desdemona + othello

• Wain - Venice's acceptance of their relationship is "partial" + Desdemona's love gives Othello a "living link" to Venice
• Bradley - Othello in middle age “comes to have his life crowned with the final glory of love”
• Auden (the Willow Scene) - “It is as if she had suddenly realised that she had made a mésalliance and that the sort of man she ought to have married was someone of her own class and colour like Ludovico”
• Loomba - Desdemona “passes from being his ally who would guarantee his white status to becoming his sexual and racial ‘other’ when her husband sees her as an adulteress
• Burke - “Ownership in the profoundest sense of ownership, the property of human affections, as fetishistically localised in the object of possession, while the possessor is himself possessed by his very engrossment.”
• Bradley - “He is to save Desdemona from herself, not in hate but in honour; in honour, and also in love. His anger has passed; a boundless sorrow has taken its place.”
• Gruesser - the only way to control Desdemona is to kill her
• Byles - Desdemona is Othello's "narcisstic love-object" who makes him feel "noble, powerful, and manly"
• Tennehouse (marriage) - The smothering of Desdemona is an example of the silencing of the female political voice; all marriages are political by nature
• Sanders - “The womb is either a place of privileged ownership or a common pond breeding bestiality.”