Discuss the presentation of race, gender and class in Act1 of Othello.

Social classes were a very important part of Venetian society and Othello represents this very well. Social class is often represented by the way characters address each other. For example when a lower class person such as Iago address a senator he must speak differently to someone of equal or lower class than himself. He will address them as thou instead of you. Iago is driven by class and a thirst to prove himself worthy. He feels that as Othello is of a different race that he is weaker and of a lower status even though Othello is a General. He also believes that Othello cannot be civilised and consumed in the art of war, calling him a Barbarian. In Scene 1 when Iago and Roderigo awaken Brabantio, there is a fluctuation in class. Roderigo is very respectful as he would like to marry Desdemona and therefore must impress her father to stand a chance. He informs Brabantio that Othello has “robbed” his daughter from him. Once Brabantio realises this is true his tone towards the pair transforms. He almost becomes desperate begging to know where he could find his daughter.

“Call up my brother – O would you had had her!

Some one way, some another. Do you know

Where we may apprehend her and the Moor?”

Even Brabantio is lowered to the standards of Iago referring to Othello as the “moor”. Throughout the play Iago manipulates most characters to a lower standard from what they started as at the beginning of the play.

In many Shakespearean plays and around the Jacobean and Elizabethan eras, women were seen to be mild and submissive. However the first women we are presented with in Othello is Desdemona. She is seen to be a powerful woman with her own mind and very independent, I feel this is because she had deceived her father to marry Othello without his consent. However women generally don’t seem to be individuals, each are defined in terms of her male partner. Women are a possession of a man throughout their life, whether she is her father’s daughter or her husband’s wife. Brabantio is very over protective of Desdemona and naïve of his views of her. He refers to her as a possession that has been stolen from him. I think that in Othello, women are represented in a very stereotypical way, which is in-keeping with typical women of that era.

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