Gender Roles In Othello

1. Gender Politics is an ideology based on the underlying assumption of the expectations required of genders, but in order to understand it wholly, it is important to grasp the differences between gender, sex, and sexuality. Gender is relative to society and is definitive through concepts of masculinity and femininity whereas sex is determined through the different biological reproductive organs, and sexuality expresses the sexual orientation of a person. Gender Politics encompasses a wide variety of diverse topics but comprises the debate on whether having the title ‘man’ or ‘woman’ requires them to have separate roles within society. Being titled with these genders can often reflect in the way that we act as individuals due to societal pressure.

In a lot of Shakespeare’s work, the women are typically seen as only affections of a man’s love or lust, leaving them little gravitas in their characters. Some of Shakespeare’s arguably more misogynistic works were plays such as Othello, a play that idolises male friendships and includes a destructive path of sexual envy. In Othello, the only three female characters in the play are spoken to in an abusive manner and are portrayed as a ‘whore’, naïve and unintelligent or innocent, which correlates with the belief of how men in that time period believed women should be. Most of the men in Othello believe the women to be disloyal and promiscuous, thinking they will sleep around and be unfaithful to their husbands. For example, at the beginning of Shakespeare’s play, Brabantio says ‘Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see. She has deceived her father, and may thee.’ which suggests he believes that Desdemona, as a young woman who ‘betrays’ her father by eloping with Othello, would also betray her husband and be boisterous and adulterous. Due to women having to ask their father’s permission before giving their hand in marriage, Shakespeare’s Othello and Romeo and Juliet have a common theme of women’s rebellion against their parents, fighting to have their own right to decide whom they want to

Women’s rebellion in Shakespeare’s plays perhaps shows a progressive nature in his views of gender stereotypes; for example, the character of Juliet transforms from ‘a hormone-addled adolescent […] into a full-blooded woman aware of her sexuality and not afraid to express it.’ (O’Brien 2015) Much like in Othello, Shakespeare is a hopeless romantic, not afraid to push gender boundaries and let the women break rules to be with the men they love, not just who their families have pushed for them to marry. Although a lot of his work is also very un-progressive, throughout Shakespeare’s plays his philosophies on gender roles appear to change ever so slightly. In Kate Busselle’s critical review on Tina Packer’s ‘Women of Will’, Busselle states that ‘[Packers] analysis in this act highlights the archetypal gender roles in Elizabethan England as they are all Shakespeare knew women to be: riotous, violent shrews and pious, obedient women. The women’s behavior is solely dependent on the perception of man.’ (2016) This concurs the notion that Shakespeare himself may not have been necessarily misogynistic or sexist, but perhaps his plays and his views were just a product of his time and environment. Reading Women of Will, it argues that Shakespeare’s plays became more female-positive over the years, as you can see the difference in the way he writes about women significantly from Romeo and Juliet (written roughly around 1595) which highlights Juliet as an object of a boy’s affection