In the time of Shakespeare, feminism, the belief that all people are entitled to the same civil rights and liberties and can be intellectual equals regardless of gender, was a foreign concept. Women were commonly treated as nothing more than property of their husbands and fathers, incapable of free and intelligent thought. It was not understood that women were just as capable as their male counterparts, and had ambitions beyond living only to please men. Indeed, even the most liberated of Shakespeare’s female characters were often motivated solely by the influence of their husbands, fathers, or other male companions. In Shakespeare's Othello, Desdemona, wife of the title man, is a prime example of one such woman. Many authors and critics …show more content…
The very image of what was considered the perfect wife, she asks Emilia to “Commend me to my kind lord” with her final words, (V.ii.123) when she easily could have used that dying breath to denounce her murderer, Othello. This is a prime example of the way Shakespeare creates a one-dimensional woman without her own drive and motivation. Devotion to Othello is what moves her, as well as desire for his approval and love; however, she lacks motive to act for herself. Even after he slaps her, slanders her reputation, and offers her nothing but borderline abusive mistreatment, she continues to hold him in high esteem. Desdemona sheds her identity as a human being who deserves to be treated with respect, absolving Othello of any responsibility to show compassion or feel remorse for his actions, as well as permitting the audience to pity the man despite his misdeeds. Her “love doth so approve him / That even his stubbornness, his checks, his frowns … have grace and favor” in her eyes (IV.iii.19-21). Here, Shakespeare plays into the male fantasy that women are biddable creatures who will passively accept verbal or physical mistreatment. Desdemona’s behavior as an acquiescent recipient of whatever fate her husband chooses for her culminates into a final scene in which she passively accepts that her husband will kill her. Even Desdemona’s single act of defiance in the play, choosing her new husband …show more content…
She chooses her husband Othello because he is a “strange dark man” (Vogel, 20) and is intensely disappointed when she discovers “under that exotic facade was a porcelain white Venetian” (Vogel, 20). She originally aims to use him as a means to reject the ideals of her society. By marrying a man whose who is considered ‘other’ and ‘strange’, Desdemona believes she will be free of the constraints that would apply to to a woman married to a white Venetian man. Through him, Desdemona imagines she will have new experiences and explore new ideas. Unfortunately for her, Othello turns out to be the very thing she was attempting to flee from. The illusion of an ‘exotic’ Moor is destroyed for Desdemona when she discovers a man who holds the same values as the average Venetian, despite his background. To her, Othello is “porcelain white” in spirit despite his dark skin, and conforms to the masculine stereotypes which Desdemona is accustomed to seeing around her every day. It is this that drives her to seek to experience the world through sleeping with other men in Bianca’s brothel. Despite her desire to escape male constraints through working Tuesday nights in the brothel, it only reinforces the influence men have in Desdemona's life. “Men come into that pitch-black room,” she says to Emilia, while describing the