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

Saints in your injuries, devils being offended,
Players in your housewifery, and housewives in your beds.
[…] your rise to play, and go to bed to work. (II.i.125-128, 131)
Iago, as I will discuss later in this thesis, performs the role of the re-enforcer of
the status quo. Therefore, we can take that his “script” is the “script of the
oppressive status quo” (Falluga). Desdemona, had she followed the script that
she was meant to, would still have been doomed. Because a prominent script in
the early 17 th century stated that women were carnal beings, Iago does not even
have to work very hard to convince Othello of Desdemona’s treachery. Othello
has lived in Venice long enough to be aware of the script that controls the
patriarchy there.
However, Perhaps one of the most debated and discussed lines in Othello, the
one that causes nearly all critics that discuss the character of Desdemona are
driven in one way or another to explain, are Desdemona’s dying words: “Emilia:
O, who hath done this deed? Desdemona: Nobody—I myself.” (V.ii. 148-149)
This line is often used to support critics’ arguments that Desdemona is
complicit in her own death, either by her willingness to lie with her immortality
at hand or by her supposed passivity. I would not completely disagree that
Desdemona’s dying words and actions in her death imply a certain complicity,
but I would not agree that she is represented as deserving death at the hands of
17