“…so much duty as my mother showed
To you, preferring you before her father,
So much I challenge that I may profess
Due to the Moor my lord” (Act 1, Scene 3, 184)
Emilia is Desdemona’s female servant, one of her closest confidants and is Iago’s Wife. Emilia is perceived as having a more practical and shrewd sense about her that is more apparent than Desdemona’s. Emilia pleads with Desdemona to confront Othello about his suspicions and when she discovers Iago’s betrayal, she reveals him, even though he is her husband. Eventually her allegiance to Desdemona will costs her, her life. Though she is a good loyal friend to Desdemona, she unknowingly contributes to the events that lead Othello to believe Desdemona is being unfaithful. This happens when she gives Iago, Desdemona’s beloved handkerchief that Othello gave to her as a token of his love. Iago then planted this in Cassio’s quarters to serve as proof that Desdemona was not only with Cassio but gave him this precious token of Othello’s and her love. Emilia is introduced in Act 2 being ridiculed by her husband Iago, he does this by saying
“…you are pictures out of door,
Bells in your parlours, wild-cats in your kitchens,
Saints in your injuries, devils being offended,
Players in your housewifery, and housewives in your beds”
(Act 2, Scene 1,108)
Emilia’s bitterness is due to this poor relationship she has with her husband Iago. This frequent abuse that she endures makes her bold and direct. She tells Desdemona
“Tis not a year or two shows us a man:
They are all but stomachs, and we all but food;
To eat us hungerly, and when they are full,
They belch us.”
(Act 3, Scene 4, 98)
Emilia is a woman from a common life opposed to that of Desdemona, She feels unappreciated and is a frustrated hard working housewife.
Bianca is a prostitute who Cassio visits frequently. When Cassio finds Desdemona’s handkerchief, he gives it to Bianca to duplicate the stitching. Bianca becomes upset and assumes it is a gift from another woman or lover, though being a prostitute she probably has other lovers herself. She is the only female in the play that Cassio shows less respect to and is too ignorant to see that she is merely Cassio’s courtesan rather than his lover or girlfriend, which see sees herself to be. Bianca is eventually accused of stabbing Cassio when it was actually Iago in an effort to kill him as ordered to by Othello. The relationship between Bianca and Cassio is purely physical, this serves as an example of the common stereotype that women are only good for one thing, which was often the opinion in this time. Bianca is clearly in love with Cassio and wants a relationship with him, she remarks,
“What, keep a week away? Seven days and nights?
Eight score eight hours? And eight lovers’ absent hours,
More tedious than the dial eight score times? O weary reckoning”
(Act 3, Scene 4, 67)
However, Cassio has no intentions of having a serious relationship with Bianca and the thought of marrying her is a joke to him, he says,
“I marry? What a customer? Prithee bear some charity to my wit; do not think it so unwholsome. Ha ha ha!”
(Act 4, Scene 1,118)
Cassio also thinks that Bianca is an annoying nuisance, he says that
“She haunts [him] in every place” and that she “falls [him] thus about [his] neck-“
(Act 4, Scene 1, 128)
As Othello and Iago are the two foremost male characters, I find their attitudes towards the women in their lives most interesting. At the beginning of the play Othello is completely in love with Desdemona and trusts her implicitly
“My life upon her faith!”
(Act 1, Scene 3, 335)
He is in awe of her and can not believe she is his, he places her on a pedestal and I believe he thinks himself not worthy of a woman of her stature. Some of this may come from his own racial beliefs, in that in that he is below her in background and because of race. Yet Iago who is truly beneath her, considers her nothing more than a typical woman. He believes that whether they are a common prostitute or a wealthy senator’s daughter they are beneath men and can not be trusted
“Mark me with what violence she first loved the Moor but for bragging and telling her fantastical lies…Her eye must be fed….Now for want of these required conveniences, her delicate tenderness will find itself abused, begin to heave the gorge, disrelish and abhor the Moor. Very nature will instruct her in it, and compel her to some second choice”
(Act 2, Scene 1, 212)
Each of these three women end up being wronged by the ones they love or because of the ones they love. Desdemona is killed in her wedding sheets, by the man she ultimately gives her life for, Othello. She remains faithful and pure even after her death. Emilia is also killed by her husband Iago. Like Desdemona, she is killed because of her unfaithfulness to her husband, but in this case the deceit being true. She defies her husband by telling everyone the truth about his involvement in the death of Desdemona. Emilia remains strong, standing up to Iago knowing that her death would be the consequence. Bianca’s sinful and ignorant nature leads others to believe that she is the one to blame for stabbing Cassio, the one she loves and is arrested for doing so.
Although in this play all three women have very strong characters and play vital roles, the attitude shown are very much that women are untrustworthy and all the same in the end. That the social classification between Desdemona and Bianca maybe on opposite spectrums they are both women and in end, whores that can not be trusted, though the evidence shows different.
Access English Studies
Unit 2
Shakespeare’s Othello
Emma Marshall
Bibliography
Othello William Shakespeare, Heinemann Advanced Shakespeare, 2000.
Word count; 1378.