폴라 보겔의 『데스데모나: 손수건에 관한 극』에 나타난 셰익스피어 비극의 페미니스트 각색연구

A Study on the Feminist Adaptation Strategy of Shakespearean Tragedy in Paula Vogel"s Desdemona : A Play about Handkerchief.

&nbsp;&nbsp;As Ania Loomba argues, Othello is a play that powerfully illuminates the interconnections in the formation of race and gender identities of the early modern era. Feminist scholars are now required to pay a very critical attention to the patriarchal maneuvering of gender and race in the destruction of both Othello and his Venetian wife, Desdemona. This explains the difficulty feminist writers would face in adapting Shakespeare&quot;s Othello, particularly reinventing positive Desdemona, which would inescapably pose them a dilemma of putting gender against race.<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;Paula Vogel&quot;s Desdemona: A Play about Handkerchief, is an interesting response to such a dilemma, allowing us to witness feminist writers&quot; alternative choices. This paper examines Vogel&quot;s adaptation strategies in deconstructing patriarchal ideology in Shakespeare&quot;s text, while dealing with such a dilemma.<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;Vogel&quot;s Desdemona resets Shakespeare&quot;s play in the parlors of Desdemona&quot;s house, focusing on the relationship among three female characters with different class backgrounds, Desdemona, an upper class housewife, Emilia, her washer maid, and Bianca, a prostitute, by eliminating all the male characters. Vogel transforms Desdemona into a women of desire who frequents Bianca&quot;s brothel to escape from the boredom of her life as an upper class wife in order to challenge patriarchal tradition in Othello of idealizing female fidelity. In this funny, obscene, postmodern adaptation, Desdemona takes a subject position that frankly enjoys the pleasure of sex and female companionship including lesbian eroticism. This transformation effectively deconstructs the persistent power of Desdemona as an icon of purity and innocent victim and thus foregrounds women&quot;s story silenced in Shakespeare&quot;s text.<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;Vogel&quot;s adaptation also depicts both the unwitting destructiveness of female relationship in the misogynist world and possibility of female bonding. By treating Desdemona&quot;s handkerchief, a symbol of Desdemona&quot;s chastity, as a sneezer, Vogel&quot;s Desdemona mocks the patriarchal obsession with female chastity and the tradition of justifying husband&quot;s killing of his unchaste wife. By turning Desdemona into the woman of the world who is nonetheless destined to death, Vogel also raises a question on whether women can be in charge of their own lives in the patriarchal society. Vogel&quot;s Desdemona testifies to the absurdity of female existence in the patriarchal world.