Gender

Question 1

Marylin French

Answer 1

Othello shares Iago’s sense of the degradation sexuality constitutes, but whereas Iago would engage in sex and then hurl contempt at the woman… Othello attempts to idealise sex out of existence.

Question 2

Loomba

Answer 2

Women are seen largely as functions, and trivialised

Question 3

Frances Dolan (on Iago and Desdemona)

Answer 3

Iago defeats her by drawing on the deeply entrenched, reactionary cultural interest in insubordinate wives, which associates female self-assertion with betrayal, adultery and violence

Question 4

Frances Dolan on Othello

Answer 4

Othello is a domestic tyrant who murders his wife on spurious grounds… he finally murders Desdemona, as Richard S. Ide observes, in propria persona: as a base, selfish, passionately jealous husband.

Question 5

June Sturrock

Answer 5

The anti-feminist invective of the play is weighed against the action of the play, in which all three women are almost entirely motivated by love and loyalty… their major function is to demonstrate various kinds of love and loyalty

Question 6

Lisa Jardine

Answer 6

Desdemona becomes “a stereotype of female passivity”

Question 7

June Sturrock on Desdemona

Answer 7

Desdemona’s chastity is instinctive, and her charity is almost beyond comprehension

Question 8

June Sturrock on relationships

Answer 8

The issue between lago and Emilia is honesty and dishonesty, as the issue between Othello
and Desdemona is love and justice.