Discuss the significance of handkerchief episode in Othello.

The dominant symbol in Othello is the
handkerchief, spotted with strawberries, Othello's first gift to Desdemona.  It's white
background is symbolic of Desdemona's suspected reputation (virginity), and the spots of
red strawberries are indicative of the stains on her reputation as well as the blood
that follows in Act V.  Like the bed, another major symbol, it is first intended as a
symbol of eros (physical love), but it is subverted and turned into
a symbol of theros (death).

It is a
symbol of either Othello's love for or possession of Desdemona.  Othello, a former
pagan,who  sees the handkerchief as magical ("there's magic in the web of
it"), and he speaks of it in mythological
terms:

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That
handkerchief
Did an Egyptian to my mother
give;
She was a charmer, and could almost
read
The thoughts of people: she told her,
while
she kept it,
'Twould
make her amiable and subdue my father
Entirely to her
love, but if she lost it
Or
made gift of it, my father's eye
Should hold her loathed
and his spirits should
hunt
After new fancies: she, dying, gave it
me;
And bid me, when my fate would have me
wive,
To give it her. I did so: and take heed
on't;
Make it a darling like your precious
eye;
To lose't or give't away
were such perdition
As nothing else could
match.

Notice
that it is connected to the eye ("my father's eye" and
"your [Dedemona] precious eye"), love ("subdue my father
entirely to her love"), and supernatural spirits ("spirits
should hunt / After new fancies").

Desdemona, a Christian,
obviously doesn't see any of these connections; rather, it is a curse and a mark of
jealousy:

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Then would to God that I had never
seen't!

Over the
course of the play, the handkerchief is in the hand of nearly all the main players: it
goes from Othello to Desdemona to Emilia to Iago to Cassio to Bianca.  Notice, it goes
from the top ranking male (Othello) to the lowest (Cassio, after he is dismissed), and
it goes from the most reputable female (Desdemona) to a prostitute (Bianca).  So, not
only is it a dominant symbol of love and jealousy but also of gender and social class
difference.  Also, it is a means to achieve situational
irony.

The handkerchief is important psychologically as
well: did Othello set Desdemona and the marriage up to fail by giving it to her?  Why
does Emilia, faithful to her mistress, steal it and give it to her misogynistic
husband?

All in all, the handkerchief is symbolic of the
sexist double standards of the patriarchal society in which men control women: they are
possessions to men.  Just as Emilia says, "They are all but stomachs and we but food,"
so too it is with the handkerchief: men use handkerchiefs as possessions, play-things,
as means-to-an-end, and, when finished, they dispose of them after having first blown
their noses on them.