Othello: Emilia the Grander one Essay -- English literature, Shakespear

â€Å"Othello,† the tragic play written by William Shakespeare in 1601 has given a new outlook to women’s right during the time period when they had no voice to call their own. A tragic play about a jealous and manipulative man named Iago who does everything in his power to pursue and destroy the life of the protagonist, Othello. In the belief that Othello had wrongfully promoted someone else to the position that he claims to be rightfully his. In this play, unsure if this was the intention of Shakespeare, but Shakespeare’s two main female characters each embodies a completely different bias about women and feminism during the Elizabethan time period. Shakespeare encircles â€Å"Othello’s† plot and themes around its male characters all the while concurrently but indirectly shed light to the hidden anti-parallel dynamic among the livelihood of women. Desdemona, Othello’s wife, the more traditional female character, believes in putting her hus band first and that love is all that matters. On the other hand, Emilia, Iago’s wife and one of Desdemona’s dearest friends, is portrayed as the stronger feminist in the play and believes in women’s right and that women are physically no different to men. To place this assumption into retrospect, in Shakespeare time, from the 1558 to the 1600s, England society was ruled by Queen Elizabeth. Although a women took ownership of the country, in Elizabethan’s society married women and minor girls were entirely in the power of their husband and guardianship of their father. None the less, even after Elizabeth I took the throne, she was expected to wed and â€Å"have her rights to rule limited or completely take up by her husband† (Wagner, 21). Women living in a society built upon Renaissance beliefs were only m... ... when his lies and deceits destroys innocent lives. In correlation to Shakespeare’s time and with his character Emilia, women should see that in order for a man to successfully thrive, it takes a strong-will and outspoken woman to back him up. On the other hand, afraid of societal and dynamical change, men can only silence change with death like Iago did to Emilia. Works Cited 1. Shakespear, William. â€Å"Othello, the Moor of Venice.† Literature: Craft and Voice. Eds. Nicholas Del Banco and Alan Cheue. 2en ed. New York: Mc Graw Hill, 2012. 1202-1271. Print. 2. â€Å"Feminist Criticism (1960s- present).† Purdue OWL: Literary Theory and Schools of Criticism. Web.25 Apr 2014. 3. Chojnacki, Stanley. Women and Men in Renaissance Venice: Twelve Essays on Patrician Society. Baltimore:John Hopkins UP,2000. 115-169. Ebook.