ABSTRACT
One day, not so long ago, I was teaching Othello badly. I posed each problem as if it held an arcane solution known only to me, trapping my students in an itchy tangle of boredom and alarm. I said “I’m really not looking for a particular answer” three or four times, thus establishing that this strategy does not work at all. So I asked whether the play’s ending criticizes the social restrictions imposed on women. Even if I implied that the only credible answer was yes, we could talk about why. A student raised her hand. “Yes,” she said. “Why?” I asked. “Because,” she said, “the fact that Desdemona had sex with Cassio doesn’t give Othello the right to kill her.”
