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The barberry plant never appears in Othello, but its resonances in Act 4 Scene 3 crystalize the play’s concerns with racial status, women’s domestic knowledge, and European beauty standards. Scholars have begun to consider the scene’s global context, concentrating on Desdemona’s revelations about her mother’s servant, Barbary. Yet Barbary’s name also conjures images of the more familiar barberry bushes of England, which proved common in recipes for lightening hair. The scene’s invocation of the barberry plant underscores the play’s concerns with culturally determined notions of beauty and the potential for “fair” outsides to mask unchaste interiors. In considering barberries beside Barbary, this essay sheds new light on the play’s anxieties regarding racial categorizations, beauty, and female virtue.

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