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Gender Equality In Othello Essay

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Women of the Shakespearean age fulfilled one sole purpose: pleasing their husband by all means necessary. Trapped these domestic constraints, the blame of a failing marriage could easily lie on the targets painted on women’s backs. Likewise, William Shakespeare in his tragedy, Othello, positions the Moorish general of the Venetian army, Othello, against his devoted wife, Desdemona, for the accusations of unchaste crimes. These toxic claims draw to an empathetic Emilia, who attempts to comfort the distressed Desdemona during the collapse of her marriage. Emilia’s vehement attitude on infidelity depicts the engenderings and liabilities associated with adultery. Through a feminist lens, Shakespeare’s voice through Emilia focuses light on the roles …show more content…

In lines 104-108 of Act IV, scene iii, she explains that wives and husbands share morals and rationale alike; she proclaims that men shall realize that “their wives have sense like them” (105). No act nor thought trace to one particular gender as males and females cogitate in unison. This implies that the gender constraints that men place on women are unjustifiable as the two separate sexes share common sensory interactions and capabilities. This commonality drives each towards his or her own motives without any gender restraints. Accordingly, feminism’s critical property of equality resonates through Shakespeare’s …show more content…

With an emphasis on domestic constraints and an establishment of unity, Shakespeare’s Othello demonstrates the critical roles of husbands and wives within a broken marriage. Not only do men and women share coordinating desires and emotions, but women also experience an entirely separate position of forced submissivity that shapes the framework of oppressed feminist ideologies. All of Shakespeare’s marital implications through Emilia draw to these feminist principles; the beaming light of sisterhood that he creates exhibits the charge women must take to build their internal and external

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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.

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Moreover, women may have surreptitiously helped formulate Emilia’s self-sufficiency and valor in order to either live vicariously through her, in frustration with their misogynist society, or at the very least, to comment on it. Additionally, it is likely that Emilia’s independence was inspired by Shakespeare’s own wife and mother, whose atypical authority can both be confidently assumed. Shakespeare’s mother, Mary Arden, very possibly had more sway in her relationship with Shakespeare’s father, John Shakespeare, because before their marriage, Mary was in a higher social class than John, as her father was a gentleman farmer (Andrews). Thus she was not entirely reliant on her husband. As

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