Desdemona - Critics

Question 1

Name: A. C. Bradley

Answer 1

Quote: “Desdemona is helplessly passive. She can do nothing whatever. She cannot retaliate even in speech; no, not even in silent feeling.”

Explanation: Bradley views Desdemona as entirely submissive, lacking agency or the ability to defend herself.

Question 2

Lisa Jardine (1983):

Answer 2

“Desdemona becomes the stereotype of female passivity, a woman who pays for her love with her life, unable to assert herself against the male-dominated world around her.”

Question 3

Marilyn French (1982):

Answer 3

“Desdemona accepts her culture’s dictum that she must be obedient to males. Her last words, in which she forgives Othello, are the words of one who loves and seeks to mitigate the pain of the one she loves.”

Question 4

A.C. Bradley (1904):

Answer 4

“Desdemona is helplessly passive, her innocence and sweetness rendering her suffering profoundly moving. She is a creature of infinite tenderness.”

Question 5

ST Coleridge

Answer 5

She is ‘almost sanctified in our eyes by her absolute unsuspiciousness and holy entireness of love’