hello everyone this is Jen and I make useful English Lit study videos on Shakespeare poetry fiction literary devices and wool to help you become a literary expert so this sounds exactly like what you need make sure that you hit the Subscribe button Below in today's video I'll be analyzing Emilia in Othello now those of you studying the play will know that Emilia is the lady waiting to Desdemona who is of course Othello's wife and the female protagonist Emilia first appears in act 2 scene 1 together with Desdemona when they arrive in Cyprus you can meet Othello our first impression of Amelia is probably not gray because she's presented in a somewhat Palace pathetic light as a wife request to grudgingly swallow her husband yago's misogynistic insult about women being Naggy and dishonest later however we realize that Amelia is a woman with independent thinking and pragmatic wisdom especially in Act 4 scene 3 when we see her trying to console a distraught testimona by sharing her sobering views about marriage and Fidelity but ultimately Amelia is a figure of marital tragedy when Yargo murders her in a rage after she publicly exposes her husband's deathlish schemes now most of the analysis out there about Amelia tends to present her as the foil to Desdemona Emilia is pragmatic and down to earth whereas testimona is romantic and idealistic has someone even argue that she's a feminist but I'd say that this is probably a bit too reductive of reading and one that is solely based on what's probably Emilia's most memorable speech which is the one I had alluded to in Act 4 scene 3. if anything I think Amelia is more similar to than different from Desdemona both of them being women were clearly very intelligent in their own ways but are ultimately made to die as scapegoats of their husbands violent rages what makes Amelia especially interesting though is her representation as a woman who is intellectually independent but socially dependent and is made to suffer precisely for this combination unlike testimona whose high social standing means that as she wanted to she would not have had to put up with ill treatment from any man and still be able to fall back on strong social and financial support Emilia does not have the Privileges which would give her this sort of Leverage of Freedom so as such Amelia is circumstantially forced to behave in ways that prioritize survival over values despite this being a constant thought of Agony for her and this I would argue is perhaps the greatest tragedy about women presented by Shakespeare in this play which I'll now go on to explain with a close reading of Amelia's moments in the text the handkerchief is one of the play's key symbols representing on one level Othello's commitment to his wife Desdemona but on another symbolizing the fragility of relationships and the Damage that a lack of communication could cause it crosses the hands of all the couples in the play including Othello and Desdemona Yago and Amelia as well as Cassio and Bianca well what's interesting is that the handkerchief always functions as a trigger for conflict when Emilia picks up the handkerchief that Othello accidentally dropped she faces the struggle of deciding where her loyalty should lie should she obey her husband's demand that she steal it for him or should she fulfill her professional Duty by returning the object to its rightful owner Desdemona if we close read Amelia's monologue at the point where she picks up the handkerchief we see that her immediate impulse is actually to satisfy yongo's will as she says I'm glad I have found this napkin my wayward husband have a hundred times rude me to steal it the word Wayward here meaning capriciously deceitful carries strong value judgment and suggests that Amelia knows what Yago wants is wrong but she's nonetheless relieved at the opportunity to be able to satisfy his Woods her moral conflict deepens as she continues to speak signaled by the conjunction but in but she so loves the token she here referring to testimona finally Emilia can only reconcile her warring War impulses by proposing to herself a middle ground solution of having the work taken out and give it to Yago which is copying the embroidery on the handkerchief in another one when a media concludes that only Heaven Knows not I what Yago plans to do with the handkerchief she's expressing a sense of resignation and helplessness if not also a wish to relegate responsibility to this greater Supernatural force of Heaven the last line I nothing but to please his fantasy reinforces this impression of Amelia's powerlessness specifically in the syntactical chiasmas of not I I nothing but this Crossing of not I I nothing brings to mind a knotted bind and the image of someone's hands being tied in hostage which is not unlike how Amelia sees her situation in this moment indeed the first thing she says to Yargo upon bumping into him is a defensive self-protective remark do not you child me I have a thing for you the blunt straight phrasing of these two sentences suggests that Emilia sees to exchange a material object for personal safety and that the marriage operates based on the logic of trade and barter rather than love and feeling it is tragic then that despite disagreeing with yargo's senseless at least familiar demands in both reason and morality Emilia must act against her values and accept that her role in the marriage is ultimately to execute her husband's orders and to comply with his whims by the way guys if you find this video helpful so far I'd massively appreciate it if you could hit the Thumbs Up Button below and subscribe to my channel so that you don't miss out on any of my top grade lit study content going forward I'd also encourage you to check out my membership program by clicking the join button below if you want exclusive access to members only study content and make special video requests I'll see you there but to consider Amelia in such powerless terms would seem odd if we were to read her speech about marriage and Fidelity in the Act 4 Willow scene where she comes across very much like a figure of strength now what are the two main ideas in Her speech a cheating is not necessarily a bad thing if it helps achieve a mutually beneficial goal for both husband and wife when she says who would not make her husband a cuckold to make him a monarch and B if a wife lapses in her marital duties then the husband is also to blame when she says be ills we do their ills instruct us so now coming right after the audience sees Desdemona in a distressed helpless state of being humiliated and wrongly accused by her husband but not fighting back Emilia's indignant trenchanted views stand as a stark refreshing contrast but while it may be tempting to conclude from her words that she is a strong feministic character it's really worth looking at the details in Her speech to consider of Amelia's words are more Wishful Bluster than genuine belief first noses that the phrase I think recurs throughout Amelia's speeches in the play this starts with her response to desmona's outrage over the possibility of women ever cheating on their husbands when she says in trough I think I should and later when she expounds on the tit-for-tat relations between husband and wife as in but I do think it is the husband's fault if wives do fail and then is it sport I think it is and doth affection breeded I think it does now the word think suggests that for all that Amelia insists about women having the power to act in potentially hurtful or vindictive ways towards their husbands most of the time they can only think about doing such a thing I.E imagine or fantasize themselves having the agency and wherewithal to carry out real actions that would affect the power dynamics in a marriage the subversive shrewd wife who won't take her husband's abuse lying down isn't really Emilia herself it's probably a projection of who she wishes that she could but can never really be in fact husbands are portrayed as having much more agency and Power in Her speech they can do much more whereas women are cast in a relatively more subdued position this is reflected in the proportion of vivid active verbs ascribed to men in Amelia speech when she says men slack their duties pour our Treasures into foreign laps break out and peevish Genesis strike us scant our former having in despite which means cut back on household allowances now compare this to women who are matched with comparatively more passive verbs as in have goals have Grace have some Revenge they see smell have their palettes for sweet and sour there's no outward oriented impact with having a trait seeing smelling or tasting most tellingly Emilia concludes by appealing to husbands to let them use us well with the verb use meaning treat conceding power and authority to men as those who determine the terms of treatment within a marriage Now red in this line we'll see that Amelia's so-called feministic track is perhaps less empowering than pessimistic and less practical than wishful now we know that Amelia dies ultimately from her husband's murder but one could argue that she had already died in Mind and Spirit even before her husband's brutal stabbing in fact Amelia anticipates her own death at the point when she discovers that Othello had killed Desdemona when she cries I'll make thee known though I lost 20 lives and later when she realizes that it was her husband who had propagated the lie about testimony and cassio's supposed Affair when she exclaims I'll kill myself for grief but is it grief that Emilia feels at this moment or is there also guilt specifically guilt over not doing more to avert the course of tragedy such as battering Iago to explain why he wants the handkerchief so much or persuading Desdemona earlier on to dig deeper into the roots of Othello's accusations it's perhaps not coincidental that the phrase I think should reappear in this final scene when Julia cries villainy villainy villainy I think upon it I think a villainy I thought so then the villain he alluded to here is on a most obvious level that of yaga's Deceit and fellows cruelty but it could also be understood as Amelia's own villainy of being complicit always unknowingly in desdemona's death there's a sense of shame that Emilia seals over her endless thinking about the plight and injustices faced by women because in thinking so much she has not been doing anything to change the situation and indeed if we look at Amelia's the final words the phrases there again when she breathes So speaking as I think alas I die the syntactical parallel of I seek and I die draws an implied causality between thinking and dying I.E it is in her endless rumination and thus avoidance of action that has finally led to her death interestingly this idea of thinking too much leading to disaster is also Central to Hamlet which is the only other tragedy that predates Othello so perhaps Shakespeare was still carrying over those creative traces from his previous work into this later play so anyway the takeaway from all of this is that Amelia women back then face which is their awareness of gendered Injustice but they're simultaneous inability to do anything about it in Shakespeare's England patriarchy was very much the socio-cultural norm so feminism as we understand today was still an anachronism but while most women didn't receive formal education many had the streets Mars and instinctual intelligence to know that the treatment they were receiving from men and the husbands no less was often unjust and at times demeaning and in 1603 when Othello was first staged perhaps his Consciousness would have been all the stronger with Elizabeth the First's 40-year matriarchal rule coming to an end and that's it for this character analysis on Amelia I hope this gave you some new refreshing insights and to think of Amelia not just as his feminists flow to Desdemona but as a historical representation of what women back in the early modern era might have struggled with in both marriage and Society now for your next video I would recommend that you watch this one that I'm showing on the screen right now where I discuss whether Othello is a misogynistic play with an analysis on all the female characters including nestomona Emilia and Bianca this I'm sure will give you an even stronger understanding of the gender theme in Othello which will no doubt help you in your studies if you want personalized feedback on any Othello or English literature essays make exclusive video requests and access members only content make sure that you check out my membership program by clicking the join button below otherwise please hit the Thumbs Up Button if you found this video helpful so that I can be encouraged to keep making these useful English Lit study videos for you and other passionate Learners all around the world if you haven't already please make sure to subscribe to my channel so you don't miss out on any of my weekly study content and I will see you as always in the next one ciao