SOURCE: Vanita, Ruth. “‘Proper’ Men and ‘Fallen’ Women: The Unprotectedness of Wives in Othello.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 34, no. 2 (spring 1994): 341-56.

In the following essay, Vanita identifies the similarities between the deaths of Desdemona and Emilia and explores the complicity of male society in the two murders.

A surprisingly large number of Elizabethan and Jacobean plays represent or culminate in the murder of a wife, the reason cited almost always being her infidelity.¹ The plays construct these murders, often led up to by beating and torture of the wife, as tragedy, yet endorse them as a form of justice.

These tragedies have come to be known as “domestic tragedies,” suggesting that the events are private, springing from a familial relationship, unlike tragedies which involve political murders and take place in the public sphere. An unresolved contradiction is evident in the titles of these plays which signal the...