Themes: Jealousy Flashcards
How is Othello’s romantic jealousy portrayed throughout the play?
Othello’s jealousy of Cassio and Desdemona is the central theme of the play but it echoes through other characters such as Iago and Bianca
“I hate the moor”
Iago - Act 1, Scene 3
AO1: declarative sentence, derogatory racial comment
AO2: enhances Iago’s hatred against Othello
AO3: opinions of a black man in society
AO5: Honigmann - Iago derives pleasure from tormenting Othello, and this is the starting point for his hate-filled plan unfolding (Iago is “anything but straightforward”)
“it is thought abroad, that ‘twixt my sheets/He has done my office”
Iago: Act 1, Scene 3
AO1: Past participle verb - “done my office”
AO2: implies a sexual affair between Othello and Iago’s wife Emilia who goes unnamed until Act 3 (jealous that Othello can easily fill in his “office”, which he sees as his only job within his marriage)
AO3: women in ‘Othello’ and Renaissance society being seen only as sex objects
“O, beware, my lord, of jealousy!/It is the green-eyed monster, which doth mock/The meat it feeds on.”
Iago - Act 3, Scene 3
AO1: Personification - “green-eyed monster”
AO1: Motif of “monster”
AO2: green connotes jealousy, with jealousy being personified as a monster causing Othello’s phycological erosion
AO2: Othello constantly is compared to a “beast” or “monster” by people such as Iago that shows his place in society but he is now bound to become the metaphorical meat the monsters feed on, showing how he will be pushed further down the Chain of Being due to the masterful puppeteering of Iago
AO5: Kastan - the tragedy of Othello succumbing to his jealousy by the end of the play is foreshadowed here, which creates fear withing the audience as we will never know if this jealousy was built into Othello or if Iago drummed it into him (“fearful incomprehensibility” of tragedy)
“Haply, for I am black/And have not those soft parts of conversation”
Othello - Act 3, Scene 3
AO1: Contradiction - “soft parts of conversation”
AO2: Monologue is physical manifestation of Othello’s jealously reaching a peak and consuming him, questioning the “soft parts of conversation” he has proved to have in his first monologue to the Signiors of Venice (abrupt jump between monologue one and two shows abrupt change in character)
AO3: stereotypical black man in Renaissance society
AO5: Neale - Othello when under great stress resorts to his primordial instincts, which perpetuates the stereotypes of black men believed in Elizabethan society
“some minx’s trophy”
Bianca - Act 4, Scene 1
AO1: derogatory descriptor “minx”
AO2: the derogatory language Bianca uses likens her to the misogynistic men in ‘Othello’ like Iago, which isolates her from the women in the play (outlier to gender roles do to the fact of her prostitution making her looked down upon)
AO3: women in Renaissance times
Repetition of “turn”
Othello - Act 4, Scene 1
AO1: Diacope
AO2: sexual innuendo with Desdemona metaphorically turning to other men and being disloyal to her husband (suggests she is on the same level as Bianca, Cassio’s true mistress) and feeding into Othello’s jealousy-fuelled delusions, displaying his transformation of character
AO3: Women in Renaissance Society
AO3: Aristotle’s Tragic Hero (exerts traits such as his hamartia: his naivete)
AO5: Nutall - the audience experience entertainment from watching the tragedy of Othello and Desdemona unfold despite having an emotional disturbance (“If people go again to see such things they must enjoy them”)
