the expression of her honest indignation in the words,
Her father and her country and her friends,
To be called whore?
If one were capable of laughing or even of smiling when this point in the play is reached, the difference between Desdemona’s anguish at the loss of Othello’s love, and Emilia’s recollection of the noble matches she might have secured, would be irresistibly ludicrous.
And yet how all this, and all her defects, vanish into nothingness when we see her face to face with that which she can understand and feel! From the moment of her appearance after the murder to the moment of her death she is transfigured; and yet she remains perfectly true to herself, and we would not have her one atom less herself. She is the only person who utters for us the violent common emotions which we feel, together with those more tragic emotions which she does not comprehend. She has done this once already, to our great comfort. When she suggests that some villain has poisoned Othello’s mind, and Iago answers,
and Desdemona answers,
Emilia’s retort,
says what we long to say, and helps us. And who has not felt in the last scene how her glorious carelessness of her own life, and her outbursts against Othello—even that most characteristic one,
lift the overwhelming weight of calamity that oppresses us, and bring us an extraordinary
