Relationships

Fantasy

‘Othello is both a fantast of interracial love and social tolerance and a nightmare of racial hatred and male violence’ - Ania Loomba

Conflict

Ania Loomba claims that the conflict in the play is ‘between the racism of a white patriarchy and the threat posed to it by both a black man and a white women’

Female Relationships

Lenz’s contention that only in Othello do we have a female relationship of any substance

Blameless Othello

Othello didn’t ‘kill Desdemona in jealousy’ - rather it was forced upon him by ‘the almost superhuman art of Iago’ - Coleridge

Defiant Act of Love

‘Othello and Desdemona [are] prisoners of a time when racial prejudice and sexual inequality are so ingrained that even their heroic hearts are tainted’ - Kierman Ryan