＂왜 그녀를 창녀라고 부르는 거죠?＂: 새로 쓰는 『오셀로』, 폴라 보겔의 『데스데모나: 손수건에 대한 극』

Abstract

In Desdemona: A Play about a Handkerchief, Paula Vogel's revision of Othello, we meet Desdemona as wanton as Iago claims she is. She is sexually adventurous as she works for Bianca in her brothel and openly expresses her sexual desire in lewd language. Besides, she has a long-term affair with Ludovico who seems to help her to escape from Cyprus. Through this strategy to transform one of the most familiar character in our cultural paradigms from the chaste and innocent into a whore, Vogel gives Desdemona the chance to appropriate the language of sexuality and express her desire to break out of her narrow world. Also she converts the handkerchief which stands for the female chastity in Othello into a "snot rag" in Desdemona's contemptuous language, which stands for nothing. Making the silent speak, Vogel dislodges the convention of female representation - virgin and whore dichotomy and reveals that Othello is a tragedy of the tragic consequence of masculine anxieties toward female sexuality and the men's construction of it. Finally in keeping the plot of the murder, rather than letting Desdemona survive, Vogel analyzes and disrupts the patriarchal ideology embedded in the inherited structures of dramatic representation as well as in Othello.