English Literature: Othello: Critics

Ralph Allen Smith

Othello is an everyman character mimicking Adam in a Catholic morality play

Doris Tishkoff

Madonna/Whore complex in relation to Desdemona

Margaret Loftus Ranald

Desdemona would not have been seen as the perfect Jacobean woman due to her sociability and wit

Coppelia Kahn

The obsession with cuckoldry was based in misogyny and a male belief that women were inherently lustful.

Ania Loomba

Men assume the female characters are all deceitful and Othello and Desdemona’s relationship is unstable. Also, Venetian women are ‘immoral’

Virginia Mason Vaughan

Family is the state in microcosm

Marilyn French

2 kinds of women: virtuous angels and deceitful whores. The line is impossible to uncross once crossed.