Non-masculine Roles in Othello Essay -- Othello essays

Non-masculine Roles in Othello  Ã‚        Ã‚   In William Shakespeare’s tragic drama Othello the three women characters have interesting roles. Through the dialogue and action other roles are stated or implied as applying to women.    In â€Å"Historical Differences: Misogyny and Othello† Valerie Wayne presents Desdemona’s reaction to Iago’s verbal expressions concerning women’s role as sexual objects:    Iago instead claims that four different kinds of women are sexually wanton: either their beauty or intelligence help them to bed, or their ugliness or foolishness get them there anyway. Fair or foul, wise or foolish, women are all whores to him. Desdemona dismisses this ‘miserable praise’ as ‘old fond paradoxes to make fools laugh i’ th’ alehouse’ (136-7), but it is a particularly rank form of such mockery that dilates in every instance upon women as objects for sexual use and then blames them, as whores, for a use constructed by that discourse. (163)    At the outset of the play Iago persuades the rejected suitor of Desdemona, Roderigo, to accompany him to the home of Brabantio, Desdemona’s father, in the middle of the night. Once there the two awaken the senator with loud shouts about his daughter’s elopement with Othello. This is the initial reference to the role of women in the play – the role of wife. In response to the noise and Iago’s vulgar descriptions of Desdemona’s involvement with the general, Brabantio arises from bed. Iago’s bawdy references to the senator’s daughter present a second role of women – that of illicit lover. With Roderigo’s help, he gathers a search party to go and find Desdemona and bring her home. The father’s attitude is that life without his Desdemona will be much worse than before:... ...er own husband as the evil mastermind behind the murder results in Iago’s killing her. Despondent Othello, grief-stricken by remorse for the tragic mistake he has made, stabs himself and dies on the bed next to his wife.    Thus it is seen that the roles of women are many and varied – and are key to the successful development of the story.       WORKS CITED    Bevington, David, ed. William Shakespeare: Four Tragedies. New York: Bantam Books, 1980.    Shakespeare, William. Othello. In The Electric Shakespeare. Princeton University. 1996. http://www.eiu.edu/~multilit/studyabroad/othello/othello_all.html No line nos.    Wayne, Valerie. â€Å"Historical Differences: Misogyny and Othello.† The Matter of Difference: Materialist Feminist Criticism of Shakespeare. Ed Valerie Wayne. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991. e implicates