| Othello can be read from a feminist viewpoint | – Allows us to judge the different social values & status of women in Elizabethan society.- Othello serves as an example to demonstrate the expectations of the Elizabethan society, the practice of privileges in patriarchal marriages & the suppression & restriction of femininity.- Elizabethan society = women were to meant only to marry. – Marriage as their single occupation held massive responsibilities of house management & child rearing.- Women were expected to be silent, chaste & obedient to their husbands, fathers & brothers & all men in general.- Patriarchal rule justified women’s subordination as the natural order because women were thought to be physiologically & psychologically inferior to men.- Only 3 women in Othello.- The way that these women behave and conduct themselves is undeniably linked to the ideological expectations of Shakespeare’s Elizabethan society and to the patriarchal Venetian society that he creates. |
| Women as possessions | – Duke eventually grants permission for Desdemona to accompany Othello to Cyprus.- ‘To his conveyance I assign my wife’ ACT 1 SCENE 3 = Des is treated as his possession: he implies that she is a commodity to be guarded and transported. – Not peculiar to Othello: the first Senator, wishing Othello well, concludes by hoping that he will ‘use Desdemona well’ = ‘use’ seems to connote the phrase ‘look after’, but also supports the Venetian expectation of women – that they are to bow to the wills of their husbands who may utilise them as they wish. |
English – Othello: a feminist perspective
August 8, 2019