Bianca is a minor character in Shakespeare’s play Othello. She works as an example of real and justified jealousy, as a foil in the play to the jealousy constructed by Iago in Othello’s imagination. Bianca is a prostitute who is in love with the character Cassio, accused of having an affair with Desdemona, Othello’s wife.
Cassio mocks Bianca’s love for him to Iago (a device Iago uses to pretend it is Desdemona who is being mocked); calling her a whore and laughing at how she wants to marry him and hangs around him, particularly describing a scene on the bay/harbour in Venice. Later on in the plot Iago plants Desdemona’s handkerchief on Cassio, who gives it to Bianca to copy. Jealous that the handkerchief might be a token from another woman, nevertheless Bianca takes the handkerchief, saying she “must be circumstanced”.
I have always found Bianca’s character fascinating. She doesn’t say very much in the play, but she reflects the angers and hurts of many of the characters, and the problematic status of women in this period and today, with the dichotomy of the whore/angel; what it means to love someone who doesn’t love you, and the nature of real and imagined jealousies.
Sian Norris
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