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Why are Desdemona and Emelia so important to our understanding of the themes in Othello?
but to play the role of a good obeying wife and keep what she knows to herself. She knows that she has that obligation to her husband, but she fights with herself because she seems to have a different obligation to her mistress. She has no choice but to go on living her everyday life, even after knowing what Iago was planning. She would not think of questioning him, because she would know the consequences.
Towards the end of the play Emilia becomes so angry with Iago, after all he had just caused Othello to kill his wife and her mistress, for no reason, that the last thing going through her mind was honoring her husband. She had built up so much anger inside with Iago, and with herself for not saying anything sooner, that she had to come out with the truth. She knew if she went against her husband, in order to bring him down, she was practically buying her death certificate.
Emilia shows us that the traditional role of women must sometimes be ignored in order for a woman to make her beliefs more important than her husbands. She had the strength to stand up to Iago, something that Desdemona would not had been able to do. She probably would of remained silent in order to protect Othello.
Out of all the females in this play, Bianca to me is not the most important but she is the most "modern" of them all, right from the beginning she seems to be the stubborn one, and the toughest. She is not afraid to say what is on her mind, or to question Cassio. She shows that very well during the Handkerchief scene where she storms in to the room, ranting and raving as to where the handkerchief came from. She yells at Cassio, throws it at him, and even walks away from him, and leaves the room. She shows the reader that she has the strength to stand up to her own husband, and is not even afraid of what that will cause. Bianca seems to be very strong willed, and definitely does not follow the stereotypical role of women during that time.
The role these women had to take on in this play, was probably not to far from the way it really was for women during that time, and for some couples, the way it is today. I would hate to think that men can still have this philosophy, but I know it still exists. Some men still think that women need to stay home and take care of the kids, clean the house, cook, while he goes out and makes the money. So since they are making the money, they then feel like they can control their wives. They expect them to stand by them, not go against them, and agree with them all the time. That may have been the normal way to do things in the 1600's in Cypress, but that kind of thing can not go on [next page]