Othello - How Is Desdemona Merely a Passive Victim

Desdemona has not fallen victim to Othello’s insane rage and jealousy by her wrong doing. She isn’t even the main target of the demise brought upon Iago. The one to fall is Othello, but to achieve this, Iago must get him to kill Desdemona. Totally deprived of breath and of words to tell the truth. Wrong place’s at the most wrong times, this is what made her the passive victim for Iago’s true victim. Desdemona is probably the strongest willed character in the play, although she is a woman.

Shakespeare takes no shame in making her this, considering the time this was written in.We first see her, defending her recent marriage surrounded by powerful men, whom of which include the duke, her husband, and her father, but shes is not ashamed to assert her belief in the validity of her desires and actions. Desdemona’s forthrightness is her demise, because the brilliant Iago recognizes this and uses it against her.

Using Cassio who becomes demoted in the play, Iago exploits her willingness to demand and justice, to make him her cause and simultaneously, Othello’s enemy. As Iago’s plan goes as planned, Desdemona asks Othello to forgive Cassio adding to Othello’s suspicions created by his deceitful friend.She keeps pushing him in spite of her husbands growing rage until he declares, The handkerchief that Othello gave his wife at the beginning of the play, is stolen. Her courage is apparent in her refusal to search for it in Act III, scene iv; her willingness to have a voice and shout back at Othello as he abuses her in Act IV, scene i; and defending her innocence when accused Act V, scene ii.

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Since men have the ultimate power of women. Othello does not believe in, what he takes to be ‘shameless lies’. Her courage convinces him all the more that she is remorseless in what he thinks to be her wrongdoing.The senes including Desdemona and Emilia one can see the terrible effect of Othello’s brutality. Emilia is cynical and bawdy, and she gives Desdemona every possible opportunity to bad-mouth Othello. In Act III, scene iv, she says Insults go specifically towards Othello: And at the end of Act IV, scene iii, she gives a lengthy discourse about the virtues of infidelity. Desdemona however never speaks ill of her husband once, saying With her closes condidante, Desdemona speaks most truthful and faithful, even as she shows the strain of his terrible abuse.