Toolbox

The men in Othello have varying attitudes to women, from Othello, who idealizes Desdemona, to Iago, who sees love as "merely a lust of the blood and a permission of the will" (1.3.337). Attitudes in Shakespeare's audience are likely to have been at least as varied. There was a long and well-established tradition in the Church of what we now see as misogyny -- the distrust of women simply because they are women. Not surprisingly, the literature of the period illustrates these attitudes, sometimes approvingly, sometimes critically.

• Equality between the sexes
• Iago's notion of women's role
• Devil or Angel?
• The "disorderly" sex
• Desdemona as a hawk that needs to be tamed
• Jokes (and unkind comments) about infidelity -- the cuckold's supposed horns

Further reading on this topic. | How to cite this page