Othello interpretations

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Feminist View

Marilyn French, 1982

=  In spite of her assertiveness in choosing her own husband, French suggests Desdemona ‘accepts her culture’s dictum that she must be obedient to males’ and is ‘self-denying in the extreme’ when she dies.

"My love doth so approve him that even his stubbornness, his checks, his frowns...have grace and favor in them." (Act 4, Scene 3) 

Desdemona knows she must be thankful for Othello's flaws, even if they scare her, she knows she must accept it and still obey him. 

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Early View

Dr Johnson, 1765

suggested that the play provided a ‘very useful moral, not to make an unequal match’.

 Thomas Rymer, 1693 

= Rymer was disappointed because the playwright did not provide a satisfactory moral for the audience to take home ‘for their use and edification’. He suggested that Othello might serve only as ‘a warning to good housewives to look well to their linen’.

= Rymer also comments on Desdemona’s marriage to Othello, suggesting that she must lack morals and self-respect because she chooses to marry a Moor.

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19th Century View

At the end of the century Swinburne argued that Othello must be seen as a truly noble hero, ‘the noblest man of man’s making’.

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