The Trouble With Gender in Othello: A Butlerian Reading of William Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Othello, The Moor of Venice

Abstract

By applying the theories of gender as performance developed by feminist theorist Judith Butler in her 1990 work, Gender Trouble, to the canonical text of William Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Othello, The Moor of Venice, this thesis seeks to prove that the primary causes of the action of the play are the flaws in Desdemona and Othello’s gender performance, as well as Iago’s inability to tolerate these flaws.