Issues of Race & Gender in Othello

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 a

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r surety" (I.iii.392-4). Iago suspects "the lusty Moor" of leaping into his seat; he will give him wife for wife (II.i). In other words, Iago's own jealousy, which is in no small part racially based, predisposes him to destroying Othello. The fact that he has been overlooked in promotion by someone he despises because of his race has encouraged his anger, and the fact that he has an opportunity to destroy Othello's marriage to a white woman is an opportunity for a vicious version of poetic justice. The cynical opportunism is all the more apparent for the reason that in any case Iago cares little for his wife's company, or for the company or temperament of women in general. And it is here, as Iago draws Roderigo into the next stage of opposing Othello by promising that Desdemona will turn to him eventually, that the gender-related issues surface prominently in the play. Roderigo as Desdemona's disappointed suitor has no stake in the gambit except to become her lover, but increasingly with the motive of deceiving Othello than possessing-Desdemona in an honorable state of marriage. Indeed, it seems the fate of Desdemona as a human being to be overlooked by the very men-father, husband, suitor, courtier--who love her. As a woma

Category: Literature - I