Why we shouldn't idolize Desdemona

Over the past couple days, there's been something that I haven't been able to get out of my head, so I feel writing about it may be the only way to finally get it to stop bothering me.

I just finished reading Othello for English class, and a large portion of our discussion of the book has been devoted to Desdemona as a Christ-like figure (you can tell I go to a Catholic school). Undoubtedly, Desdemona is a great person: her fidelity to her husband, Othello, and her unwavering kindness are traits not found in everyone. Readers can certainly look up to her in those regards.

But something else bothered me. The class began discussing a particular scene in which Desdemona talks to Emilia about the concept of women cheating on their husbands as the men around them seem to do with there wives. When Emilia suggests that women should be allowed to reciprocate the actions of their husbands, Desdemona disagrees, instead saying "God me such uses send, not to pick bad from bad, but by bad mend." When observed on its own, I don't see much of an issue with the quote; however, my class ended up discussing the quote in the context not only of Othello's infidelity, but his violence towards Desdemona towards the end of the play. Eventually, the consensus was reached that we should idolize Desdemona for her ultimate desire to work on bettering herself instead of gaining revenge on her husband despite what he has done.

I do not agree with this. Sure, Desdemona's actions show her incredible goodness of heart, but they also depict her as a door-mat for Othello to trample all over. When observing the world around us, it seems outrageous to encourage people to model her behavior. We're basically telling victims of domestic violence to suck it up and work on making themselves better people rather than telling them to stand up for themselves. This thought didn't seem to occur to anyone in the room when we were discussing it in class, but upon further reflection that doesn't seem too surprising considering the entire English department is run by men. I by no means think that they're misogynistic in any sense, but I think the fact that the department remains women-less closes up the possibility of the discussion of different viewpoints and aspects of literature, especially women's issues in famous works.

I normally wouldn't want to write something like this, but I really felt that I had to get it out of my system. A post about Comic Con will be coming soon