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

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silence as his prerogative: “What you know, you know. From this time forth I never will speak word” (V.iii.352-353). 33
Conclusion The Matrix Restored By reading Othello through a Butlerian lens, we can perceive, if not a confirmation of Shakespeare as the social conservative that many critics believe him to, at least a very conservative world view in this play. Because, even as we weep for Desdemona, Othello and Emilia, we take away the social script the play has reinforced: Girls who disobey their fathers die. Women who admit to wanting sex die. White women who marry black men die. Women who talk when told to be silent die. Black men who marry white women die. The only woman who survives the action of the play does so because she has followed the script: she is a whore who acts like one. Daileader states “Othellophile 7 narratives are less concerned with the praise or blame of their black male protagonists than with the sexual surveillance and punishment of the white women who love them. In other words, Othellophilia as a cultural construct is first and foremost about women—white women explicitly, as the subject of representation.”( Daileader 10) It is especially important to keep in mind the social script that is enforced by Othello in light of the information provided in Stephen Orgel’s essay, “The Performance of Desire”: The theater was a place of unusual freedom for women in the period; foreign visitors comment on the fact that English women go 34
Page 1 and 2: THE TROUBLE WITH GENDER IN OTHELLO:
Page 3 and 4: THE TROUBLE WITH GENDER IN OTHELLO:
Page 5 and 6: Acknowledgments In Honor of Fred Fe
Page 7 and 8: TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION: THE
Page 9 and 10: If, as Butler writes, there is no p
Page 11 and 12: Another benefit of this type of rea
Page 13 and 14: and Juliet show what happens after
Page 15 and 16: legitimacy of the authority, […]
Page 17 and 18: For Butler, the distinction between
Page 19 and 20: further understand the subversion i
Page 21 and 22: (i.e., fitting her gender, race, cu
Page 23 and 24: Therefore, the fact of Desdemona’
Page 25 and 26: her husband. However, there can be
Page 27 and 28: Section Two: Othello in the Matrix
Page 29 and 30: nearly verbatim, “look to your wi
Page 31 and 32: Nor to comply with heat, the young
Page 33 and 34: and leave her home in Venice for a
Page 35 and 36: is the threat to his gender perform
Page 37 and 38: fictive revenge schemes in the west
Page 39: Desdemona’s exposure of “a limi
Page 43 and 44: of a possible agenda of enforcement
Page 45 and 46: Lenker, Lagretta Tallent. Fathers a
Page 47: Notes 1 In this section of her book

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