Othello (Vol. 35) | W. D. Adamson (essay date 1980)
W. D. Adamson (essay date 1980)
SOURCE: "Unpinned or Undone?: Desdemona's Critics and the Problem of Sexual Innocence," in Shakespeare Studies: An Annual Gathering of Research, Criticism, and Reviews, Vol. 13, 1980, pp. 169-86.
[In the essay below, Adamson surveys critical opinion on Desdemona's moral character and concludes that her dominant trait is innocence, which, the critic argues, contrasts sharply with the characters of Othello and Iago.]
Surveys of Othello criticism have for years noted that most of the opinion about Desdemona's moral significance is lamentably polarized: at one extreme are her idolaters, the readers who see her as a desexualized spirit, "ardent with the courage and idealism of a saint" (A. C. Bradley); and at the opposite one, her attackers, including those who disparage her as "little less than a wanton" (President John Quincy Adams) or even as an outright strumpet.1 Perhaps because both...
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