The Smothering Of Desdemona's Will In Othello

Weeping Willow: The Smothering of Desdemona’s Will in Othello Among William Shakespeare’s vast array of deeply flawed characters, Desdemona of Othello stands out as remarkably virtuous and pure of heart. Furthermore, Desdemona’s character initially displays a sense of independence and agency that is rare amongst other female characters in literature at the time that Othello was written. However, by the story’s end, Desdemona is a much more submissive and passive character, accepting her tragic circumstance without protest. Throughout the play, prominent male characters in the story (both explicitly and implicitly) pressure her into this capitulation: her father, Iago, and Othello. These figures, to varying degrees, receive her behavior as
She is proud of her agency in being able to select her own spouse, no matter how unconventional her decision may seem; “That I did love the moor to live with him,” she says, and “my downright violence [towards propriety], and storm of fortunes, may trumpet to the world” (26). However, she does still express some strained commitments to other figures. She tells Brabantio that she “[perceives] a divided duty” between him and Othello: to Brabantio, she is “bound to life and education…[which] both do learn [her] how to respect [him]”; to Othello, though, she is bound to love, and “so much duty as [her] mother showed to [Brabantio], preferring [him] before her father,” Desdemona concedes that she is more obligated to her husband (23). She is indeed deeply devoted to Othello, saying that her “love doth so approve him that even his stubbornness, his checks, his frowns…have grace and favor” (117). When Othello’s favor begins to turn against her, she remains somewhat resilient, but also begins to feel more and more remorseful, though such feelings are unfounded. Lamenting Othello’s false accusations of her philandering, she wonders out loud to Emilia whether “there be women [that] do abuse their husbands in such gross kind,” but nonetheless accepts the abuse (119). The vigor of her devotion is shown even in her most tragic hour, where after desperately pleading
Her character arc follows an inverse trajectory to Desdemona’s. When she is first introduced in the story, she is quiet and passive, accepting Iago’s misogynistic abuses without protest in act two, scene one. However, as the story progresses, Emilia becomes a much more outspoken and audacious character. In response to Othello’s outrage towards Desdemona upon misplacing her handkerchief, Emilia muses that men “are all but stomachs, and we [women] all but food; they eat us hungerly, and when they are full, they belch us” (88). This feminist vein appears again when she castigates Othello for labeling Desdemona a whore, saying that “a halter [noose] [should] pardon him” and “hell [should] gnaw his bones” for making such serious and erroneous accusations (112). When asked if she would ever be unfaithful to her husband, she responds that she would not hesitate to do so if the reward were great enough, and goes on to say that “it is their husbands’ faults if wives do fall” to such temptations, and that they should know that “their wives have sense like them” (120). Upon discovering that Othello has murdered Desdemona, only Emilia has the gumption to censure Othello for such a wrongful act, and she is also the only one with the wit to reveal Iago’s machinations as the impetus for it. Though she too pays for this boldness with her life, she