Desdemona

des-de-mo'na, the heroine of Shakespeare's tragedy, Othello. She is the daughter of Brabantio, a Venetian senator. Desdemona listens while Othello, the Moor, recounts his many adventures to her father. Her admiration is won; then her love. She weds the Moor against her father's wishes. Othello is led by Iago to believe his wife unfaithful, and in a fit of rage he smothers her. Desdemona's character is well drawn. She is innocent, modest, and ingenuous. Incapable of any base suspicion herself, she is slow to realize that she may be suspected.