Sharon Friedman

Revisioning the Woman's Part:

Paula Vogel's 'Desdemona'
In Desdemona, Paula Vogel's revision of Shakespeare's Othello, we have a Desdemona
who is Othello's worst nightmare, the transformation of lago's fiction into reality. Why has
Paula Vogel created a Desdemona who, though ostensibly inside out, still appears to
be Othello's projection? Sharon Friedman argues that although Paula Vogel's raucous
Desdemona draws on many of the conventions of feminist revisioning, it marks an
important shift in the feminist critical perspective in drama - as characterized by Lynda
Hart, 'from discovering and creating positive images of women . . . to analyzing and
disrupting the ideological codes embedded in the inherited structures of dramatic
representation'. In a deconstructive parody, Vogel dislodges the convention of the intimate
scene between women in Shakespeare's theatre and expands it into an entire play.
Decentering the tragic hero, she foregrounds and enacts the threat of female desire that
incites the tragic action, and disrupts the familiar categories of virgin, whore, and faithful
handmaiden by forging links with gender ideology and class status. The author, Sharon
Friedman, is an Associate Professor in the Gallatin School of New York University, and
the author of several articles on American women dramatists, including Susan Glaspell
and Lorraine Hansberry.

IN HIS INTRODUCTION to Othello, Alvin sibly inside out, still seems like Othello's
Kernan asserts that Shakespeare's vision of projection? Could a lascivious Desdemona
human nature dramatizes 'ancient terrors represent a feminist reclamation of the
and primal drives - fear of the unknown, powers of desire and, at long last, ownership
pride, greed, lust, underlying smooth, of the gaze? What, in this revision, con-
civilized surfaces', and that there is a marked stitutes change, subversion, or the revelation
'contrast between surface manner and inner of patriarchal ideology concerning women's
nature.... In Desdemona alone do the heart sexuality encoded in Othello?
and the hand go together: she is what she To be sure, Vogel joins a throng of critics,
seems to be.' 1 writers, directors, and actors who have chal-
This characterization is reversed in Paula lenged Shakespeare's plays with their new
Vogel's revision of Othello as Desdemona.2 In readings, literary applications, film adap-
this play, we have a Desdemona who is not tations, and inventive theatrical productions,
what she seems, 'of spirit so still and quiet'. often from a feminist perspective.3 In her call
Rather, she is Othello's worst nightmare, the for 'more new readings' of Shakespeare in
transformation of lago's pretence into reality. the 1990s, the scholar Jean Howard argues
Though still naive, Desdemona is no longer against the traditional approach to criticism
the innocent - unselfish in her love, forgiving that sees meaning 'already in the text', there
of all transgressions against her. She is sexu- to be discovered by the 'alert reader'. Rather,
ally adventurous as she works for Cassio's Howard argues that a Shakespeare play is an
harlot Bianca in her brothel, seemingly vora- occasion for a 'complex, contemporary inter-
cious in her appetites, manipulative of any- action with a classic text' and 'an occasion
one who can feed them, and anything but for creation by which the critic acknow-
loyal in her relationships with women or men. ledges his own place in history'.4
Questions abound. Why has Paula Vogel Peter Erickson, in Rewriting Shakespeare,
created a Desdemona who, though osten- Rewriting Ourselves, locates the writer as well

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 as the critic in history. Emphasizing the These revisions eventually lead to 'trans-
'interactions between past and present that formational' readings which, in alliance with
we construct and negotiate', he is seeking Shakespeare, 'transform his scripts into their
representations of Shakespeare which go own'.
beyond contemporary theatrical perform-
ance and pedagogy to the 'different cultural A Shift in the Feminist Perspective
sites of contemporary literature', which he
perceives as ripe for 'imaginative free play Paula Vogel's raucous Desdemona draws on
and for the development of an independent many of these conventions of feminist
perspective'.5 revisioning. She foregrounds the women in
Erickson's prime example is the poet the play; explores female friendship; and
Adrienne Rich's re-visioning of the father- refocuses plot to reveal the 'high cost of
daughter motif and women's forgiveness in patriarchal values' that several critics see
both King Lear and The Winter's Tale. Given embedded in Shakespeare's tragedies. As
Shakespeare's iconic status, the danger is the editors of The Woman's Part assert, 'the
that the image can become 'fixed in our men who uphold [these values] atrophy, and
minds as an inviolable element of father- the women, whether resistant [Emilia] or
daughter relations', despite the ideological acquiescent [Desdemona], die'.8
tensions in 'values and expectations', which However, departing from her re-visionary
are subject to dramatic pressure within the and transformational predecessors, Paula
text. 'Whether or not Shakespeare is seen as Vogel does not attempt to celebrate the pur-
critical of Lear, Shakespeare cannot give us portedly 'womanly' virtues - the 'flexibility,
Cordelia's point of view.'6 compassion, realism' attributed to Shake-
This critical distance from Shakespeare in spearean heroines.9 She does not perceive in
twentieth-century rewritings of his works the women's intimacy a 'mutual affection
is also noted by Marianne Novy, whose col- and a kind of female subculture apart from
lection of articles documents women's read- the man's world'.10 Nor does she correct and
ings of Shakespeare over the past three revise the restrictions that so obviously
hundred years. Carol Neely, in an epilogue oppress the women and inform the men's
to this book, observes categories of revisions. destructive fantasies of betrayal.
Some writers foreground female friendship Rather, Vogel's play marks an important
and express a connection to women charac- shift in the feminist critical perspective,
ters who demonstrate assertiveness, exploit specifically in drama, as characterized by
the uses of disguise to transcend confine- Lynda Hart in her collection of essays on
ment, and display wit as well as passion (e.g.,
contemporary women's theatre: 'the shift...
Rosalind, Beatrice, Helena, Cleopatra). Other
from discovering and creating positive
writers who adapt Shakespeare for their
images of women in the content of the
texts seem more detached as they 'balance
drama to analyzing and disrupting the
sympathy and judgement. . . . Patriarchal
ideological codes embedded in the inherited
structures and the constrictions suffered
structures of dramatic representation'.11
by women are exposed and, sometimes, cor-
rected through revision.' Neely notes that Whether one takes the interpretive stance
several often seemingly conflicting responses that Shakespeare questions and explodes
alternate - patriarchal attitudes toward women or that
he reinscribes profound fears of female
sexuality and desperate attempts to control
between anger and empowerment, between it, the terms by which women are defined
critique of patriarchal culture and the creation of (e.g., the virgin or the whore) and the
alternatives to it Analysis of patriarchy moves
beyond characters, beyond the playwright him- spheres to which they are relegated -
self, to a probing analysis of his culture as well as backroom, bedroom, balconies - remain in
the writer's, with Shakespeare's plays enabling the place. A revisionary theatre perceives genre,
critique.7 language, stage space, and the body as the

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 'loci' for the playwright to 'dramatically desire - that incites the tragic action of the
challenge' the terms, categories, and beliefs play.14
by which women are defined and deter- Using bodily presence and ribald language
mined in the discourse of dramatic and in place of whispering asides, delicately
cultural texts.12 expressed confidences, and plaintive ballads
In any revision, the original work hovers (e.g., Desdemona's song in the willow scene),
over its present incarnation. In fact, the these familiar female characters, central to
programme notes to Desdemona include a our most cherished narratives and cultural
brief synopsis of Othello, followed by a letter paradigms, speak in a forbidden language,
from Vogel to her audience in which she and disrupt the categories of their repre-
reveals her implicit dialogue with the Bard. sentation - the twin images of the virgin/
She begins by sharing her memories of whore dichotomy and the faithful hand-
earlier readings, when she had wept for the maiden - linked to their gender and class
Moor, who 'goaded to desperation by the status. Vogel produces multiple and shifting
innuendos of cuckoldry that [his ensign] identities as she dramatizes, among various
Iago manufactured, [and] believing his vir- postures, a whoring Desdemona, a spiritu-
ginal bride to be the harlot coupling with his ally monogamous Bianca, and a sassy Emilia,
lieutenant Cassio, gives in to homicide', who does not invariably understand and
strangling 'pure, blameless Desdemona' in support the lady she serves. As in women's
her bed. performance art, 'the position of the female
At the same time, however, and despite subject talking back throws that position into
Vogel's admiration for Shakespeare's 'fan- process, into doubt'.15
tastic verse', she began to question the
critical assessment of Desdemona as a 'fully
Female Characters and Public Action
dimensional heroine'. The woman that she
reads is an abstraction played by 'gawky In Renaissance drama, particularly tragedy,
male adolescents'. Furthermore, Vogel raises centre stage is the site of public action and
two provocative questions regarding con- oratory more often reserved for male charac-
duct in a text which, though naturalized ters, reflecting the 'relationship between the
through the ages, in her mind bears male-defined polis and the politics of stage
questioning:' space'.16 Several critics have lauded Shakes-
peare for creating a counter-universe in
Had Desdemona been sleeping with the Russian scenes where women share intimate conver-
Navy [that is, the Venetian garrison], would sations that reveal both their 'freedoms and
Othello have been justified in his self-pitying act
of murder? [And] why did Emilia steal the hand- constraints'. Carole McKewin observes that
kerchief Othello had given his wife, if she was although this enclosed space is often 'shaped
such a devoted servant to Desdemona? by the larger world of the play', in scenes
('A Letter from the Playwright') where women talk to each other apart from
men, they engage in freer expression of their
In this self-reflexive reading of Othello, the 'perceptions and identities, comment on mas-
playwright/critic also becomes a feminist culine society, gather strength, and engage in
spectator who, as Randi Koppen defines reconnaissance to act in it'.17
such a viewer, resists, revises, and produces McKewin illustrates this assertion with her
meanings 'in response to the text's own view that Desdemona and Emilia's 'feminine
13
promptings'. In a deconstructive parody, friendship . . . is affectionate and frank,
Vogel dislodges the convention of the inti- generous and nurturing'. In the willow-song
mate scene between women in Shake- scene in Othello, Desdemona laments the
speare's theatre and expands it into an entire plight of her mother's maidservant forsaken
play. Now decentering the tragic hero, she by her lover, and initiates a dialogue with
foregrounds and enacts the threat of female Emilia about women's attitudes toward
transgression - the construction of female adultery and honour. According to McKewin,

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 this dialogue between women 'reflects both whorish behaviour with his men of every
the increased oppression of the outside rank and file, 'pioneers and all' (III, iii, 343).
world and the effect, however limited, the As Jyotsna Singh succinctly states:
counter-universe can have on its opposite'.
McKewin admires Emilia's loyalty to Des- To label Othello a 'tragedy of jealousy' has almost
demona and her 'egalitarian view of man become a critical commonplace. What has less
frequently been specified is a crucial aspect of his
and woman in marriage'. Indeed, with more male jealousy - namely, the fear that wives can
than a hint of cultural feminism, the critic turn into whores or, put another way, that wives
perceives their friendship as what ultimately and whores are indistinguishable.20
emerges from this counter-universe to 'reveal
what woman is, and to reshape the chimeras It is precisely this binary construction that
of slander' that result in the 'debacle of Vogel dramatizes and, in the process, decon-
Othello'.18 structs as she probes the ideological dis-
Vogel, focusing her lens onto the back- course that informs the play's lofty themes
ground of the play, brings Bianca from the of marital love, honour, and loyalty.
streets into the palace, juxtaposes her with What lurks behind the Renaissance ideal
Desdemona and Emilia, and complicates this of pure and passive femininity, guardian of
intimate conversation with material con- masculine sexuality, if not the anxiety that all
cerns. Her women engage in frank discus- women are descendants of Eve, responsible
sion and behaviour that undermines their for TDOth mortality and the "sin" of human
valorization and camaraderie, and so frus- sexuality'?21 Female sexuality is contained in
trates any attempt at a unified construction the social practice of marriage to a virginal
of 'what woman is'. Her counter-universe is
bride. That which is not contained 'emerges
fraught with differences among the women
as whoredom'. Singh observes that the terms
and contradictions within each character.
'harlot', 'whore', 'strumpet', and 'courtesan'
Their world is presented as inextricably
intertwined with all that surrounds it, to recur 'frequently in various Renaissance
reveal the hierarchy and intersection of discourses such as court records, sermons,
gender and class relationships that might moral treatises, and literary texts' in the ser-
explain Emilia's careless but fatal betrayal as vice of moral prescriptions.
well as the harsh Renaissance code govern- Singh also notes that prostitution, as a
ing a woman's adultery. social and economic institution that expan-
ded in the early modern period, is 'elided'
in narratives which demonize women's un-
Probing the Ideological Discourse bridled sexuality and associate it with the
prostitute.22 The idea of woman's desire (as
To establish the links between the ostensibly opposed to woman as the object of desire)
dual universe of feminine and masculine, was seen as a threat to the moral and social
Vogel probes the 'unconscious' of the text - order dependent on strict gender opposition
that which is not directly spoken or pre- and hierarchy.23
sented but 'operate[s] contrapuntally' in the Within Othello, this polarization between
'absence', 'silence', or 'reverse side' of what the sexes is generated by the men and leads
is written.19 Although Othello is not a tragedy to the destruction of all the major characters.
of a woman's infidelity, but rather of the What one remembers of this conflict is the
tragic consequences of Iago's plot inflaming male preoccupation with honour that Othello
Othello's fantasy of betrayal, the subject of speaks of as dependent upon a woman's
Desdemona's sexuality and, most notably, faithfulness - 'I had rather be a toad / And
the men's construction of it, is always there, live upon the vapour of a dungeon / Than
'latent', bubbling to the surface in speech keep a corner in the thing I love / For others'
and action. Indeed, the hint of Desdemona's uses' (III, iii, 269-72). And even after the
alleged indiscretion with Cassio is instanta- discovery of his error, he calls himself an
neously translated by Othello into her 'honourable murderer' (V, ii, 290).

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 Several critics have identified the root of
this concern in the struggle for a secure mas-
culine identity which gives rise to images of
threatening females. Thus, in Man's Estate
Coppelia Kahn argues that, although 'in its
outward forms, patriarchy granted near-
absolute legal and political powers to the
father . . . in unacknowledged ways it con-
ceded to women, who were essential to its
continuance, the power to validate men's
identities through their obedience and fidelity
as wives and daughters'.24
Shakespeare's Desdemona is continually
called upon to defend her honour in a
display of her faithfulness and obedience
to her husband. She speaks her desire only
in her wish to consecrate her marriage
('the rites for which I love him', I, iii, 252) by
following Othello to Cyprus. Othello, how-
ever, speaks of it in fear and loathing:
O curse of marriage,
That we can call these delicate creatures ours,
And not their appetites! (Ill, iii, 267-9)
And when he believes her guilty of sexual
impropriety with one man, he declares her a
threat to all men that he must eliminate ('Yet
she must die, else she'll betray more men',
V, ii, 6).
Iago's plot is consistently underscored by
his numerous references to wives as whores.
Taunting Desdemona and Emilia in repartee,
he claims that though 'pictures out of door',
you are 'wildcats in your kitchens ... players
in your huswifery, and huswives in your
beds' (II, i, 108-11). And in his plot to dupe
Othello, he substitutes talk of Bianca for
incriminating remarks about Desdemona. In
the staged conversation with Cassio which
he intends to be inaccurately overheard by
Othello, Bianca the whore serves as the 'em-
bodiment' of Desdemona's transgression.25
Replacing the 'Absent Female'
By 'making the silences speak',26 Paula Vogel
engages us in a production that replaces the
'absent female', represented by the boy
players of the Elizabethan theatre, with real
women whose sexual desires and psychic
needs are no longer cursed, camouflaged,
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mimicked, or encoded in stylized gestures,
at least by the men.27 As Sue Ellen Case
argues:
Without the public appearance of the female
body, cultural representations of sexuality could
not be physical ones. Rather, sexuality became
located within the symbolic system that was the
property of the spiritual domain, for instance lan-
guage. . . . In theatre, the sexual danger inherent
in the female gender was alleviated by the male
assimilation of female roles.. . .28
In Vogel's production, the women, not the
men, comprise an almost exclusive commu-
nity. Their formidable presence momentarily
evokes the spectre of women's emasculating
power and duplicitous nature that had only
been treated symbolically in Othello.
In her Comic Women, Tragic Men, Linda
Bamber argues that the 'feminine in Shake-
speare . . . is always something unlike and
external to the Self, who is male. . . . The
Feminine ... is that which exists on the other
side of . . . the barrier of sexual differen-
tiation.'29 With ironic references to the men's
suspicions in Othello, Vogel brings her audi-
ence across the great divide only to find that
the women's quest for fulfilment seems to
mirror the men's, as they yearn for sexual ad-
venture, power and position, and, of course,
true love.
Even sexual betrayal is in the air. Des-
demona unwittingly cuckolds Emilia during
her night at the brothel, and Bianca is almost
driven to violence when she discovers that
the handkerchief given to her by Cassio
belongs to Desdemona. The playwright heeds
Emilia's words in Othello: 'Let husbands
know / Their wives have sense like them.
They see, and smell, / And have their palates
both for sweet and sour . . . ' (IV, iii, 96-8).
Women's desire, though boldly advocated
by Shakespeare's Emilia, is articulated in
terms of men's sensibilities. It is this version
of sexuality that Vogel puts on display.
Making no attempt to capture the lost
voices of Renaissance noblewomen, hand-
maidens or prostitutes, Paula Vogel stages the
threat of female desire in a patriarchal culture
and the conditions that might structure
women's fantasies about themselves and
135
 each other. In dramatic texts, perhaps the fashion a Desdemona out of his subversive
most salient feature of what Sue Ellen Case cues - for example, Brabantio, Desdemona's
calls the 'Fictional Woman' is her repre- father, warning Othello that his daughter
sentation as an 'object of exchange between may betray him as she has betrayed her
men'.30 As maiden or prostitute, her 'sexual father in marrying without his consent. She
allure can never escape the thrall of commo- has defied the patriarchal code in placing her
dification'.31 Paula Vogel's women, exercising will above her father's judgement - even the
a kind of agency, are acutely aware of the judgement of the Venetian Senate, in her
value of their charms. refusal to postpone the consecration of her
marriage. She professes not to have fallen
prey to mysterious potions and charms, but
Manipulating the Sexual Exchange to have responded to her heart's 'prefer-
In Desdemona, the three women spring to life ences'. Furthermore, Othello tells us that she
as they appropriate the language of sexuality had been aroused by listening to his
and manipulate the exchange. In coarsely dangerous exploits:
mocking banter, they talk to each other about
their experience of sex; objectify the male She'd come again, and with a greedy ear
Devour up my discourse. . . .
organ (as Desdemona fondles a hoof-pick,
she stretches out and says 'Oh me, oh my - She wished she had not heard it;
if I could find a man with just such a hoof- Yet she wished that heaven had made her
such a man. (I, iii, 148-9,161-2)
pick - he could pluck out my stone'); name
the various forms of copulation (as does
Bianca when she informs and instructs the Vogel transposes this 'greedy ear', this desire
to be a male warrior, into a greed for con-
eager Desdemona in the tricks of her trade);
quest and sexual adventure that Desdemona
and acknowledge the barter of their sexu-
associates with male freedom. 33 She explains
ality in exchange for money, gifts ('a brooch
to the scornful Emilia her desire to break out
for a breast') and, in Emilia's case, her place
of her 'narrow world' and to see the 'other
in the world as the ensign's wife.
worlds' that married women never get to
In Othello, the handkerchief functions as
see, 'bridled with linen, blinded with lace'
a powerful metaphor for the proprietary (19). Seeking to assuage her disappointment
attitude toward women's sexuality. Whoever with the 'strange dark man', whom she mis-
possesses the handkerchief possesses the takenly believed would offer her escape, she
woman. Thus, the handkerchief confiscated proclaims her 'desire to know the world':
by Emilia and placed by Iago in Cassio's
possession - only to end up in the hands of
I lie in the blackness of the room a t . . . [Bianca's]
his strumpet Bianca - duly becomes proof of establishment... on sheets that are stained and
Desdemona's alleged betrayal.32 torn by countless nights, and the men come into
The handkerchief in Vogel's play - visible that pitch-black room - men of different sizes and
in a lit corner of the stage as the play opens - smells and shapes, with smooth skin - rough
retains its power to convict Desdemona skin, with scarred skin. And they spill their seed
into me, Emilia - seed from a thousand lands,
(Vogel's subtitle is 'A Play about a Hand- passed down through generations of ancestors,
kerchief). However, we see it as a mere with genealogies that cover the surface of the
contrivance - a 'snot rag', in Desdemona's globe. And I simply lie still there in the darkness,
contemptuous language, which stands for taking them all into me; I close my eyes and in the
nothing. The women become the 'ocular dark of my mind - oh how I travel! (20)
proof that Shakespeare's Othello yearns for
to justify his accusation and revenge. Desdemona reveals at once her desire to
Still, this Desdemona is far more complex know and the limits on her desire as she
than Othello imagines her to be. Vogel relies seeks only carnal knowledge and imagines
on dramatic irony as she reaches back herself a passive learner. She becomes what-
through Othello to Shakespeare in order to ever they are. She knows whatever they know.

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 J. Smith Cameron as Desdemona with Fran Brill as Emilia. Photo: Gerry Goodstein.
Furthermore, Vogel associates Desdemona's
desire for the 'strange, dark man' with the
desire for a different and, using Coleridge's
word, 'monstrous' union. The critic Karen
Newman has linked Othello and his tales of
'slavery and redemption', 'of Cannibals, that
each other eat', and 'men whose heads Grew
beneath their shoulders', to the play's 'other
marginality, femininity'. Both thus represent
the fear and power of the Other, which
'threatens the white male sexual norm here
represented by Iago'.34
Vogel's Desdemona openly expresses her
attraction for the feared Other, acts out her
propensity for a union which is alluded to by
Shakespeare's male characters as unnatural
and bestial. Concomitantly, she expresses dis-
appointment in the divided self that marks
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Othello. As the Renaissance scholar Stephen
Greenblatt observes, Othello's own identity
depends upon a constant performance . . . of his
story, the loss of his own origins, an embrace and
perpetual reiteration of the norms of another
culture. . . . He is both representative and up-
holder of a rigorous sexual code which prohibits
desire, and yet is a sign of a different, unbridled
35
sexuality.^
Vogel's Desdemona, less discreetly than
Shakespeare's, aligns herself with the latter
Othello as she quests for global encounters
that will replicate if not surpass his mythical
journeys.36
In Othello, it is Emilia who punctures the
ideal of women's purity and of unwavering
faithfulness to husbands. When Desdemona
137
 asks her, 'Wouldst thou do such a deed for
all the world?' Emilia replies: 'The world's a
huge thing; it is a great price for a small vice'
(IV, iii, 70). In Shakespeare's dialogue, Emilia
imagines fashioning a world that would
make her wrong a right. However, it is a
world in which her cuckoldry would make
her husband a 'monarch'.
In Desdemona, Vogel switches the women's
respective stances. Her Emilia is unwilling to
take chances, intimating that her position
in the social order is vulnerable enough. It
is Desdemona, with the haughtiness of the
desirable noblewoman, who tries to remake
the world - not for her husband's gain, but
for her own power, responding, "The world's
a huge thing for so small a vice' (19).
With these inverted representations of the
women, Vogel offers us a dual response. She
reads against the text in order to reveal the
material concerns and the discursive repre-
sentations that haunt the women in Shake-
speare's Othello. So, in Vogel's invention, the
women are situated in the back room of the
citadel, the private sphere of the servant
Emilia where her work is no longer invisible.
Among the artifacts of her daily life - tools,
baskets, leather bits - she peels potatoes and
washes blood-stained sheets and nightgowns
(actually the chicken's blood used to feign
Desdemona's virginity on her wedding night).
The sense of containment in the back room
and the association of sex and the spilling of
blood seem to reflect a more vulnerable,
certainly less lofty, image of women's lives.
The latter half of Vogel's play introduces
Bianca. As the owner of a brothel, she is
depicted as a more aggressive prostitute
than the courtesan who in Shakespeare's
play follows Cassio around, pining for his
love and waits on his attention. Vogel's
Desdemona, true to her class, ignores the
destitute conditions underlying Bianca's
plight. She sees her as the sexually and
financially independent new woman of the
Renaissance, that which the men of her
station might perceive as the threat of
organized lechery.37 Here, the women speak
openly of sex, but like their Shakespearean
counterparts are defined by the attachment
to the men in their lives, and are frequently
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subject to physical abuse. And though they
share these intimacies, they are separated by
class divisions that evoke condescension,
misunderstanding, and distrust among them.
Bianca, though on the surface free, is still
subject to violence from her customers, and
will never have her dream of romance and
security with Cassio. In the end, she shatters
Desdemona's misguided fantasy about her
when she says: 'Inside every born one of us
want smugs an' babies, smugs wot are man
enowt t' keep us in our place' (38).
Emilia will continue to be ignored or
mistreated by Iago, and, whatever fraught
allegiance she has to Desdemona, cannot
look to her for salvation as her lady's maid
in exchange for keeping Desdemona's confi-
dences. She has taken the handkerchief to
advance the career of her husband on whom
she is forever dependent. Despite the con-
tempt for Iago that she openly expresses to
Desdemona, she explains that
for us in the bottom ranks, when man and wife
hate each other, what is left in a lifetime of mar-
riage but to save and scrimp, plot and plan? . . .
I says to him each night - I long for the day you
make me a lieutenant's widow. (13)
And finally, amidst all of her daring and
bravado, Desdemona's fate is sealed in the
cultural code reflected in the punishment of
death for betrayal that she is to receive from
Othello, even in Vogel's revision.
Judgement between the Acts
As spectators, producing meaning in our
interaction with Shakespeare's text and with
Vogel's production simultaneously, we might
resist her disturbing representation as we
long for a Desdemona free of Othello's con-
ception of her, pure or vile, and revisioned as
more tragically heroic. Yet we feel Othello's
conception more powerfully in his absence,
sensing from the tension within the female
enclave that the male world is 'everywhere
around', and that the female world of love
and desire is 'entirely constituted by the
gaze of man'.38 And when this Desdemona
addresses the audience directly, without the
mediation of the male protagonist, spec-
 'A play about a handkerchief.' J. Smith Cameron as Desdemona and Cherry Jones as Bianca, with Fran Brill
as Emilia looking on. Photo: Gerry Goodstein.

tators might, in Brechtian terms, become Paula Vogel creates an episodic structure
'alienated' from their 'habitual perceptions' that invites the spectators to interpose their
of a character made strange by this shift in judgement between the acts. By contrast
viewpoint. 39 with a seamless narrative or plot structure in
Clearly Vogel makes use of Brechtian tech- which the characters move to what feels like
niques - the alienation effect, epic (episodic) an inevitable end, the division between
structure, and the social gest - to disrupt the scenes allows the spectator greater freedom
spectator's expectations of Othello, to 'sur- here to imagine alternatives to the course of
prise the spectator into thought'. As Janelle these events, or to reflect on their deter-
Reinelt describes it, Brechtian technique minants.
At the same time, the playwright expli-
provides the means to . . . foreground and citly frames the angles from which we view
examine ideologically determined beliefs and each character in a series of what one critic
unconscious habitual perceptions, and to make called 'character-freezing tableaux', that at
visible those signs inscribed on the body which
distinguish social behaviour in relation to class, once eliminate a single viewpoint while
gender, and history . . . to see what is missing, or drawing attention to the framing of char-
what new insights emerge if hidden aspects are acters on stage. Freeing (or 'alienating') these
thrown into relief.40 characters from the audience's familiar or
conditioned responses, the actors posture to
In thirty short scenes, or 'takes', punctuated the audience employing the device of the
with flashes of light and percussive music, 'social gest'.

139

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 Consisting of a singular gesture or a
'realm of attitudes'41 expressed in words and
movement, the gest demonstrates the char-
acter's identification with social attitudes
and relationships. Emilia, the confidante in
servitude, bends over her crate of potatoes
or her pile of washing; Bianca, the sexually
aggressive prostitute, stands with legs apart,
hands on hips which are thrust forward; and
Desdemona, with unladylike abandon, leans
back upon a table, and dangles her head
arched upside down, suggesting both privi-
lege and vulnerability.
The final four frames constitute a tragic
recognition shared by two women, though
they have no authority to act on it. Once
again, Vogel dislodges a generic convention
associated with tragedy — the moment of
recognition that signals self-knowledge for
the protagonist. In their dialogic relationship,
Desdemona and Emilia together discover
that Othello's gathering up of the wedding
sheets from her bed, 'like a body', breathing
it in 'like a bouquet', isn't love (45). Indeed,
it has been surveillance.
The final gest, which spans three 'takes'
(scenes), conveys resignation as Emilia pre-
pares Desdemona for her impending death
in the marriage bed, brushing her hair
the requisite hundred strokes. Desdemona,
'listening to the off-stage palace', leans back,
this time to accept her fate. The audience,
presumably grappling with their various
responses to the revisions of the original text,
might also become aware of what does not
change. The female world, though presented
more subjectively, is still performing under a
watchful, scrutinizing eye, awaiting judge-
ment. For all of Desdemona's fidgetings, she
is forever confined within Othello's gaze.
But the spectator, perhaps for the first time,
might stand outside it, recognize it, and
resist its compelling vision.
Notes and References
1. Alvin Kernan, 'Introduction', Othello, by William 'juxtaposing the concept of tragic transcendence with
Shakespeare (New York: Penguin Books, 1986) p. xxiii-iv. that of female transgression'.
All subsequent references to this edition of Othello are in
parentheses.
2. Desdemona was first produced in association with Feminist Critical Theory and Theatre, ed. Sue Ellen Case
Circle Repertory Company by the Bay Street Theatre (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), p. 254.
140
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Festival, Sag Harbor, New York, in July 1993, then by the
Circle Repertory Company, New York in Fall 1993, and
was published by Dramatists Play Service, 1994. All sub-
sequent references to Desdemona appear as page numbers
in parentheses.
For a discussion of the 'multiple implications' of
the phrase 'the woman's part', see the 'Introduction'
to Carolyn Ruth Swift Lenz, Gayle Greene, and Carol
Thomas Neely, eds., The Woman's Part (Urbana: Univer-
sity of Illinois Press, 1980), p. 12. The reference to 'part'
in the title plays upon five different senses in which the
term may be understood. It assumes (1) that women
play a 'distinct, gender-determined part' in the world
of the plays as well as outside them; (2) the bawdy
meaning of 'part', as used by Shakespeare to indicate
women's sexuality; (3) that the parts women play are
social as well as sexual, and in the plays may be false -
'roles adopted to deceive or inflicted by the dominant
patriarchal culture' - and constitute only part 'of a
whole': that is, the complex identity of any character
and of the men and women in relation to each other; (4)
that feminine and masculine characteristics are chang-
ing cultural constructs and thus not restricted to females
or males; and (5) that feminist criticism, in confronting
these limiting constructs within texts, is 'avowedly
partisan', and so taking the 'woman's part'.
3. For example, Peter Erickson's readings of the repre-
sentations of Shakespeare by twentieth-century women
writers (Maya Angelou, Gloria Naylor, Adrienne Rich)
in Rezuriting Shakespeare, Rewriting Ourselves (Berkeley,
California: University of California Press, 1991); the
numerous films of recent years such as Kenneth
Branagh's Hamlet, Trevor Nunn's Twelfth Night, Al
Pacino's Looking for Richard; or Kristin Linklater's all-
woman cast in the Company of Women's production of
Henry V at Smith College, in September, 1994.
4. Jean Howard, 'Scholarship, Theory, and More
New Readings: Shakespeare for the 1990s', in Shake-
speare Study Today, ed. Georgianna Ziegler (New York:
AMS Press, 1986), p. 129,138.
5. Erickson, p. 2, 7.
6. Erickson, p. 163-4.
7. Carol Thomas Neely, 'Epilogue: Remembering
Shakespeare, Revising Ourselves', in Women's Revisions
of Shakespeare, 1664r-1988, ed. Marianne Novy (Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1990), p. 243-4.
8. Lenz, Greene, and Neely, p. 6.
9. Neely, 'Epilogue', p. 243.
10. Lenz, Greene, and Neely, p. 5.
11. Lynda Hart, ed., Making a Spectacle: Feminist
Essays on Contemporary Women's Theatre (Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 1989), p. 4.
12. Hart, p. 13.
13. Randi S. Koppen, '"The Furtive Event":
Theorizing Feminist Spectatorship', Modern Drama,
XXXV, No. 3 (September 1992), p. 379.
14. See Dympna Callaghan, Women and Gender in
Renaissance Tragedy (Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey:
Humanities Press, 1989), p. 56-9, where she argues for
'deconstructing certain crucial terms of canonical criti-
cism' in order to examine women's status in tragic
drama and its reproduction in traditional criticism by
15. Jeanie Forte, 'Women's Performance Art: Femi-
nism and Postmodernism', in Performing Feminisms:
 16. Nancy Reinhardt, cited by Hart, p. 8. Reinhardt
notes that the 'sides, background, niches, and balconies
function as the inner domestic space where women are
usually kept'. Lorraine Helms, in 'Acts of Resistance:
the Feminist Player', in The Weyward Sisters: Shakespeare
and Feminist Politics, eds. Dympna Callaghan, Lorraine
Helms, and Jyotsna Singh (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994),
p. Ill, examines the effects of theatrical production
in relation to performance choices for those who play
'the woman's part' in contemporary performance. She
claims that 'with some exceptions, Shakespeare's female
characters play their roles in the illusionistic scenes of
the locus. They enjoy few opportunities to express the
inferiority of the reflexive soliloquy and even fewer to
address the audience from the interactive platen.'
17. Carole McKewin,' "Counsels of Gall and Grace":
Intimate Conversations between Women in Shake-
speare's Plays', in The Woman's Part, eds. Lenz, Greene,
and Neely, p. 118-19. McKewin cites Juliet Dusinberre's
observation that Shakespeare's theatre offers a 'con-
sistent probing of the reactions of women to isolation in
a society which has never allowed them independence
from men either physically or spiritually' (p. 117).
18. McKewin, p. 128-9.
19. Callaghan, p. 75, 65.
20. Jyotsna Singh, 'The Interventions of History:
Narratives of Sexuality', in The Weyward Sisters, eds.
Callaghan, Helms, and Singh, p. 46.
21. Callaghan, p. 53, 63-4.
22. Singh, p. 12.
23. See Dympna Callaghan's survey of the relation-
ship between family, church, state and cosmos, and the
significance of the category 'woman' in political and
theological discourse (p. 14-27).
24. Coppelia Kahn, Man's Estate (Berkeley, Cali-
fornia: University of California Press, 1981), p. 12.
According to Madeline Gohlke Sprengnether, male
fantasies of betrayal stem from fears of being weak or
'feminine' in relation to a powerful woman. "The
feminine posture for a male character is that of the
betrayed, and it is the man in this position who portrays
women as whores'. See ' "I Wooed Thee with My
Sword": Shakespeare's Tragic Paradigms', in Othello, ed.
Alvin Kernan, p. 250.
25. Singh, p. 48.
26. Singh (p. 7) draws on a phrase employed by
Gayle Greene and Coppelia Kahn in their reading of
Isak Dinesen's story "The Blank Page' as a 'paradigm for
a feminist historiography'. See 'Feminist Scholarship
and the Social Construction of Woman', in Making a
Difference, eds. Gayle Greene and Coppelia Kahn
(London: Methuen, 1985), p. 13.
27. Lorraine Helms (p. 106-7) cites varying critical
responses to women playing female roles originally
written by men for male performers. For example,
Elaine Showalter argues positively that 'when Shake-
speare's heroines began to be played by women instead
of boys, the presence of the female body and the female
voice, quite apart from interpretation, created new
meanings and subversive tensions in these roles'. On
the other hand, Sue Ellen Case argues that these roles
are 'caricatures', and that they should again be played
by men to underscore that classic roles are 'classic
drag'. Helms argues for a 'partial, problematic, and
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paradoxical' freedom at the same time that one acknow-
ledges these constraints.
28. Sue Ellen Case, Feminism and Theatre (New York:
Methuen, 1988), p. 21.
29. Linda Bamber, Comic Women, Tragic Men (Stan-
ford, California: Stanford University Press, 1982), p. 4.
30. Case, p. 26.
31. Singh, p. 20.
32. According to Carol Thomas Neely, the hand-
kerchief also functions symbolically to represent 'sexu-
ality controlled by chastity'. Passed from female sibyl to
female charmer to Othello's mother to Desdemona, its
purpose has been to make women 'amiable', and pre-
vent men from hunting 'after new fancies'. (See her
extended discussion in 'Women and Men in Othello',
in The Woman's Part, eds. Lenz, Greene and Nealy,
p. 228-30.) Karen Newman discusses the handkerchief's
historical as well as psychological significance: in her
view, it 'figures not simply [the mother's] missing penis'
but the 'lack around which the play's dramatic action is
structured, a desiring femininity . . . an aberrant and
monstrous sexuality'. "'And Wash the Ethiop White":
Femininity and the Monstrous in Othello', Shakespeare
Reproduced, eds. Jean E. Howard and Marion O'Connor
(New York: Methuen, 1987), p. 156.
33. Karen Newman observes that Desdemona's res-
ponses to Othello's tales are 'perceived as voracious . . .
conflating the oral and aural'. Othello's language
'betrays a masculine fear of a cultural femininity . . .
envisioned as a greedy mouth never satisfied, always
seeking increase, a point of view which Desdemona's
response to their reunion at Cyprus reinforces. . . .
Othello fears Desdemona's desire because it invokes his
monstrous difference from the sex/race code he has
adopted, or alternatively allies her imagined monstrous
sexual appetite with his own' (p. 152).
34. Newman (p. 157) further argues that although
Shakespeare was subject to racist, sexist, and colonial
discourses of his time, by making Othello a hero and
Desdemona's love for him sympathetic, the play stands
in a contestatory relationship to the hegemonic ideo-
logies of race and gender in early modern England.
35. Greenblatt, quoted in Newman, p. 150.
36. Desdemona is, after all, willing to accompany
Othello to Cyprus, which Alvin Kernan sees as a society
'less secure' than the idealized city represented by
Venice - the image of government, 'of reason, of law,
and of social concord'. The island of Cyprus is more
exposed to the Turks, emblematic of the forces of bar-
barism, the 'geographical form of an action that occurs
on the social and psychological levels as well' (xxvi-vii).
37. See Jyotsna Singh's discourse on such facts as
unemployment and population displacements that led
to the prosperity of brothels in early modern England
(p. 28-33).
38. Roland Barthes, quoted in Greene and Kahn, p. 4.
39. See Bertolt Brecht on the alienation effect in
Brecht on Theatre, ed. and trans. John Willett (New York:
Methuen, 1964), p. 192.
40. Janelle Reinhelt, 'Beyond Brecht: Britain's New
Feminist Drama', in Feminist Theatre and Theory, ed.
Helene Keyssar (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996),
p. 35-6, 42.
41. Brecht, p. 198.
141