misunderstanding and miscommunication.
How does Iago manipulate Othello?
Posing leading questions and withholding information, Iago manipulates Othello’s insecurities about his new marriage to Desdemona. Even though Iago uses arachnid imagery to describe his own plotting, Iago’s whisperings in fact transform Othello into a spider. Othello spins a ‘web’ from self-loathing and faulty logic.
The handkerchief
What two things does the article believe the handkerchief represents?
They were displayed as fashionable ornaments or ostentatiously dropped to prompt men gallantly to retrieve them. They were also exchanged symbolically as lovers’ gifts during courtship, and could even be used as evidence of a binding commitment to marriage if betrothal was contested.
What does the pattern on the handkerchief represent?
Its web-like pattern of the handkerchief gives it inflated meaning.
The Venetian ‘state of mind’
How does the play Othello characterise Venice?
It characterizes it similarly to how it was viewed by people at the time.
What did the Venetians have an appetite for?
the scandalous
How did John Leo view Africans and why is this a significant difference to Venetian's?
Joannes Leo’s casting of ‘the African’ as ‘most honest’ and ‘high minded’. It is a counterpoint to the Venetian desire for salacious statements.
War
Why does this section believe misunderstanding is inevitable?
Because there is a lot of miscommunication between the characters.
Gender
In the play, what do Venetian men have little grasp of?
the ‘true’ character of their womenfolk; men cannot see women for who they ‘really’ are
What is Emilia's function?
to go against the idea of what women should be like and bring the frustrations of women to attention
Summarise this section from a feminist perspective.
Men and women fail to understand each other and never really make the effort too as their attitudes are so internalised. Othello easily believes that Desdemona has been unfaithful because of social attitudes towards Venetian women ( that they were all promiscuous.) The only person in the play to openly challenge the way womens sexuality is viewed is Emilia who is frustrated that she is not listened to or understood.
'Let husbands know Their wives have sense like them; they see, and smell, And have their palates both for sweet and sour,
As husbands have. '
'Let husbands know Their wives have sense like them; they see, and smell, And have their palates both for sweet and sour,
As husbands have. '
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