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The Desdemona of the Northern antebellum United States was more than a mere character in one of Shakespeare's most popular plays; she was a cultural icon through which critics, audiences, and readers debated important questions of the era, including not only the volatile issue of miscegenation but also the social construct of womanhood and the ever-increasing involvement of women in public affairs. Othello's popularity in the theatre, the availability of the play in print, and efforts by American Shakespeareans to sanctify Shakespeare all contributed to the character's national prominence.1 However, Desdemona's importance within the antebellum North's discourse on the role of women was fueled most by reactions to the character's complex actions, as models of womanhood evolved from passive virtue to sensibility and domesticity and then were challenged by the active participation of women in the movements for abolition and women's rights. To many individuals she may have remained immutable, but the prevailing attitude toward her in the North as a whole changed with the times, moving roughly from idealization of her virtue, to disapproval of her passivity, and finally to condemnation of her independence.
Virtue and Passivity
Given America's racial history, it would be easy to assume that miscegenation, or "amalgamation" as it was then known, would be the foremost consideration in any early nineteenth-century discussion of Desdemona. However, prior to the 1830s when Garrisonian abolitionists stirred Northern debate over interracial marriage and women's rights, interpretations of Desdemona emphasized her virtue, innocence, and simplicity rather than the race of her husband. The playbill of the first performance of Othello in New England-the 1761 Rhode Island production by David Douglass's American Company-announced Desdemona as "a young and virtuous wife. . . . Reader, attend; and ere thou goest hence / Let fall a tear to hapless innocence," and readers who were introduced to the character by one of the many American editions of Charles and Mary Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare found Desdemona described as "fair" and "gentle" with "many virtuous qualities."2 British criticism that focused on pitying Desdemona's downfall and idealizing the virtues of passivity was both widely read and reprinted. Samuel Johnson, in the essay that preceded many early nineteenthcentury editions of Othello, described "the soft simplicity of Desdemona, confident of merit, and conscious...