Femininity In Othello

Mother, sister, daughter, aunt, and grandmother all are titles for women in people’s lives. What are their purposes in their lives? Over centuries, women have matriculated through the hierarchy of respect and authority societally. Through some literature, they can be looked at as symbols of strength. But, for Shakespeare, especially in Othello, women are viewed as worthless, gullible sex symbols. Three authors in their article state Revisiting Shakespeare and Gender, “For Shakespeare, as well as for most of Renaissance society, women as the feminine represented the following virtues which, importantly, have their meaning in relationship to the male; obedience, silence, sexual chastity, piety, humility, constancy, and patience” (Gerlach, Almasy,
Initially, Othello falls in love with Desdemona because she is well spoken. For instance, she goes back and forth with Iago confidently while they await Othello’s arrival in Cyprus. But, when her relationship with Othello started to become progressively more abusive, she becomes the “Silent Woman”. She does not revert to this new-found character because she “she lacks verbal resources, but because she cannot understand words without reality to her.” (Corbett 12) During one of their arguments she states, “I understand a fury in your words, But not the words.” When Desdemona has transformed into the “Silent Woman”, she is the epitome of the idea of female perfection which Othello has felt dependent on. And to keep this ideal of perfection from becoming reality, he kills her. Her silence is too good to be true. Jill Savvitt says in her article Female Stereotypes in Literature, “When the female character deviates from the norm, from these stringent stereotypes, more attention is then called to the purity of what the female character is supposed to be. The narrowness, the confining nature of the women’s stereotypes in literature is as nullifying as are the imagined strictures on her in real life.” (Savvitt) The woman before she transformed had the living, speaking aspects that he thought a lady of high morals would have. A lady that he loved. Desdemona’s victimization consists of verbal, emotional, aid physical abuse, false accusations, and ultimately murder. Granting it is evident that women in abusive relationships, like those of Desdemona and Othello’s, progressively become afraid to speak their minds, others may think that abused women accept the relationship that they are in. Or, maybe going through a “phase”. But, in actuality, abused woman are fearful to be themselves. They are frightened to say or do anything because they know the smallest