Race Flashcards
(8 cards)
Quotes about race in I, i
- Brabantio says about Othello to Iago “thick lips”
- “an old black ram is tupping your white ewe” Iago says that to Brabantio
- “Barbary horse” Iago says that to Brabantio
- “gross clasps of a lascivious Moor”
Quotes about race in I, ii
Brabantio says:
- “sooty bosom/ Of such a thing as thou”
- “practis’d on her with foul charms”
- “abus’d her delicate youth with drugs or minerals”
Quotes about race in I, iii
- “mixtures powerful o’er the blood”
Quotes about race in III, iii
- “Haply for I am black”
- “Her name, that was as fresh/As Dian’s visage, is now begrim’d and black/ As mine own face”
- “Arise, black vengeance” Iago
Quotes about race in V, ii
- “O, the more angel she, And you the blacker devil” - Emilia
Which characters use racist language?
Roderigo and Iago - but we are clearly meant to feel antipathy towards them, and hence the language they use.
Brabantio uses effectively racist ideas when he equates Othello’s ethnicity with satanic practices - but we are clearly meant to feel antipathy towards him.
Is Othello’s character a racial stereotype?
He is an exotic character in terms of his history - what he tells Desdemona of his travels - of what we learn of his background when he talks about the provenance of the handkerchief.
However, the audience are presented with a man who completely overturns any negative stereotyping - in Act I ( & through Lodovico’s words in Act IV).
Psychologically he weakens when Iago implies that his racial characteristics make him unappealing to Desdemona. He sees this as the reason his wife would be faithless. He is made a victim of his own feelings of racial inferiority as stirred up by a villain.
Does Shakespeare imply his descent into jealous madness is a result of racial characteristics?
Emilia - at the end of the play equates Othello’s colour with evil - he becomes the negative stereotype through his murder of Desdemona. We are meant to sympathise here with Emilia. The whiter Desdemona becomes the blacker Othello.
