Depiction of Female Characters in Shakespeare’s Othello

It is their keep ups faults, if their wives do fail. Othello, a take most race, power and sexual practice is wizard of the best works of Shakespeare, and highlights most of the major societal issues of his epoch. On the one side is Othello, who is caught in his racial inferiority, conflict the prejudices his society has heaped upon him. And on the other side is Desdemona, who has transgressed her sexual urge lines to marry the moor, exclusively is ultimately pushed into the sphere of submission and obedience the traditionalistic spot where a fair sex should constrain herself-importance.We are make to wonder so Whose tragedy is Othello genuinely ab out(a) and who was the real victim, Othello for his racial inferiority or Desdemona for her gender? If Othello makes himself appear to be a victim of Iagos plans, confessing nought I did in hate, precisely all(a)(a) in keep an eye on, thus he had besides had erst made Desdemona his victim. And non Desdemona alone , the other deuce wo workforce in the play, Emilia and Bianca face kindred consequences. Emilia is a nonher chaste, obedient and incorruptible married woman to Iago the malignant conniver, worser than Desdemona, she is never toughened as a wife.And the last Bianca is, in fact, a ensconceen woman a prostitute. The treatment of women in the play and the assumptions made or so them removes the curtains drawn and triggers the single irresolution in the minds of the readers How true is the depiction of women in the play, and did Shakespeares society treat women in the same manner? As a matter of fact, s compensateteenth degree centigrade England did non reserve a grand place for women, and feminist writings on womens deplorable lives have come up mostly during Shakespeares time.This paper go out study the three women characters and emit well-nigh light on the in andice face up by them and how they have been mere projections of manly prejudices they are assumed to be what men think them to be. The protagonist of the play is the beautiful, fair-skinned Venetian Desdemona. As her name would back up to besotted ill-fated, Desdemona proves to be the most-affected victim of Iago, as until Othello comes to smother her, she was asleep of the cruel plucky played against her. Innocently in venerate ith Othello, she has been extremely loyal and supportive to her economize. When the play prototypal introduces Desdemona, she is a different somebody from what she will become in Cyprus. sheer in her approach and almost fearless, she does non resemble the Venetian women of seventeenth century by leaving her fathers house and marrying the Moor, thus committing miscegenation she takes her first step in redefining her fiber as a woman. She confirms Othellos lecture and accepts Othello as her keep up.With her cunning, she smartly handles the situation and adeptly performs her dissever duty to her father for life and direction, and to Othello for organis m her husband and companion she admits her uxorial behavior descending from her mother, who had likewise once preferred her husband to her father. Her dearest is not affected by Othellos racial difference as she could strike down Othellos physical ugliness and fall in make do with the man privileged him she saw Othellos visage in his mind.She similarly subverts feminism by unflinchingly asserting her sexuality and her love single-valued function with Othello, and firmly says, I did love the Moor to live with him, and decides to follow him to Cyprus. That is the only time we see Desdemonas vigor to stand for her defense. The shift of the play from Venice to Cyprus is not just spatial, it also has symbolizationisationic overtones. As from then onwards, Desdemona is reallocated to the position she tried to transgress, although in a different form this time, playing a wife.Without any sexual congresss or acquaintances, in Cyprus Desdemona is all on her own and all the more than vulnerable. Her marriage becomes a scandal, not in her failure to receive her fathers prior respond except in her husbands blackness. That blackness- the sign of all that the society finds frightening and dangerous- is the indelible pick up to Othellos permanent status as an noncitizen, and to convince him the truth in Desdemonas love is impossible. Being a self-fashioner, he is always in need of symbols and signs to mean in Desdemonas idea about him as her hero.First, her confirmation speech becomes the symbol of her love, then, to continue the trust-game Othello gives her a hankey his communicable property, legitimate from his mother, who in her turn had received it from an old witch as a blessing to her marital life. The appearance of the hanky is believed to be a white somatic with a red strawberry imprinted on it. Symbolically it represents the bedspread of a married woman, with her virginal blood-stains on it, and also becomes the symbol of Desdemonas chastity, purity and her loving, civilizing sexual power.With the vent of it she loses Othellos trust, and as Carol Neely puts it The handkerchief is lost literally and symbolically not because of the failure of Desdemonas love but because of Othellos loss of faith in that love love is not continue through symbols and signs but through conviction. This brings out the frail nature of Othellos love for Desdemona, held not by his heart but by the handkerchief. Othellos fear of macrocosm deceived and cuckolded rises from the flaw that is inherent in him the self that would never grow out of the uncertainties for being racially inferior looks upon Desdemona as the jade.A chaste wife, being killed by her husband because he lacked self-identity and the power to recognize the incommode inside him is universally acknowledged as the most appalling crime move against an innocent woman. Another woman is Emilia, wife to Iago and the only companion of Desdemona in Cyprus. As the play progresses, sh e emerges from a common maidservant to a heroic individual. Dismissing Iagos complains about Emilias noisiness Desdemona says regrettably She has no speech. Desdemona seems right until the nerve centre of the play. Emilia has no existence aside from her instrumentality to the game.She passes the handkerchief to Iago, unaware of his plans what he will/ Heaven knows not I. / I nothing but to occupy his fantasy. Emilia is heard speak elaborately only in forge IV, word-painting iii also termed the willow tree scene, which stages the conversation between Desdemona and Emilia. In this scene, Emilia comes across as a realist with her ideas like The worlds a huge thing it is a big price / For a small guilt and when she says that wrong and right are relative terms, and wrongs can well be modify into right by the power-wielders.The most bang words are when she says that a husband is liable for his wifes infidelity, as their neglect or envy or suspicion egg on the woman to commit treachery. According to Gayle Greene Emilias is a perspective to which we wholly ascribe, fasten as it is in a material reality, but her vision complements Desdemonas and represents some of the bawdy and toughness that Desdemona lacks. He barely continues saying Emilias lucidness of ideas can be attributed to her social divide she has never been adulated, she is no ones jewel and has remained clear-eyed and without illusions.Although she did nurture her husbands fantasies like Desdemona. However, her previous error, inadvertently committed can be easily forgiven because of her sorority ties with Desdemona. She has not only been a familiarity in Desdemonas loneliest times, but also becomes her voice in Act V, scene ii after her death O. the more angel she, /And you the blacker devil Like Desdemona, she too faces disillusionment about the man she has even knots with on realizing Iagos mis bits, pronounced by her diversely inflected reiterations of my husband.Desdemona, even on her death-bed made her last tone-beginning to protect Othello from his guilt by replying Nobody, I myself to Emilias Who hath done this deed? and spells her last words of loyalty call up me to my kind lord. Emilia inverts her role as a wife and commits herself to her duties as a loyal maid to her bawd Tis proper I obey him but not now. / Perchance, Iago, I will neer go home, until she is abruptly dispatched by a stab from Iago. Of the twain women in the play, two are killed by their husbands after being despised as whores the third woman, Bianca is actually a whore.She survives not through her own endeavor to attach herself to fit in the mens world, but simply because she is not commutation enough to be pulled into Iagos plot. Women here are objects of mens horrible fancies, fancies which are projections of their own finish up fears and failings. They are either silent spectators end-to-end their lives, never retaliating, or else immediately hush if they ever make an atte mpt to over-rule mens scheme of things.Bibliography1. G.K Hunters Murdering Wives in Othello. 2. www.guttenberg.com/Othello 3. www.projectmuse.com/Othello and Desdemona 4. Introduction and Chosen essays from Norton edition.