Patriarchy Of Women In Othello Essay

Othello serves as an example to demonstrate the expectations of an Elizabethan society, the practice of privileges in patriarchal marriages and the suppression and restriction of femininity. According to Elizabethan beliefs, women were vassals for both marriage and breeding, seen as passive subordinates in comparison to the patriarchy of male domination. Patriarchal rule justified women’s subordination as the natural order, because women were thought to be psychologically and physiologically inferior to men In terms of Othello, representations of women clearly conform to the expectations of an Elizabethan society. For instance there are three female characters in Othello: Desdemona, Emilia and Bianca, with each of these characters behaving

For example Viola dresses up as a male , in order to not only subvert gender norms but also to secure a coveted position in society, that her sex cannot obtain. In turn her dressing up as a man - Cesario – is both comedic and catastrophic – comedic because she is playing the part of a man when she is in fact a woman and catastrophic because it releases a chain of inevitable events. For example Viola falls in love with Orsino but cannot tell him, because he thinks she is a man, while Olivia, the object of Orsino’s affection, falls for Viola in her guise as Cesario. There is a clear homoerotic subtext here: Olivia is in love with a woman, even if she thinks he is a man, and Orsino often remarks on Cesario’s beauty, suggesting that he is attracted to Viola even before her male disguise is removed. Orsino’s declaration of love to Viola suggests that he enjoys prolonging the pretense of Viola’s masculinity. Even after he knows that Viola is a woman, Orsino says to her, “Boy, thou hast said to me a thousand times / Thou never should’st love woman like to me” (V.i.260–261). Similarly, in his last lines, Orsino declares, “Cesario, come— / For so you shall be while you are a man). Even once everything is revealed, Orsino continues to address Viola by her male name. It suggests that even after her ‘passive female status is revealed , she is still treated as an equal to Orsino, although the term

She even allows her husband Othello to control and dominate her both physically and ideologically, demonstrated through her role as a masculine possession. For instance Othello assigns his wife to Iago in act 1 scene 3, reflecting the transference from one male character to the other. The handling of Desdemona suggests that she is a commodity , to be guarded and ‘used well’, which not only presents her as an individual reliant on male patriarchy, but also eroticizes her as a sexual commodity for the gratification of men . Ideologically it gives the impression that Desdemona is a traditionally subservient female with a ‘spirit still and quiet’ , susceptible to the values and norms presented by a male