Essay: Character of Desdemona in Shakespeare’s Othello

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This essay discusses the character of Desdemona in Othello. Desdemona, the leading female Character in his Shakespeare’s Tragedy Othello,  is a woman of strength, independence and fidelity on the one hand, and of self-sacrifice to the point of death on the other. One can say that the general theme linking the various snippets of Desdemona in this play is her utter devotion to her husband, a loyalty that will even praise him for his kindness after he has strangled her (5.2.125).

Desdemona, the leading female Character in his Shakespeare’s Tragedy Othello,  is a woman of strength, independence and fidelity on the one hand, and of self-sacrifice to the point of death on the other. One can say that the general theme linking the various snippets of Desdemona in this play is her utter devotion to her husband, a loyalty that will even praise him for his kindness after he has strangled her (5.2.125).

Dympna Callaghan, in her book Women and Gender in Renaissance Tragedy, makes says

“Misogynistic discourse . . . leads, directly or indirectly, to the death of the female tragic transgressor [among whose number in Renaissance drama she counts Shakespeare’s Desdemona (123)

Her first words in fact do not come until she has been summoned by the Venetian Senate to answer questions on whether she has keenly consented to marriage with Othello (1.3.180). Before this time, however, she is represented both as a sexually loose woman and as an innocent and chaste maiden. The strength of her character, however, is that when she begins to speak she will swiftly show the inadequacy of those characterizations.

In order to enrage her father, Iago says that the “black ram” (Othello), is “tupping” his “white ewe” (1.1.89). the first reference to Desdemona is as if she is a kind of animal, a lower creature.

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