Theme of Love Flashcards
What does H Fisher say about Love in Othello?
‘Romantic love is an obsession, you lose your sense of self … distort reality’
What does C Phillips say about Love in Othello?
‘Desdemona is the love of a possession. she is a prize’
What does M Scott say about Love in Othello?
‘Evidence for Lagos hatred for love is everywhere’
What does FR Leavis describe Othello’s love as ?
‘A manifestation of his love for himself’
How is love and hate presented?
-Domestic tragedy
-Binary love hate is central to the plays plot
How is O and Ds love presented?
-Love as a healing agent
-Union established through shared lines and imagery
How is Iagos view of love presented?
-Performance of fake love
-Replaces and subverts true love of others
-Weaponises love
-Cynical view - women should be kept within the domestic sphere and retain their role of mother and wife
-Love as lust
How is love and race presented?
-Racially charged hatred for Othello is an antithesis to love
-Jacobean prejudices
-Salacious language
-naivety and blindness to love
How is male homosocial love presented?
-culture of sexualisation
-Lust
How does the idea of deception of women and the sexualisation link to Christianity. ?
the Fall - Eve reason for societies downfall
Iago and Othello’s relationship?
-Homosocial
-Intimacy - marital and pervasion of marriage
Female views of love?
-willow song
-Female space of protection
-Emilias cynical view of love
-Desdemonas passivity and naivety
-repress own desired
Shakespeares mockery of courtly love ?
-Othello transforms into renaissance Petrarchan lover - original male view of love
-Mocks idea of courtship through Othello’s love for his militaristic and social image
-Cassio undermines Cassio’s courtly love - suggests courtly love is dying
What does Ruth Vanita say about love?
- “women fall not morally but physically … felled by those morally ‘fallen’ husbands … by the male-dominated society which endorses the murder of supposedly fallen women’
What does Virginia Vaughan say about love?
‘England’s preoccupation with cuckoldry demonstrates a basic male insecurity about women’s sexuality’
What is the importance of the Setting being Cyprus?
Cyprus = birth place of Aphrodite - the goddess of love and sexual pleasure - which is ideal for Iagos view of love as it embodies his view
‘Turn ….. Into ….. ‘ - Iago
Turn virtue into pitch
2.3
‘To …. the moor’ -Iago
To love the moor
1.1
‘I …. thee …… Desdemona’ -Othello
I love thee gentle Desdemona
1.2
‘Let her ….. of me before her ……’ - Othello
Let her speak of me before her father
1.3
‘The …… Desdemona’ -Cassio
The divine Desdemona
2.1
‘she’s framed as ……..’ -Iago
She’s framed as fruitful
2.3
‘Cuckold lives in …..’ - Iago
Cuckold lives in bliss
3.3
‘She did ……. her father’ - Iago
She did deceive her father
3.3
‘I nothing but to …… his …….’ - Emilia
I nothing but to please his fantasy
3.3
What derogatory words are used to describe women?
Strumpet and wench
‘In the due …….. of a sacred …’ -Iago
In the due reverence of a sacred vow
3.3
‘I am your own ……’ -Iago
I am your own forever
3.3
‘They are all but …….., and we are all but …. ; they eat us …….., and when they are done ….. us’ -Emilia
They are all but stomachs and we are all but food ; they eat us hungrily and when they are done they belch us
3.4
‘I will marry her, out of her own …. and ………, not out of my ……..” - Mocking tone Cassio
I will marry her out of her own love and pleasures not out of my promise
4.1
