Feminism in Othello

Women’s Roles in Othello Shakespearean England was a thoroughly patriarchal society, with very few rights for women. This culture was borne of the perspective that women were of a lower worth in society than men, a view reflected in the treatment of the majority of women by the men in their lives. William Shakespeare wrote many plays about social issues across Europe, and his play Othello was especially focused on the mistreatment of women in England. Though Desdemona and Emilia, the two main female figures in Othello, have horrific deaths, they advance the feminist cause by denying the female stereotypes set by their male counterparts. In Shakespeare’s time, men had particular views on women and Shakespeare shows these views through the speeches of his characters. In Shakespearean society, there were “two male fantasies” of women- one “negative, of the shrew, and the other, the ideal of the submissive subordinate.” The submissive subordinate is easily manipulated by men, and never does anything to promote her own interests, but while the shrew is oppositely verbally abusive and oversteps her societal constraints by being overly opinionated, her disobedience just reinforces the negative outlook on women at that time. In this way, being an opinionated woman is akin to being party to stifling feminism, and both categories of woman have the same result (1C). Iago and Othello both show how a woman’s pride is her downfall- in Act II sc i, Iago says that “`she that was ever
Boyle 2 fair and never proud’ is a rare, perhaps nonexistent woman”, and this familiar view of women as proud and strong enough to be unconventional allows Othello to become “all the more easily convinced by Iago” (3A). Iago’s traditional view of male dominance seems to originate from his “little contact with women in the play”. Instead of seeing the true women in front of him, Iago, like Brabantio in Act One Scene I, only sees his “dream”- the horrible woman portrayed in his society (5B).