me of Cinderella for some odd reason

I think this song is talking to a woman who was traumatized when she was little, and it's causing her problems now.

"The beginning and the end Much closer than they seem Death is but a dream, I know"

life is short, and you die sooner than you think. If death is "but a dream", that would mean you could only dream of dying, and it's unreal to you. But then maybe her father/loved one died/was tortured in front of her eyes,(I get that from when it says how did your father die, but it could just be a traumatizing event like rape or something) and it scarred her for life. Now she's depressed, has drawn away from the world, has no friends or "faith in the world" - making her a mad girl, hence the title of this song.

When it says How did your father die? was he a good man? might be saying, why did they torture him like that? What might he have done to make them murder him?

Now she might be escaping in her own mind, most likely has a mental illness. She's dreaming of being like a princess, where she has a prince who loves her, etc. Yeah, that's what i think. I could be way off, but whatever.

The song is about Ophelia from the play Hamlet. Idk if you have ever reliezed how much she likes Shakespeare .. I mean she named her album Opheliac .. Ophelia is a woman in Hamlet who goes insane because of Hamelts anger and he kills her father .. at the end she "She teetered, she tripped And then she fell" off a Weeping Willow tree into a river and drowned. No one is sure if it was suicide or accidental.

I believe that in one of the fan chats, EA said this song has three meanings. I think one of them has to do with Sylvia Plath (one of her villanelles is called Mad Girl's Love Song). Plath's father died when she was eight, so the lines about the mad girl's father fit into Plath's life, since she was too young to know what kind of man her father was. The lines about the "bottle of nothing" remind me of the way Plath's semi-autobiographical character Esther describes her deteriorating mental state as being trapped in a suffocating bell jar. And "death is but a dream" is another allusion to The Bell Jar, in which the main character (Esther) spends the majority not fully understanding/appreciating death (it's been a while since I read the book, but I remember a scene where she's in a hospital or something, and prides herself on not freaking out at the dead bodies and gruesome images). There are probably more connections to be made, but I think I need to read more of Plath's poetry first. And reread The Bell Jar.

She said in TOC that it's the oldest song, besides Shalott, that she's written. She didn't know what it was about at the Time, but went back to it later and saw that it was Ophelia's story. Also, the lyric is "dolls were meant to THROW away".

Just a theory here, but perhaps on a personal level for Emilie, this is about her experience in an insane asylum. Obviously there are a lot of different interpretations of this song but I think perhaps the reference to "a bottle of nothing" as her friend and her faith in life (which is supposed to stop her dreaming of death) point to "a bottle of nothing" perhaps being anti-depressants/mood stabilisers. After her reference to this Emilie states that "still I fly/still I fall" which is perhaps alluding to immunisation of the effects of the drugs they gave her in the asylum upon her condition: in short, she still experiences episodes of mania (flying) and depression (falling). There's a lot more in this song to comment on but I think those are the most obvious arguments for that particular interpretation.