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Border Crossings in Shakespeare's Othello: A Critical Analysis of Race, Gender, and Class

Marjorie Garber's Commentary on Border Crossings in Othello

Informal Writing: Border Crossings

In her opening chapter on Othello, Marjorie Garber points out several ways in which Shakespeare’s tragedy pushes against traditional systems of order, in other words how either characters or actions push against or cross borders.  Garber states:

Modern scholars sometimes tend to think of race, class, and gender as distinctively contemporary modes of analysis, categories that reflect our own concerns, identities, and anxieties. But the plays of Shakespeare, produced in a period now often described as “early modern England,” are themselves strikingly “modern” in this as in other respects. To an extraordinary degree, Shakespeare’s plays… exhibit and record tensions around and within these categories. And never more than in Othello.

Race, class, and gender become crisis points when they categorize something, or someone, as different, and also as out of place: out of place, of course, from the point of view of traditional society. A black man marries a white woman, and is chosen by the nation to lead it in time of peril. A soldier, ambitious for preferment, sees his place given to another— given, in fact, to a courtly, educated snob who believes in rank, believes that “the lieutenant is to be saved before the ancient” (2.3.95-96). A woman asserts herself, making her own choice in marriage against her father’s will, speaking out in public on civic matters, then daring to contradict her husband’s view and offering him advice. These are all signs of transgression, calling boundaries into question. Anxiety, tension, hatred, and desire develop in part out of this sense of destabilization and displacement, out of the divisions and comparisons that are produced by categories like race, class, and gender. And never more so than in Othello. (Garber 588).

Informal Assignment: Prompt Question

After reading Marjorie Garber’s excerpt (above), develop your own critical argument about one of the categories: race, gender, or class as you apply it to one of the following characters: Othello, Desdemona, Iago, or Emilia.  Analyze how Shakespeare represents “border-crossings” and/or crisis points of race, gender, or class through the character you select.

350 words After reading Marjorie Garber’s excerpt, develop your own critical argument about one of the categories: race, gender, or class as you apply it to one of the following characters: Othello, Desdemona, Iago, or Emilia. Analyze how Shakespeare represents “border-crossings” and/or crisis points of race, gender, or class through the character you select.

Note:  In support of your own position, refer to a key point Garber makes and one of the Folger videos ‘Deception" or 'Language.’

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