Psychologically, Justine’s reactions are not willful, so much as they are compelled by extreme distress. But beyond this, Justine’s depression is ontological in scope. It cannot be characterized as just a contingent response to one particular set of circumstances. For it involves the rejection of any “particular circumstances” whatsoever. Justine’s depression marks a rupture with the social order as such: an order that cannot function without the tacit complicities and denials that are understood, and entered into, by everyone. In refusing this, Justine enters into a condition that is absolute and unqualified. Her depression is ungrounded, self-producing and self-validating. It needs no external motivation or justification. It is just what it is: an unconditioned and nonreflexive state of pure feeling.

From Steven Shaviro's great esssay on Melancholia