The purpose of this research is to examine the issues of race and gender in Othello. The plan of the research will be to set forth the context in which race and gender surface as critical factors of dramatic action, and then to see the means by which these issues emerge as instrumental to the work.
By and large, the impact of race and gender on dramatic action in the play comes about early. These issues are important because they provide the catalyst for feeding Othello's jealousy and working the tragedy of the play. They intersect in the marriage of Othello and Desdemona, the destruction of which becomes Iago's mission. The destruction of the marriage is the mechanism of doubt and self-hatred that points toward Othello's own destruction.
Specific references to race and gender occur principally in the first half of the play, which sets the stage for the tragedy, for the second half of the play shows the unraveling of action and of lives as an attribute of those issues. It is Iago's contempt for women in particular but a more generalized attitude toward women held by all the men of the play that is the touchstone of the gender issue. The issue of racial hatred, especially but not entirely on Iago's part, provides the extra element of tension in the action. Iago's manipulation of gender and race stereotypes has the effect of unleashing the violence that never far beneath the fear that is itself beneath skewed perceptions.
The issue of race, or more exactly European attitudes toward non-Europeans, surfaces in the first scene of the play, in which Iago, scorned by Othello in promotion, urges Roderigo to break the news of Desdemona's elopement with Othello to her father Brabantio and so ruin Othello's reputation. Roderigo simply cannot fathom that a Moor could be a successful seducer. It is his characterization of Othello as "the thick-lips" (I.i.66) that is the most revealing, and Iago exploits that sense of betrayal,...