ao5 othello

Liz Lewis

Liz Lewis

Desdemona’s identity ‘disappears as Othello’s jealousy becomes more pronounced’

Leonard Tennenhouse

Emilia’s death ‘is the silencing of a rebellious female voice’

Explores the way in which women are cast as monsters in Jacobean tragedy, primarily because of their sexuality even if they are ‘completely innocent, her torture gratuitous’

Also suggests male-female relationships in Jacobean drama are always political - Desdemona’s smothering is an example of silencing the female political voice

Sean McEvoy

‘audience becomes complicit in Iago’s intentions…share Iago’s delight’

Coleridge

Iago acted from ‘motiveless malignity’

T. S. Eliot

accuses Othello of self-dramatisation

Marilyn French

Suggests Desdemona ‘accepts her culture’s dictum that she must be obedient to males’ and is ‘self-denying in the extreme’ when she denies

Ania Loomba

Extends discussions of gender and politics to include race

Focuses on the structures of oppression in Renaissance texts and explores the radical instability and contradictions they throw up

For Loomba, women and blacks exist as ‘the other’ in the play

‘Othello’s colour and gender make him occupy contradictory positions in relation to power’, becomes a ‘total outsider’

Class and gender relations are invaded by race and the play should be used to ‘examine and dismantle the racism and sexism’ of hegemonic ideologies

Rosenberg

Soliloquies are essential for the audience to recognise Iago’s humanity and by humanising the villain, Shakespeare recognises that the ‘evil’ traits that are amplified in Iago’s character are an integral part of humanity – concept of hamartia, to have a fatal flaw