Desdemona character summary

Desdemona is a beautiful, young, white, Venetian debutante. And she's a total Daddy's girl... until she falls head over heels in love with Othello. She refuses to marry any of the rich, handsome Venetian men that everyone expects her to marry. Instead, she elopes (gasp!) with Othello—an older black man, an outsider to Venetian society (gasp!).

Turns out, this is a pretty gutsy move—Desdemona not only defies her father's expectations (that she marry a white man of his choosing); she also thumbs her nose at a society that largely disapproves of interracial marriages. In this way, Desdemona's relationship with Othello speaks to the play's concerns with 16th century attitudes about sex, gender, and race.

Like Othello, Desdemona undergoes a dramatic transformation over the course of the play. At the play's beginning, Desdemona's an adventurous spirit—when her new husband is called away for military duty in Cyprus, she begs to go with him and can't stand the thought of remaining at home where there isn't any action.

This isn't so surprising, given that Desdemona seems to be drawn to Othello's exciting past. We learn that Othello wooed Desdemona by telling stories of action, adventure, and danger, and that Desdemona consumed these tales with a "greedy ear:"

We also know that Desdemona has said she wishes the heavens had made her a man like Othello, which could mean that she wanted to marry a man like Othello... or that wishes she were a man like Othello, instead of a woman.

Desdemona's also pretty frank about her sexual desire for her husband, which is part of the reason she wants to go with him to Cyprus:

DESDEMONA
That I did love the Moor to live with him
My downright violence and storm of fortunes
May trumpet to the world. My heart's subdued
Even to the very quality of my lord.
I saw Othello's visage in his mind,
And to his honor and his valiant parts
Did I…