Leslie Fielder on Desdemona
‘a miracle of virtue’
Angela Pitt on Desdemona
‘a symbol of purity’
A.C. Bradley on Desdemona
‘simple and innocent as a child’
‘ardent with the courage and idealism of a saint’
‘a saint radiant with that heavenly purity of heart’
Jan Kott (2) on Desdemona
‘eroticism was her vocation and joy’
‘Desdemona is faithful, but must have something of the slut in her. Not in actual but in potential’
Thomas Rhymer on Desdemona
‘Maidens of quality should not run away with black Moors’
W.H. Auden on Desdemona’s death
Desdemona’s acceptance of her death is because she has come to understand her wrongdoing (which is her betrayal of her father and her secret marriage to Othello)
Jarvis on Desdemona
‘dies a whore’s death for all her innocence’
Graham Bradshaw on Desdemona’s death
‘The murder is the marriage’s only consummation’ and thus it becomes a ‘ghastly tragicomic parody of an erotic death’
W.H. Auden on testing her relationship
‘In continuing to badger Othello, she betrays a desire to prove to herself and to Cassio that she can make her husband do as she pleases’
W.H. Auden on Desdemona’s love for Othello
‘the romantic crush of a silly schoolgirl rather than a mature affection’
‘it is Othello’s adventures…which captivate her rather than Othello as a person’
Cox on Desdemona
‘damned if she does and damned if she doesn’t’
‘characters divide into virgins and saints or whores and devils’
Adams on Desdemona
‘She falls in love for no better reason than he has told her a braggart story’
W.H. Auden on Desdemona’s realisation in the willow scene
Desdemona seems to have ‘realised that she had made a mésalliance’ and should have married someone like Lodovico in 4.3 after talking to Emilia about women
Cox on the accusations against Desdemona
‘Desdemona is accused of double dishonestly as lying and lying with other men’
