Earticle

초록

영어

While Othello is man of great and royal blood, highly regarded for skill in war, Woyzeck is a character from the lowest echelon of society. In spite of this difference as well as several less common features, jealousy and murder are prominent points that the two plays share. Desdemona and Marie guarantee the superior meaning of life for Othello and Woyzeck. However when the male characters begin to suspect their wives` sexual betrayal, the entire moral construct plunges the male characters into a kind of chaotic frenzy or hallucinations. By expressing jealousy in part through abuse, Othello and Woyzeck crave proof of their wives` infidelity to end the agony aroused by what they cannot really see. Both Othello and Woyzeck alike perceive the possibility of female separateness as an affront to all males and a violation of a sacred cannon of the paternal/patriarchal control. Thus the erotic threat of the female body is physically contained by the male strategy of containment; by the representation of female character as a receiver of a male gaze which raises the question of voyeurism, or by means of a dramatic transformation of woman into a corpse as the restriction of her mobility and freedom. Woyzeck`s and Othello`s killing of their wives become the rational outcome of a process set in motion by masculine sexual politics. Their violent acts do not come from a sense of disappointed romantic love but rater from a sense of jealousy at having been found sexually and socially inadequate. Because the possession of the female body is a precondition of his coherent male subjectivity, the male character`s killing of the wife becomes logical step to reinstate a structure of morality, to demonstrate his ownership of the woman, and to re-establish his gender identity. Like Woyzeck, Othello seems driven by an impulse to regain control through a purifying violence, a killing committed so that social values may be restored. But murder is a metaphorical act for the male fear of female power; a barely disguised act of revenge for the woman`s sexual betrayal. Each play demonstrates that in a patriarchy the fidelity of a wife is the major prop and condition of social order. So the woman destroyed by the masculine code of male domination becomes the sacrificial victim in the play. Desdemona and Marie seem to take guilt upon themselves, assuming that they have somehow served to isolate and accentuate their husbands` anxiety and fear and are responsible for their predicament. Shakespeare and Buhner attempt to present things from the male point of view, and articulate the tragic hero`s conservative gender ideology. In both plays, however, patriarchal norms are compensatory for the vulnerability of men to the female powers.

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 Works Cited
 ABSTRACT

저자

• 이혜경 [ H ye Kyoung Lee | 강릉대학교 ]

참고문헌

발행기관

간행물

표지보기 관심저널 등록

• 간행물명

  영어영문학연구 [The Jungang Journal of English Language and Literature]

• 간기

  계간

• pISSN

  1598-3293

• 수록기간

  1968~2026

• 등재여부

  KCI 등재

• 십진분류

  KDC 840 DDC 810