Women are always victims because it is men who determine social organisation." Consider the ways the representation of men and women in "Othello" supports or challenges this assumption.

Women are usually but not always the only victims of the social organisation created by men. In Shakespeare's famous tragic drama, "Othello", numerous characters, both male and female, are represented negatively and through their suffering the audience feels sympathy towards them. Desdemona's rebellion against her family in eloping with Othello, a black army general, results in her untimely death. Emilia, on the other hand, is compliant, to the patriarchal society, to a point whereby she …

…not required to give evidence against their husband in court. If this is the case today, we can only imagine how the audience would have viewed Emilia's brave actions more than 400 years ago. Shakespeare's Othello is a great tragedy, but also reveals the ideologies and subsequent tensions of Elizabethan society for its disempowerment of females and white hegemony, and causes us to reflect upon our own society and whether we are making the same mistakes.