Gruber, Elizabeth. "Insurgent Flesh: Epistemology and Violence in Othello and Mariam." Women's Studies, vol. 32, no. 4, 2003, pp. 393-410.
Gruber’s central claim is that violent, female death is a necessary component of gaining knowledge on the male quest. Essentially, without Desdemona’s death, knowledge could not be discovered for both the characters and audience. Since Gruber is using a compare and contrast of two plays with disgraced women, she is not situating her argument among others about Othello. Instead, she is situating her argument among a broader conversation about epistemology – mainly its evolution over the centuries. In the introductory pages she references Francis Bacon, Andreas Vesalius, and makes footnotes to other epistemological studies of the Medieval era. Since we are not reading Cary’s Tradgedie of Mariam, I will focus on what she says about Othello. She uses the plot of Othello to define the “calumniated woman” plot/frame/genre. In this frame, “the slander directed at female characters prompts their jealous husbands to seek knowledge of them” (Gruber 394). This is the main plot/conflict of Othello obviously. Gruber’s argument is not about the typical quest / pursuit of “truth” or “Self-Knowledge,” but instead finding out whether a wife was unfaithful. Gruber uses misogynistic quotes from Iago to point out how seeking knowledge was a male activity, and since they are the subject seeking knowledge of an object (the female), that minimizes their presence in the story (making them objects, and removing their agency). Gruber’s interpretations add some unique understandings to Othello. The first being Othello’s talk of not wanting to share his “corner” of Desdemona with other men (Shakespeare 3.3.267). Gruber insinuates this corner his her vagina, and that her body is his “territorial space” that is being violated – and thus violating his “territorial rights” (Gruber 402). Additionally, Gruber shows how Desdemona’s death makes her body (and mind) finally “compliant” to Othello. He can now “read her like a book,” and find the evidence of her infidelity (which does not find).
-Ben Mathews
