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Women portrayal in othello
The character analysis of othello
The character analysis of othello
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More handpicked essays just for you.
Women portrayal in othello
The character analysis of othello
The character analysis of othello
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
In “Othello” the Feminist perspective is very clear and appears a lot, one of
The women in Othello and Chaucer's Wife of Bath differ, but in the end both want their husbands to love them. In Othello there are only three women displayed in the story, but the statements that were said about these three women were the belief that all women in that society were all the same- evil, whores who were temptress to the men. The three women; Desdemona, the wife of Othello, Emilia, the wife of Iago, and Bianca, perceived as a prostitute who is a “customer” (l. 138. 4.1) of Cassio. Iago is one of the main characters who degrades and slanders all women including his wife Emilia.
Othello is general of the Venetian army and follows the precedent exclusively considering appointing males as his lieutenant. Iago is angered by his career taking a turn for the position is giving to Cassio instead, “In personal suit to make me his lieutenant, off-capp’d to him: and, by the faith of man, I know my price, I am worth no worse a place”(Shakespeare 5). Furthermore, from a young age males are confined with the expectations of being rough, pronounced, and strong. They are always suppose to be leaders and to be moved away from sensitive emotions. Males are not widely accepted for expressing feminine deemed qualities, leading to an extensive amount of dishonor.
In Shakespeare’s ‘Othello’, women are portrayed as either pure angelic beings and jewels, or as whores who are impure. They are objectified and shown as something to be used. The only women in this play are Desdemona, Emilia and Bianca compared to the main 6 male characters, not to mention the minor characters, who are also all male. Their depicted purpose is to belong to a man; Desdemona, Emilia and Bianca’s lives revolve around being wives to Othello, Iago and Cassio. This fits into the idea of a perfect Elizabethan woman, who’s lives are subject to their husband’s rule across all aspects, to be disposed of as men wish.
Patriarchy has been prevalent in both life and literature tracing back from the biblical texts to modern times. This masculine way of thinking is often seen as simply how things are, an unchangeable reality of society, which causes more harm than good. This is most certainly true for the female characters in Shakespeare's tragic play, The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice. Throughout the play, female characters choose to be submissive to the dominant male characters and allow themselves to be dehumanized by this. The culture of Othello creates an atmosphere where women lose self value due to being dehumanized and objectified by men.
The way these women act and conduct themselves is unquestionably related to the ideological expectations of Elizabethan and patriarchal society. Desdemona, Othello 's wife and Brabantio 's daughter, is represented as the ideal woman. So she would never be disloyal to her husband. On many occasions, Desdemona obeys her husband firmly and calls herself obedient even after Othello hits her. She was loving and loyal to Othello and wishes a long marriage of prosperity and commitment that would lead to her ultimate happiness.
In conclusion, the genders in Shakespeare’s play, Othello, misperceive each other due to generalizations created by their strongly implemented values and often times this can lead to fatalities. The sharp distinctions between men and women are strongly influenced by their values and beliefs, and as a result the men underestimate the women and the women overestimate the men. Iago underestimated his wife and Desdemona overestimated her husband, which not only led to the deaths of their loved ones, but the deaths of themselves as well. Strictly enforced morals create narrow mindsets that hinder the ability for humans to understand and connect with one
For Shakespeare’s plays to contain enduring ideas, it must illustrate concepts that still remain relevant today, in modern society. Shakespeare utilises his tragic play Othello, to make an important social commentary on the common gender stereotypes. During early modern England, Shakespeare had to comply to the strict social expectations where women were viewed as tools, platonic and mellow, and where men were displayed as masculine, powerful, tempered, violent and manipulative. As distinct as this context is to the 21st century, the play exposes how women were victimised by the men who hold primary power in the community in which they compelled women to conform to the ideal world of a perfect wife or confront an appalling destiny for challenging the system. Moreover, Shakespeare utilises the main antagonist, Iago, to portray how men are desperate to achieve what they want and to indirectly fulfil the stereotype of masculinity and power through manipulation.
Shakespeare's Othello is set during the Renaissance period and therefore the roles of the women in Othello are supposedly bounded by the period when women are considered to be of low intellect. In Othello, most male characters assume that women are inherently promiscuous, which explains why all three women characters in the play are accused of sexual infidelity. Yet Shakespeare develops the women to speak the most sense throughout the play and able to trust other characters in the play. To the men in Othello, female sexuality is a threatening force more than it is an attractive one.
Emilia’s opinion about the betrayal expresses a contemporary view of the relationship between the sexes. Even though it might be hard for us to really connect to this today but during the Elizabethan era, these were more than just views, it was the harsh reality of how men and women treated each other. Othello is a book that successfully portrays this relationship. In the book Othello, Emilia states, “ Tis not a year or two shows us a man; They are all but stomachs, and we all but food; To eat us hungrily, and when they are full, They belch us. Look you, Cassio and my husband” (3.4.92-95).Emilia’s statement clearly suggests what it is like to be a woman during her time and how men would treat them.
In Shakespeare’s play Othello, the male characters perceive woman as property of their own who have to be submissive and they treat them as adulterous. The male characters in Othello perceive women characters as promiscuous and adulterous. Iago being the character who strongly shows his perception that woman are promiscuous by concluding that his wife has deceive him with Othello and Cassio. Moreover, Iago creates and immoral image of Desdemona persuading Othello of this lie, ultimately, Othello convinces himself that Desdemona is a promiscuous.
Also, each relationship in Othello provokes jealousy in one partner. In a typical Venetian society, a woman was considered to be a man’s property, so if a woman was disobedient, it negatively impacted the man, while also questioning his masculinity. The hyperbolic soliloquy as Othello expressed he would “rather be a toad” than “keep a corner of the thing I love” is Othello’s justification of killing his wife, as her untrustworthiness challenged his masculinity and reputation. Referring to Desdemona as a “thing” emphasises the idea of women being property. Iago’s jealousy of Desdemona and Othello’s relationship is emphasised through the degrading comment of Othello, “an old black ram” “tupping” Brabantio’s “white ewe”.
A Modern View of Feminist Criticism William Shakespeare 's "Othello” can be analyzed from a feminist perspective. This criticism focuses on relationships between genders, like the patterns of thoughts, behavior, values, enfranchisement, and power in relations between and within sexes. A feminist examination of the play enables us to judge the distinctive social esteems and status of women and proposes that the male-female power connections that become an integral factor in scenes of Othello impact its comprehension. I believe that the critical lens that provides modern society with the most compelling view of literature is Feminist Criticism because it analyzes distrust and disloyalty among relationships, women being treated as possessions
While Desdemona is a remarkably strong character, Emilia also displays independence unmatched by any other female in Othello, and there are multiple details of Shakespeare and his time that may have prompted such a portrayal. In Elizabethan England, many women worked behind the scenes of productions, like Shakespeare’s, as uncredited authors and editors (Crowley). Due to their anonymity, nobody can be sure that women were involved in Shakespeare’s plays nor Othello in particular, but there is a genuine possibility that female writers did have leverage. This may have had to do with how Emilia was portrayed as resilient from the time of Desdemona’s death all the way until her own, standing up for herself regardless of the ridicule it caused her (Iyasere). In fact, it even killed her in the end.
Elizabethan and Jacobean periods are the eras in which Shakespeare’s plays were developed and the characters of his plays were influenced by the social context. The way women were treated, their social status, the roles that they were supposed to accomplish and the expectations set for them in those times are reflecteIn the England of the sixteenth and seventeenth century, as well as in the rest of Europe, women were considered to be inferior to men and their roles were very well defined: “daughters and wives, sisters and mothers.” (Kemp Theresa D., 29). These roles, the women’s social standing and their marital status had a crucial part in defining the women. Also, it has no importance if she was a mother, a wife or a widow, her personality