the trouble with gender in othello - Auburn University Electronic ...

I am hitherto your daughter. But, here’s my husband;
And 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. (I.iii. 198-207. Emphasis mine)
Even while using the words of submissive words appropriate to a daughter
addressing her father, “operating within the matrix of power” as it were,
Desdemona is disrupting the patriarchal control (Dash 105) her father seeks to
exert over her…and she knows it. Desdemona is completely unapologetic for
her disruption. Throughout Act I, Desdemona has been identified as object, i.e.,
my daughter, his daughter, my wife, etc. But here, Desdemona steps out of the
role of object and becomes a subject, in the process making Brabantio and Othello
objects, “my father, my husband.” Brabantio never identifies himself as
Desdemona’s father, Othello never as Desdemona’s husband, reserving for
themselves an identity separate from her. By referring to Othello as “my
husband” and Barbantio as “my father”, it is she who objectifies the men,
claiming for herself the separate identity. While Desdemona is respectful in her
dissent (she consistently uses the more respectful “you” appropriate for
addressing someone of higher rank than oneself), she is unapologetic.
It is not only the way Desdemona addresses her father in this speech that
makes her words transgressive, but also the way she speaks of herself. To
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