The character of Desdemona represents a woman of the 17th century who surpassed the norms of sexual morality set for Venetian women of that time. When Desdemona left her father's house to marry the Moor, Othello, it was the first step in redefining her role as a woman. Instead of asking her father's permission, Desdemona decided on her own to marry Othello. By making such a momentous decision on her own, she revealed that was breaking away from the strictness imposed by her father. She recalled the way her mother made the same decision, "I am hitherto your daughter. But here's my husband and so much duty as my mother showed to you, preferring you before her father, so much I challenge that I may assert due to the Moor my lord," (1.3, 409). Desdemona denied her father any right in choosing or granting allowance for Othello to marry her. Instead she chose the man who she wanted to marry and felt it unnecessary that her father intervene in their relationship. This act of independence by Desdemona tore away the gender barriers of the Venetian patriarchal society as well as posed a threat to male authority.
The other aspect of Desdemona's rebellion was the miscegenation in her and Othello's marriage. By choosing her own husband who happened to be black, Desdemona further deviated from the role in which Venetian society cast upon her as well as all other women in such a patriarchal period. The traditions of the Venetian society are discovered when Iago speaks to Brabanzio and plants both the ideas of miscegenation and loss of power into Brabanzio's mind. Iago warns Brabanzio when he says, "your heart is burst, you have lost half your soul; Even now, now, very now, an old black ram is tupping your white ewe. Arise, arise!" (1.1, 400). These lines highlight the fact that in Elizabethan society, Brabanzio, like other fathers, considered Desdemona's body to be his possession while also tapping into the fear of miscegenation that existed in Venice at that time.