Hello everyone, this is Jen and I make useful English Lit study videos on Shakespeare, poetry, fiction, literary devices and more to help you become a literary expert. So if this sounds exactly like what you need, make sure that you hit the subscribe button below. In today's video, I'll be analysing Emilia in Othello. Now those of you studying the play will know that Emilia is the lady-in-waiting to Desdemona, who is of course Othello's wife and the female protagonist. Emilia first appears in action in the play.
Act 2, Scene 1, together with Desdemona, when they arrive in Cyprus to meet Othello. Our first impression of Emilia is probably not great, because she's presented in a somewhat powerless, pathetic light, as a wife who has to grudgingly swallow her husband Iago's misogynistic insults about women being naggy and dishonest. Later, however, we realise that Emilia is a woman with independent thinking and pragmatic wisdom, especially in Act 4, Scene 3, when we see her trying to console a distraught Desdemona by sharing her sobering views about marriage and fidelity.
But ultimately, Emilia is a figure of marital tragedy when Iago murders her in a rage after she publicly exposes her husband's devilish schemes. Now most of the analysis out there about Emilia tends to present her as the foil to Desdemona. Emilia is pragmatic and down to earth, whereas Desdemona is romantic and idealistic. Now, some would even argue that she's a feminist, but I'd say that this is probably a bit too reductive of a 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 Emilia is more similar to than different from Desdemona, both of them being women who are clearly very intelligent in their own ways, but are ultimately made to die as scapegoats of their husband's violent rages. What makes Emilia 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 Desdemona, 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 prioritise survival over values, despite this being a constant source 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, symbolising 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, Iago and Emilia, as well as Cassio and Bianca. But what's interesting is that the handkerchief always functions as a trigger for conflict.
When Emilia picks up the handkerchief that Othello accidentally drops, 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 Iago's will, as she says, I'm glad I have found the snap. My wayward husband hath a hundred times wooed me to steal it. The word wayward here, meaning capriciously deceitful, carries strong value judgment and suggests that Amelia knows what Iago wants is wrong, but she's nonetheless relieved at the opportunity to be able to satisfy his wants.
Her moral conflict deepens as she continues to speak, signalled by the conjunction but in, but she so loves the token. she here referring to Desdemona. Finally, Emilia can only reconcile her warring moral impulses by proposing to herself a middle ground solution of having the work taken out and give it to Iago, which is copying the embroidery on the handkerchief in another one. When Emilia concludes that only heaven knows, not I, what Iago plans to do with the handkerchief, she's expressing a sense of resignation and helplessness, if not also a wish to surrender.
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 chiasmus 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 Iago upon bumping into him is a defensive self-protective remark, do not you chide me, I have a thing for you. The blunt straight phrasing of these two sentences suggests that Amelia seeks to exchange a material object for personal safety, and that the marriage operates by based on the logic of trade and barter rather than love and feeling. It is tragic then that despite disagreeing with Iago's senseless 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, the 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, trenchant 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 if Amelia's words are more wishful bluster than genuine belief. First, notice that the phrase, I think, recurs throughout Amelia's speeches in the play.
This starts with her response to Desdemona's outrage over the possibility of women ever cheating on their husbands, when she says, in troth, 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 breed it? I think it doth.
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 action. 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's speech, when she says men slack their duties, pour our treasures into foreign laps, rake out in peevish jealousies, strike us, scant our former having into spite, 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 palates for sweet and sour. There's no outward-oriented impact with having a trait, seeing, smelling, or tasting.
Most tellingly, Amelia concludes by appealing to husbands to let them use as 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, read in this light, 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 Emilia 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, Emilia 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 twenty lives, and later when she realises that it was her husband who had propagated the lie about Desdemona and Cassio's supposed affair. when she exclaims, I'll kill myself for grief. But is it grief that Amelia feels at this moment?
Or is there also guilt, specifically guilt over not doing more to avert the course of tragedy, such as badgering 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 Emilia cries, villainy, villainy, villainy, I think upon it, I think, oh villainy, I thought so then. The villainy alluded to here is on a most obvious level that of Iago's deceit and Othello's cruelty, but it could also be understood as Emilia's own villainy of being complicit, albeit unknowingly, in Desdemona's death. There's a sense of shame that Emilia feels 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 final words, the phrase is there again when she breathes, so speaking as I think, alas, I die. The syntactical parallel of I think 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 dramatises one of the deeper tragedies that women back then faced, which is their awareness of gendered injustice, but their simultaneous inability to do anything about it. In Shakespeare's England, patriarchy was very much the sociocultural norm, so feminism, as we understand it today, was still an anachronism. But while most women didn't receive formal education, many had the street smarts and instinctual intelligence to know that the treatment they were receiving from men, and their 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 I'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 a feminist form 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 Nesta Mona, Amelia, 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.
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