In Desdemona, Paula Vogel's revision of Shakespeare's Othello, we have a Desdemona who is Othello's worst nightmare, the transformation of lago's fiction into reality. Why has Paula Vogel created a Desdemona who, though ostensibly inside out, still appears to be Othello's projection? Sharon Friedman argues that although Paula Vogel's raucous Desdemona draws on many of the conventions of feminist revisioning, it marks an important shift in the feminist critical perspective in drama – as characterized by Lynda Hart, ‘from discovering and creating positive images of women … to analyzing and disrupting the ideological codes embedded in the inherited structures of dramatic representation’. In a deconstructive parody, Vogel dislodges the convention of the intimate scene between women in Shakespeare's theatre and expands it into an entire play. Decentering the tragic hero, she foregrounds and enacts the threat of female desire that incites the tragic action, and disrupts the familiar categories of virgin, whore, and faithful handmaiden by forging links with gender ideology and class status. The author, Sharon Friedman, is an Associate Professor in the Gallatin School of New York University, and the author of several articles on American women dramatists, including Susan Glaspell and Lorraine Hansberry.
Paula Vogel And The Modern American Female Playwrights