Her name comes from the Greek, meaning Misfortune, an ironic name for rich nobility. Her active role in the downfall of Othello highlights the racism of Venice, which Shakespeare internalizes into Othello’s character. We see this in Act I, Scene I of the play, when she volunteers to go to war with Othello, both at his side against the Ottoman Empire, and against him as the housewife, not a moth of peace, who seeks revenge for her conquest:

DESDEMONA

That I did love the Moor to live with him,

My downright violence and storm of fortunes

May trumpet to the world: my heart’s subdued

Even to the very quality of my lord:

I saw Othello’s visage in his mind,

And to his honour and his valiant parts

Did I my soul and fortunes consecrate.

So that, dear lords, if I be left behind,

A moth of peace, and he go to the war,

The rites for which I love him are bereft me,

And I a heavy interim shall support

By his dear absence. Let me go with him.

http://shakespeare.mit.edu/othello/full.html

Othello inspired violence within Desdemona, though she lived in great fortune. He appeared to her as a spirit until she was mad for him. Her soul and fortunes went to him in a spiritual battle, and this was not silent but trumpeted to the world. She calls his parts valiant, meaning he bravely risked his body parts by intertwining them with hers. Even still, she looked down on him, her heart was subdued down to his “very quality,” what she saw as the lower quality of Othello, darkness.

To allow them to be together would be to give her her rites, the religious ceremony, holy matrimony and cohabitation, that cannot be separated from this spiritual experience. The religious ceremony is her opportunity to repay Othello for the conquest, although, still looking negatively upon him, his absence would be dear. She wants to go to war with Othello, that is against him in his bedroom while he fights for Venice against Cyprus, planning to hurt him for having risen above his rank to court a rich Venetian lady. To Venice, Othello’s capturing the heart of someone so rich and so close to the Duke would look like a rebellion. In order to save themselves and control the rebellion, they gave Othello a dangerous mission in Cyprus, far from Venice and the Duke of the Republic of Venice.

OTHELLO

Let her have your voices.

Vouch with me, heaven, I therefore beg it not,

To please the palate of my appetite,

Nor to comply with heat–the young affects

In me defunct–and proper satisfaction.

But to be free and bounteous to her mind:

And heaven defend your good souls, that you think

I will your serious and great business scant

For she is with me: no, when light-wing’d toys

Of feather’d Cupid seal with wanton dullness

My speculative and officed instruments,

That my disports corrupt and taint my business,

Let housewives make a skillet of my helm,

And all indign and base adversities

Make head against my estimation!

http://shakespeare.mit.edu/othello/full.html

Now that Desdemona leaves her father and the court of the Duke, from far away only their voices will remain in her mind. Othello defends, in speech, the integrity of Desdemona’s father, his good soul, and belittles his own old body. This is formality, as he clearly thinks the opposite: that Desdemona’s father had a soul obsessed with wealth and fears a usurper who would marry his daughter and kill him for the fortune. Othello’s body is fit for war and has physical needs as well. His officed instruments are his weapons of war, the speculative instruments are the investments of the oligarchy of the Republic of Venice, for which he fights. He seals these away while with his wife, but that is only his hope. He cannot escape the fact that Desdemona is herself a stock portfolio and at war even in his bedroom. For this reason, he says “let housewives make a skillet of my helm,” since his armor, which should be locked away, now becomes the very thing that cooks his head. “Make head” means to rise in armed revolt, and the means of the armed revolt is through love affairs that turn dangerous.

The simplistic view of Othello, that clever Iago fooled the dumb Othello, ignores the moral of Othello’s rising against the Venetian oligarchy as a means of conquering their wealth for himself. This made Othello’s position impossible as he fought battlefield enemies in Cyprus for profits and the counter-revolution at home, which secretly punished him for his ill-begotten wealth. Othello’s rising symbolizes the rising of all oppressed nations, torn between serving the empire for military power and conquering wealthy families for an increase in social status and personal wealth. If he only fought bravely for the empire, he would remain an unknown soldier and die in poverty. If he continued to fight for personal wealth and political influence in Venice, they would call him a Moor and discriminate against him until he gave up and accepted his lower status, which would then lead to immense humiliation and perhaps even physical mutilation of his “visage” and “valient parts.”