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

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