Daniel Irala
ENG 2400
Professor Scanlan
Final Essay
December 17, 2020
Final Essay
The word “ethics” is defined as, “Moral principles that govern a person’s behavior or the conducting of an activity”. Within the text of Othello and the films Othello and O, there are feminine ethics that appear in these pieces. The rules that women had to follow were indeed stricter during the patriarchal society, there options were very limited on what they wanted to be in life. Over time, the rules that the women had to abide, loosened. Unfortunately to this day, there are still areas around the world that still have women that have to follow strict guidelines. One of the ethics that the feminist philosopher Alison Jaggar says is that, “traditional ethics overrates culturally masculine traits like ‘independence, autonomy, intellect, will, wariness, hierarchy…’”.
In the text, Othello it clearly showed that it was common for men to do all of the major work such as go to war as soldiers, being high ranking officers or being a leader of the land that they own. The females in Othello were obviously not under those types of situations, they seem to have had limits on what they wanted to be in life. They were either a housewife, an attendant or a prostitute. Those were the roles of the three women that were in the book. Those characters were Emilia, Desdemona and Bianca, with Emilia being Desdemona’s attendant, Desdemona being Othello’s wife and Bianca being the prostitute. Those roles were most likely the usual roles women had back in those days. Based on the text, it showed how obedient and faithful Desdemona was to Othello by saying lines such as “I am obedient” and “I will my lord”. Even after Othello choked Desdemona she didn’t blame Othello but herself which showed how faithful she was to him even till the very end of her life. With Bianca being a prostitute, she would be called a “strumpet” by Iago and Iago also called his wife Emilia a “Villainous whore”. In the movie O, while it was intended to be a more modern interpretation of William Shakespeare’s Othello, it still had somewhat of the same story. Like the text Othello, Iago killed his wife Emilia. In the movie O, Hugo kills Emily by shooting her after telling Odin that Hugo told Emily to take the scarf.
Overall both the book Othello and film Othello seemed to have left that impression on women for the viewers to see, they were seen as women who have to obey men as they are inferior. While the Othello text was entertaining to read, it also left an impression on the women as they were given limited opportunities in life just because they were a different gender. In the present day, some or most women still have to endure these circumstances especially in other countries. Time will tell when this issue would get resolved.