I've been studying Othello as an A-level text and the only relationship I could appreciate was Emilia's devotion and loyalty to Desdemona. Emilia is often considered a proto-feminist figure, I see her as a proto-lesbian … perhaps not even proto. Anyway let me know what you think, I had some time to kill in a free period.
'Lay me by my mistress' side'
My husband stabbed me in the back – I wish he'd pierced my heart and silenced it directly. I'd played my part in their infantile struggles for power and I knew that I was responsible for my lady's death. But I could not have smothered her. No sheet would be thick enough to silence her screams from my ears or obscure her face from my eyes. Yet in her dying breath she spoke of 'her lord' – her executioner – and once again denied me.
I willed they let me lie with her and segregate her from her oppressor; from oppression, in death for no one would grant me so in life. If I there is a heaven I may enter it should be filled only with her.
