by Heather A. Fowler

Created on: September 20, 2011   Last Updated: September 21, 2011

Can hatred and jealousy destroy otherwise honorable and sane people? This is the central question Shakespeare examined in his play ‘Othello’. In it, a standard-bearer named Iago twists and manipulates his general, Othello, into a jealous rage over his wife in order to avenge being passed over for promotion. Iago’s true target is Cassio, the man who received the promotion, but ultimately others are pulled into his perverse web of lies and deception as well, with tragic results. The most notable victim is Othello’s wife, Desdemona, who is used as the tool for Iago’s revenge. Ultimately, she is murdered by her husband in his enraged belief that she has been unfaithful to him – which she has not.

Desdemona is a character who lies at the center of much literary debate.  On one hand, she can be seen as a strong woman with a “manly” sense of adventure who knows her own mind and isn’t afraid to speak it. She fiercely defends her love marriage to a man her father hasn’t approved, who is many years older, and not of her race to boot. All of these were serious cultural taboos in her time. Desdemona shows her sense of adventure by the way Othello was able to court her – with stories of his great battles and travels – and her own desire to accompany him on his journey to Cyprus. She is a woman of honor, willing to defend both her own and that of others when she believes it has been impinged. She pleads Cassio’s case when he has been demoted due to the machinations of Iago, and she defends her own against accusations of infidelity even in the face of Othello’s increasingly frightening anger.

While there are reasons to call Desdemona a powerful female character in a pantheon of stereotypically weak women often found in Shakespeare’s work, there are others to illustrate the opposite. The most notable argument is that she takes the blame for her own murder. Her final words, when Emilia asks who has done this to her, are, “Nobody, I myself. Farewell. Commend me to my kind lord. O, farewell!” This ultimate capitulation to abuse and unfair judgment comes after increasing amounts of it through the play demonstrate either a gradual breakdown in Desdemona’s strength, or an illustration of her true meek nature which has previously been hidden under bravado.

In the beginning, Desdemona was self-confident, sexually aware, and tough, but her entire world becomes centered upon convincing Othello that she is faithful to him even as he becomes more physically and verbally abusive toward her.  The less her husband trusts and loves her, the less of a strong, independent person she becomes. This is an unfortunately accurate illustration of behavior seen in many battered women, especially the defense of their abuser. In the end, Desdemona has become so weak that love for her murderer matters more than her fading life.

So is Desdemona a strong, honorable woman, or just another flower that wilts under the power and anger of a man? It could be that she is both. It is regrettably common that a woman who seems independent and sure of herself becomes lost in an unhealthy or abusive relationship.  Desdemona may have been a sad example of that, and become one of the ill-fated women who do not survive the onslaught of a partner’s irrational jealousy.

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