Shakespeares Othello - Desdemona the Ideal Essay -- Othello essays

Desdemona the Ideal What wife can compare to the ideal wife which the Bard of Avon has painted for us in his tragedy Othello? She is appreciated by everyone except the villain. Angela Pitt in Women in Shakespeares Tragedies comments on Desdemona as the ideal wife Handbooks of the period explain in or so detail what is required of the ideal wife, and Desdemona seems to fulfill even the most conservative expectation. She is beautiful and also humble A maiden never bold Of shade so still and quiet that her motion Blushed at herself. (I.iii.) Her concern for Cassio shows her generosity, for she will intercede for him with Othello. She is wise, and also a true and loving wife the sweetest innocent that eer did lift up eye. (44-45) David Bevington in William Shakespeare Four Tragedies describes the depth of virtue within this tragic heroine We believe her Desdemona when she says that she does not even know what it gist to be unfaithful the word whore is not in her vocabulary. She is defenseless against the charges brought against her because she does not even comprehend them, cannot believe that anyone would imagine such things. Her love, both sexy and chaste, is of that transcendent wholesomeness common to several late Shakespearean heroines . . .. Her preferring Othello to her father, like Cordelias placing her duty to a husband before that to a father, is not ungrateful further natural and proper. (221) Blanche Coles in Shakespeares Four Giants interprets the protagonists very meaningful four-word greeting to Desdemona which he utters upon disembarking in Cyprus Othellos four words, O, my souls joy, tel... ...mind behind the murder results in Iagos murder of her. Gullible Othello, grief-stricken by remorse for the tragic mistake he has made, stabs himself and dies on the bed abutting to his wife, his sorrow being as deep as his love for Desdemona prior to Iagos machinations. WORKS CITED Bevington, David, ed. William Shakespeare Four Tragedies. fresh York Bantam Books, 1980. Coles, Blanche. Shakespeares Four Giants. Rindge, New Hampshire Richard Smith Publisher, 1957. Pitt, Angela. Women in Shakespeares Tragedies. Readings on The Tragedies. Ed. Clarice Swisher. San Diego Greenhaven Press, 1996. Reprint from Shakespeares Women. N.p. n.p., 1981. Shakespeare, William. Othello. In The Electric Shakespeare. Princeton University. 1996. http//www.eiu.edu/multilit/studyabroad/othello/othello_all.html No line nos.