womanhood Flashcards
‘thieves, thieves, thieves! Look to your house, your daughter and your bags!’
Iago-presents Desdemona as an object owned by her father, almost irrelevant in list of stolen objects.[A1S1]
‘And so much duty as my mother showed
To you, preferring you before her father’
Desdemona- irony that Desdemona, who disobeys her father and subverts patriarchal norms is in fact an upholder of tradition and is what a wife should be, faithful to her husband[A1S3]
‘She did deceive her father, marrying you,’
Iago- Iago casts back to shed doubt in Othello’s mind and manipulate social anxieties of womens faith, that in disobeying her father and marrying Othello, Desdemona has the capacity to betray Othello.[A3S3]
‘Who would not make her husband a cuckold to make him a monarch’
Emilia- Contrasts Desdemona’s naive idealism with pragmatic assertion.[A4S3]
‘I will chop her into messes! Cuckold me?’
Othello-Reflects on Jacobean beliefs that should a woman cheat or defy husband, masculinity is destroyed, Othello enraged at this slight. Shakespeare may offer an indictment of this socially entrenched notion of masculinity, that Othello would fly into such a rage when there is no real proof.[A4S1]
