Othello: Quotes

“Divine Desdemona"

"Heavenly Desdemona"

-Cassio, Act 2 scene 1

• Divine imagery often associated with Desdemona

• Othello’s great sin is elevating Desdemona. Idolatry?

"O curse of marriage that we call these delicate creatures ours and not their appetites."

-Othello, Act 3 scene 3

• Consumption motif in relation to sexual ‘appetites’

• Coppelia Kahn- women were inherently lustful

• Lust is seen as inevitable? After all everyone has an ‘appetite’? And ‘curse of marriage’?

• Dehumanisation of women (‘delicate creatures’)

• Ownership ties to Iago- goes from equal language of “My fair warrior” to more misogyny, obsession with lust, evidence of Iago’s influence

"An old black ram is tupping your white ewe."

-Iago, Act 1 scene 1

• Black v.s white motif

• Dehumanising language- both women and POC presented as animalistic

• Represent other v.s society

• Arsenteva- Genesis begins the idiom of the black sheep as a symbol of otherness

• Purity of Desdemona presented

• Lust

"I am not what I am."

-Iago, Act 1 scene 1

• Biblical allusion (“I am what I am.”) solidifies Iago as AntiChrist figure

• Paradoxical nature reflects Iago

• Attempt to confuse Roderigo? Similar to repeated brackets, the repetitions of specific phrases such as "put money in thy purse", it's to bewilder the one he views as stupider (hence the switch from iambic pentameter to prose)

"It is thought abroad that twixt my sheets he has done my office."

-Iago, Act 1 scene 3

• Possessiveness and dehumanisation

• His pathological need for control motivating all actions- his upset over Emilia is not jealousy as he blatantly doesn't care for her. He controls everything to the point he tries to tell Othello to "strangle her in bed, even the bed she hath contaminated.". He is obsessed with control.

"O, beware, my lord, of jealousy it is the green-eye'd monster that doth mock the meat it feeds on."

-Iago, Act 3 scene 3

• Follows Othello's route in the story? And Iago's. They mock their wives (Othello calling her a whore in Act 4 and Iago being rude to her in Act 2 and 3) and as Emilia says "[ Men ] are all but stomachs and we all but food; To eat us hungerly and when they are full they belch us." Jealousy turns both into monsters.

• Consumption motif

"[ Men ] are all but stomachs and we all but food; To eat us hungerly and when they are full they belch us."

-Emilia, Act 3 scene 4

• Consumption motif, related to sexual desire in the sense the main way in which women are controlled through the text is through sexuality.

• Reverses the usual dehumanisation of women by referring to men first as nothing but 'stomachs' first.

"Thou, Iago, who hast my purse as if the strings were thine."

-Roderigo, Act 1 scene 1

• Motif of money always associated with Iago

• First thing we learn about Iago is he controls Roderigo's money

"We cannot all be masters, and not all masters should be followed."

-Iago, Act 1 scene 1

Paradoxical in that it in the first half supports societal hierarchy and then is suggesting to usurp them? But Iago only supports what serves him.

"She loved me for the dangers I passed and I loved her that she did pity them."

-Othello, Act 1 scene 3

• On the one hand, a love based on nothing to do with physicality or lust, despite what Iago spends all his time suggesting, showing Iago has fundamentally misunderstood Othello and Desdemona's relationship.

• On the other hand, it is very reflective of their relationship- Desdemona is naïve and awe struck or is presented as such by many people, and he loves her only as she pities or serves him correctly.

"Yet I'll not scar that whiter skin of hers than snow and smooth as monumental alabaster."

-Othello, Act 5 scene 2

• Once again, dehumanised, in death reduced to her beauty.

• He isn't careful due to his necessary love for her or is unable to see her harmed but is focusing on her physicality- this sharp contrast with the first discussion of their relationship reflects Iago's control as Othello now mimics his views and obsession with lust/appearances.

• Black vs white motif, ironic that he views her as sinful yet still comments she is so white, clear demonstration of her innocence and purity.

• She has stopped being compared to deities now, it's stone. She's likened to a statue, an object, not something full of life or something he can worship.

“The Moor is of a free and open nature that thinks men honest that but seem to be so, and will as tenderly be led by th’ nose as asses are.”

-Iago, Act 1 scene 3

• Further zoomorphism to present Iago’s obsession with control and superiority.

• Othello=donkey, i.e., easily trusting and useful

“I think you think I love you.”

-Iago, Act 2 scene 3

• Example of Iago’s duplicity?

“So will I turn her virtue into pitch and out of her own goodness make the net that shall enmesh them all.”

-Iago, Act 2 scene 3

• Manipulation of Desdemona’s goodness shows no limit to his depravity

• Can’t even stick to 1 metaphor- uses both ‘pitch’ aka tar, and a net aka, a web!

“But jealous souls will not be answered so. They are not ever jealous for the cause, but jealous for they’re jealous. It is a monster begot upon itself, born on itself.”

-Emilia, Act 3 scene 4

• Similar to Iago’s green-eyed monster metaphor

• Takes blame entirely from Desdemona

• Metaphor of Ouroboros, a snake eating itself stuck in perpetual loop.