desdemona Flashcards
the female perspective on cuckoldry:
- serves to humanise the issue, giving a face and a name to something typically anonymises the women involved.
- Emilia believes ‘they are all but stomachs, and we are all food’ whereas Desdemona says ‘it is true of mind and mad elf no such baseness as jealous creatures are. this shows Desdemona’s denial as she maintains Othello’s virtue in the face of his disrespect.
-‘wretched treatment’ shows that all women are confined to the same treatment.
female solidarity:
-Though Emilia and Desdemona are from different social classes, their friendship transcends rank.
-the image of two women dead on their marital bed carried profound meaning; it symbolises the way in which women are treated equally in death and oppression, while also displaying female freindship as the ultimate bond, the safe haven from male violence, the union that no longer survives no longer than marriage.
the private vs the public sphere’s:
- Othello is called of to war which gives us the impression the play is based on warfare; the threat is quickly subverted, however, the characters are left to play out domestic disputes while surrounded by a military outpost.
-It could be argued that it is Desdemona’s fault as she goes to Cyprus and involves herself in the public and political sphere, two worlds are blended together that are not designed to coexist.
race, culture nad otherness:
-Shakespeare presents the myth of a defenceless, white woman and the menacing of a black man as a narrative written as propoganda
-His stories closely resemble the sensationalised fairytales of adventures, Othello is her escape
-The audience watch in silence, like the passive bystanders on the stage, as she is slandered, demented and murdered. this symbolically makes us complicit in the same crimes and Shakespeare argues with he audience that are guilty of turning a blind eye.
D being faithful:
The fact Desdemona is a good ‘Chrisitian’ hightens the tragedy of her death. Her innocence is emphasised by her frequent association with light and heaven: ‘The divine Desdemona’.
