Othello Essay

The Jacobean era in which William Shakespe atomic number 18 first wrote Othello, eventually published in 1622, is one which is rightly remembered as being held to strict, dogmatic codes of sexuality and gender- occasion structures. On the threshold of Queen Elizabeths crowning, England under King James continued to be a purely patriarchal society, with the realms of war and diplomacy being fully impenetrable to women.Considered the primal means to demonstration and execution of power, such venues were perceived to have held reign over all manner of social order. From a cosmetic vantage, it appears by characters such as Brabantio, Othello and Iago that Shakespeargon acknowledges a sociological structure which largely keeps women see to these powers of men. However, through its intricate weaving of deception which is continually based on a distortion of the realities among men and women, Shakespeare wily toys with conventional science regarding sex and power, dismantling many o f the assumptions pertaining to the topic which were processional from the cultural hegemony of his season and place.While the work is constantly given over to opportunistic sleights against the glib malice of the female kernel, the flaws of the male characters are ultimately the cause of tragedy. Shakespeares work is marked by a rare propensity for his time, to promote a reconsideration of the reciprocal relationship inbuilt to the breakdown which occurs between love, lust and loyalty While men such as Othello and Brabantio characterise power as being in the hands of the wealthy and physically impressive, Desdemona silently and passively illuminates that sexuality is the true power broker. Even forwards it is the force which weakens his senses, Othello recognizes that all of his fearsome strengths are blunted by his complaint in the hands of love and lustWhen light-winged toysOf feathered Cupid seel with wanton away dullnessMy speculative and officed instrument,That my disports corrupt and taint my business,Let housewives makes a skillet of my helm. (1.3, 263-267)Fittingly, the conclusion magnifies this irony, consistent with the convolution of gender power and responsibility as it persists through come in. Othello recognizes that it is his indiscretion, not Desdemonas, which has delivered him to incurable suspicion. When he finally succumbs to his misguided jealously, it becomes invariably run that his physical strengths, those very same which were said to have won him the heart of Desdemona, were not simply made benign by the power of her sexuality.Worse, his powers are turned against him, unleashed from his control and wielded by a fog of lustful rage. In the denouement of the play, Othello is inconsolable of his own guilt. After choking the life out of his innocent wife, Othello is left powerless. In this is the eventual resolution of Shakespeares treatise on the falsehood in the power dynamic between men and women. Indeed, the power which i s shown to be reflected in the woman is one which contradicts traditional assumptions of 16th carbon female gender roles.That the women in this play, and Desdemona in particular, ultimately command such power over the judgment of men is quite telling of Shakespeares unique perspective. The twisted frustration which marks the conclusion of the play is a strikingly aggressive declaration by the playwright that cultural assumptions regarding the genders are not just too often grossly misunderstood, but thence also subject to terrible repercussions.