Jeff Ludwig
English 387
Dr. Ronald Strickland
July 15, 2001
Misogyny and Racism as Structures of Deception in Othello
The most obvious way to create meaning in Shakespeare’s Othello is to
understand, as Walter Cohen puts it, “Othello’s movement from nobly loving husband
to insanely jealous killer” (2091). In his 1988 interview during the American premier of
the BBC version of Othello, Jonathan Miller, the director and creative mind behind the
production, asserted that Shakespeare’s play had little or nothing to do with race, but
instead with the psychological dimensions of jealousy universal to human experience.
His all-white cast (including Anthony Hopkins as Othello) not only supports this
assertion, but also aligns itself with a larger history of Othello scholarship that denies
the possibility of Othello being black because he is a nobleman of Venice, and the “hero”
of the play.1 Yet, as recent critics and scholars have argued, to see “the Moor” as the
Duke does—as “far more fair than black” (I.iii.289) 2—is to deny vital conflicts of the
play. In essence, denying Othello’s blackness in any reading of Othello supports a
meta-narrative that works to supplant structures of racism and misogyny that can
define Othello as a social tragedy. From our situated perspective in a world that cannot
help but see structures of race, class, and gender in any text (even one dated around
1603), such dynamics cannot be ignored. As we shall see, racist and misogynistic
ideologies are what bring about the downfall of Othello, and furthermore, what define
the work as a poignant tragedy today.
Scholars have long been at odds to determine whether or not Shakespeare
intended to support or undermine racist and/or misogynistic ideologies in Othello. As
See Cohen’s introduction to Othello in The Norton Shakespeare as well as Michael Niell’s recent
article in Shakespeare Quarterly, “Unproper Beds: Race, Adultery, and the Hideous in Othello”
(40:4, Winter 1998).
1
Michael Neill states,3 “to talk about race in Othello is to fall into an anachronism; yet
not to talk about it is to ignore something fundamental about the play that has rightly
come to be identified as a foundational text in the emergence of modern European racial
consciousness” (361). While Niell’s argument here attempts to historicize Othello as a
text that recognizes racial difference in Shakespeare’s time, he rightly identifies two
fundamental concerns: first, that oppressive ideologies are a central concern in Othello,
and second, that we cannot ignore them. I do not hope to identify what Shakespeare
intended in terms of race and the role of women in Othello. Instead, I hope to show that
structures of racism and misogyny are what constitute the very core of the play’s
tragedy, and furthermore, highlighting these ideological structures serves to subvert
them.
It is difficult to not begin any discussion of Othello without starting with Iago,
the Vice-like character who inevitably controls the fates of the play’s characters through
his deliberately deceptive actions. Yet, exactly why Iago has chosen to act as he does is
debatable. Does Iago choose to deceive because he has been slighted by Othello? By
Cassio? By Both? Does he enact his revenge because he was denied lieutenant-ship?
Because of the rumor that Othello has “’twixt [his] sheets/Done [his] office” (I.iii.36970)? Or that Cassio has done the same? Or is it that Iago, as Janet Adelman has
recently argued, “calls forth a world…in which he can see his own darkness localized
and reflected in Othello’s blackness” (127). Whatever Iago’s reasons to “follow” Othello
to “serve [his] turn upon him,” to act in “seeming” as Othello’s trusted “ancient” for his
own “peculiar end” (I.i.42, 60), there is a possibility in what Adelman argues—that Iago
is very much aware of Othello’s race in relation to his own status and situation. Put
simply, Iago’s motivation to thwart Othello is also racially charged. Furthermore, and
as recent critics like Karen Newman have argued, Iago’s consciousness of Othello’s
All citations from Othello come from The Norton Shakespeare (Greenblatt et. al., New York: W.W.
Norton & Co., 1997.
3
In “’Mulattos,’ ‘Blacks,’ and ‘Indian Moors’: Othello and Early Modern Constructions of Human
Difference” (Shakespeare Quarterly, 49:4, 1998)
2
blackness comes in its direct relationship to Desdemona’s whiteness and femininity, for
their marriage is seen by the white men of the play as a “monstrous union of the
socially separated” (Bell 122), which not only goes against ideologies of Shakespeare’s
England, but is also an important cultural conflict today. As Newman states: “For the
white male characters of the play, the black man’s power resides in his sexual
difference from a white male norm. […] of the feared power and potency of a different
and monstrous sexuality which threatens the white male sexual norm represented in
the play most emphatically by Iago” (151). Iago, the villain who seems to have no
identity except as a devil,4 and who seems to act from a “motiveless malignity,” as
Coleridge famously states, can now be seen to conduct his villainy from both racial and
misogynistic hatred.
Iago transfers his inward hatreds into outward actions. He relies on racial and
misogynistic beliefs in the other characters of the play—in Barbanzio, Roderigo, Cassio,
and especially in Othello—to enact his revenge. When the play opens, it is only Iago
and the jealous Roderigo who know of Othello and Desdemona’s marriage, of their
“gross revolt” (I.i.135). Their first plan is to oust the “lascivious Moor” (I.i.127) by
creating in Barbanzio’s mind a sense that Othello has “robbed” (I.1.86) the senator not
only of his daughter, but of Desdemona’s purity. Poignant here is the way that Iago
casts the relationship as a bestial act of miscegenation: “Even now, now, very now, and
old black ram/Is tupping you white ewe;” “you’ll have your daughter covered with a
Barbary horse”; “I am one, sir, that comes to tell you your daughter and the Moor are
making the beast with two backs” (I.i. 89-90, 112-13, 117-118). Iago’s descriptions of
Othello as an “old black ram,” and a “Barbary horse” (as I take it, a horse from Africa—
hence, both “black” and “bestial”), contrast sharply with the virginal description of
Desdemona as a “white ewe.” This contrast in language, at least initially, is successful
in convincing Barbanzio that “the black Moor and the fair Desdemona are united in a
marriage which [he] view[s] as unthinkable” (Newman 144): “For I’ll refer me to all
4
Except to the characters of the play, of course, who see him as “exceedingly honest” (III.iii.312).
things of sense,/…Whether a maid so tender, fair, and happy/…Would have ever,
t’incur a general mock,/Run from her guardage to the sooty bosom/Of such a thing as
thou” (I.ii.65, 67, 70-73). To interrupt their marriage bed, Iago and Roderigo make
Othello a highly sexual “beast” in the eyes of Barbanzio, relying on racial stereotypes to
implant in him a fear of miscegenation—that his “fair” daughter could never love (and
give herself sexually) to “what she feared to look on” (I.iii.98)—the black Othello.
This first scene, as Newman observes, “dramatizes Othello’s blackness” (151)
and supports the idea that the structure of Othello relies on ideas of racial difference.
Denying that his daughter could ever fall in love with the beast-like Othello, Barbanzio
accuses the Moor of practicing “foul charms” (I.ii.74), or witchcraft, on Desdemona to
win her favor. This accusation not only shows Barbanzio’s ethnocentrism, but it more
importantly sets Othello up as an exotic “other”—a non-Christian being whose beastlike presence is invading Barbanzio’s household (and Venice as well). This
characterization carries some weight throughout the play, for in the very next scene
Othello confirms his status as exotic and an outsider in his “traveller’s history,” of:
…antres vast and deserts idle,
Rough quarries, rocks, and hills whose heads touch heaven.
It was my hint to speak. Such was my process,
And of the cannibals that each other eat,
The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads
Do grow beneath their shoulders. (I.iii.139-143)
This “discourse,” Othello tells us, Desdemona would “with a greedy ear/Devour up”
(149-50), cry for him, tell him his experiences were “passing strange” (159), and she
eventually grew to love Othello for these “dangers” (166). For Patricia Parker, Othello’s
“travelers history,” opens “to Venetian (and English) eyes exotic worlds beyond the
direct reach of vision, combined with the…secrets of Desdemona’s ‘chamber,’ chart the
crossing in this play of domestic and exotic, ‘civil’ and ‘barbarian’” (179). Indeed, for the
play’s characters (as well as the audience) are made explicitly aware that Othello is both
“civilized” in the sense that he is a Venetian nobleman and general, and “barbarian”
(recall Iago’s assertion that Desdemona was being “covered with a Barbary horse”) in
the sense that Othello is “strange” and exotic because of his color. It is Othello’s
blackness, suggests Stephen Greenblatt, that is “the sign of all that the society finds
frightening and dangerous—[it] is the indelible witness to Othello’s permanent status as
an outsider, no matter how highly the state may value his services or how sincerely he
has embraced its values” (240). This duality sticks with Othello throughout the play,
for while we see him engage in a war against the Turks (ironically, though, for he could
very well be identified with them), we learn later on that the napkin he gives Desdemona
has “magic in the web of it” (III.iv.67), and was given to his mother by an Egyptian. On
a most basic level, the napkin symbolizes the witchcraft he denies to have used on
Desdemona.5 This conflict of the “exotic” and the “noble” characteristics of Othello are
what eventually cause his downfall, aided by Iago, of course, who plays upon this clash
of identity.
We will discuss Iago’s method of deceiving Othello shortly, but what is important
to distinguish at this point is that the “exotic” nature of Othello makes him a highly
sexualized being, and if we remember the beast-like descriptions of Iago and Roderigo in
the first scene of the play, we can connect Othello to “a monstrous sexuality” (Newman
148). For, as Newman states, Othello is “both the representative and upholder of a
rigorous sexual code which prohibits desire…and yet also the sign of a different,
unbridled sexuality” (150). As a “converted” Christian and noble Venetian, Othello kills
his wife because he perceives she has sinned (“Therefore confess thee freely of thy sin”
(V.ii.58), Othello says to Desdemona. “O, I were damned beneath all depth in hell/But
that I did proceed on just grounds” (V.ii.146-47)). And yet, because of his permanent
status as an outsider, he comes to represent the “unbridled sexuality” Newman
discusses. By implication, however, and compounded by 16 th century notions of gender
and female sexuality, Desdemona also comes to represent a similar form of immoral
I also agree, however, with numerous critics who see the handkerchief (with its stitched
strawberries) as a symbol of Desdemona’s lost virginity—recalling the “stained” sheets of Othello
and Desdemona’s marriage bed. This reading of the handkerchief supports the idea that
5
sexuality because of her marriage to the Moor. We see the seeds of this belief in her
father, Barbanzio, when, distraught by the possibility that Desdemona and Othello are
enjoying their nuptial bed, states, “Fathers, trust not your daughters’ minds/By what
you see them act” (I.i.171-72). Later, and after Desdemona has professed her “duty” to
Othello in the company of the Venetian court, Barbanzio warns Othello: “Look to her,
Moor, if thou hast eyes to see. She has deceived her father, and may thee” (I.iii.180,
291-92). Barbanzio’s statements in each example can be seen as evidence of the 16 th
century belief that it is natural for women to deceive, lie, and be wanton—or, motivated
to deceive by sexual impulses. While this belief was especially powerful in
Shakespeare’s England, it still has relevance today given our recognition of dominant,
male power structures. And yet Desdemona is a special case, for she is one of
Shakespeare’s few women who are assertive in a patriarchal society, as the following
statement implies:
That I did love the Moor to live with him,
My downright violence and storm of fortunes
May trumpet to the world. (I.iii.247-249)
According to Walter Cohen, this statement gives Desdemona an “erotic boldness” that
makes “Desdemona more appealing” (2094) to the audience. But her defiance of
custom—in marrying the black Othello and deceiving her father—gives her a kind
sexuality that is to be feared by the male characters of the play. Othello’s assertion that
he wishes his wife to “be free and bounteous with her mind” (I.iii.264) is a double
entendre; as Terry Eagleton writes, “For the woman, to be free is always to be too free
[…]. The woman [Desdemona] is always a travestied text, perpetually open to
misreading…unable to be proper without promiscuity, frigid when judicious, never
warm without being too hot” (68). The tragic irony of this play, however, is that
Desdemona is in fact faithful to her husband. But because of Othello’s status as an
“other” with racist connotations of a “monstrous sexuality,” combined with the
Desdemona’s purity has been “robbed” by the exotic “beast,” Othello. See Neill, Newman, and
Snow.
patriarchal view that women who are “forward” and “free” are also sexually shameless,
it is possible to interpret that Desdemona “may” also fit such beliefs, as Barbanzio
reminds us.
The first to translate these racist and misogynistic beliefs into practice is Iago,
who relies on these ideological structures in both Roderigo and Othello to enact his
revenge. Finally we can come to understand that it is these lines of thinking that
become the very structures of Iago’s deception, and he uses them so successfully that
we begin to wonder, as Othello does, who this “demi-devil” (V.ii.307) serves. In possibly
his first act of deception, the famous “put money in thy purse” speech of act one, Iago
convinces Roderigo that he remains a viable love choice for Desdemona by enacting the
kinds of racist and misogynistic stereotypes we have been discussing. If we read
between “put money in they purse,” we hear the following:
It cannot be long that Desdemona should continue to love the Moor…nor he is to
her. It was a violent commencement in her…. These Moors are changeable in
their wills…. The food that in him now is as luscious as locusts shall be to him
shortly as bitter as coloquintida. She must change for youth. When she is
sated with his body, she will find the error of her choice.
………………………………………………………………………
If sanctimony and a frail vow betwixt an erring barbarian and a super-subtle
Venetian be not too hard for my wits… (I.iii.335-343)
Obviously we see that Iago views Othello and Desdemona’s marriage as preposterous.
Not only is their marriage a “violent commencement” (abruptly started), and therefore
probably “the mask for something unspeakable adulterate” (Neill 397), but it also goes
against the very “nature” of each of participant. Iago’s statement that “these Moors are
changeable in their wills” does not merely refer to Othello, but to all “Moors,’ or people
of color, who are controlled by their sexual emotions. Iago’s slur of Othello as “erring
barbarian” supports the belief that, because of his history as a wanderer, Othello is
quick to change his loyalty to any person, including those he loves. Iago’s misogynistic
statements about Desdemona, however, are a bit subtler. Still there is the presumption
that her marriage began in lust, which is supported by Iago’s assertion that Desdemona
will dispense with her husband when she is “sated with his body.” Iago’s
characterization of Desdemona as “super-subtle” and young, however, hints toward a
belief of Desdemona as a threatening, sexual being that will seek other loves as she
becomes bored with Othello. As Newman states, “Desdemona is presented in the play
[by Iago] as a sexual subject who hears6 and desires” (152), and the fact that she has
become a forwardly sexual being, for Iago, is evidence enough that she will find the
“error” of falling in love with Othello. Iago appeals once again to this idea of Desdemona
as an awakened sexual being in the second act, when, trying to convince Roderigo that
Desdemona has fallen for Cassio (without evidence), he states, “Her eye must be fed,
and what delight shall she have to look on the devil [Othello]? […] Very nature will
instruct her in it and compel her to some second choice” (II.i.220-21, 227-29). Because
women, by their “nature,” desire what is “delightful,” Desdemona will “naturally” seek
out another mate when Othello becomes unappealing to her. As we see, Iago relies
heavily on both racial and misogynistic ideologies to affect his first act of deception on
Roderigo, whom he finds an easily duped ally.
Before we begin to analyze Iago’s use of racist and misogynistic beliefs in his
deception of Othello, we must first point out that Othello, like the other male characters
of the play, is a product of a patriarchal society that deems women as beings
susceptible to their emotions—especially sexual desires—and therefore must be
controlled by men who, using Iago’s words, “have reason to cool our raging emotions”
(I.iii.325). More than likely, this ideology comes from Othello’s conversion to
Christianity, for as Stephen Greenblatt states, Othello submits to “a manifestation of
the colonial power of Christian doctrine of sexuality” (242). Wherever Othello’s beliefs of
the sexual role of women stems, it is of vital importance to reveal that he, too, has a
similar belief of female subjugation and male control:
O curse of marriage,
That we can call these delicate creatures ours
And not their appetites! I had rather be a toad
And live upon the vapor of a dungeon
Than keep a corner in the thing I love
6
Recall that Desdemona fell in love with Othello upon hearing his “traveller’s history.”
For others’ uses. (III.iii.272-77)
For Edward A. Snow, a statement like this allows us to be “diverted from a critique of
the pathological male obsessions beneath the ‘just grounds’ (V.ii.138) upon which he
[Othello] would have been proceeding…. Instead of being forced to confront the
predicament of every woman caught within a patriarchal society, we can…regard
Desdemona as the unfortunate ‘victim’ of Othello’s ‘tragic’ misconception” (387). Snow’s
comment raises an important assumption of the very structure of Othello—that the play
is as much about patriarchal control over female sexuality as it is about Iago’s reliance
upon this belief to deceive Othello. Statements like the one above go to show that
Othello is easily led “by th’ nose/As asses are” (I.iii.383-84) to believe misogynistic
ideologies as he is to believe his wife is honest.
We see in Iago’s first soliloquy that these very convictions are what he plans to
use on Othello. Iago states, “After some time to abuse Othello’s ears/That he is too
familiar with his wife;/He hath a person and a smooth dispose/To be suspected, framed
to make women false” (I.iii.377-79). As may scholars have pointed out, the pronoun
ambiguity in these lines leads one to deduce that the “he” Iago discusses is just as
easily Othello as it is Cassio. 7 If it is just as easy to read Othello into these lines, we
can see a couple of things. First, Iago proposes to convince Othello that he himself is
“too familiar with his [own] wife.” Second, given the 16th century belief that adultery
was not only defined as infidelity, but that husbands and wives could be called
“adulterous” if they were too sexually active with one another, 8 we have a general idea
that both Othello and Desdemona are too sexually forward. In essence, what Iago
proposes is to convince Othello that his wife is sexually forward given her marriage to
the Moor himself, and because of this, she may in turn seek out other lovers to satisfy
her desires. This seriously conflicts with Othello’s patriarchal assumptions of the
female as property within the institution of marriage, as we have seen before. It is this
7
8
See Cohen, “Introduction” to Othello, Greenblatt, and Neill, for a few examples.
See Neill, “Unproper Beds.”
very belief that Iago initially proposes to use to affect Othello. At its core, these
assumptions are what Kenneth Burke argues in his rhetorical analysis of Iago’s attempt
to become “consubstantial” with Othello:
Iago, to arouse Othello, must talk a language that Othello knows as well as he, a
language implicit in the nature of Othello’s love as the idealization of his private
property in Desdemona. This language is the dialectical opposite of Othello’s
but it so thoroughly shares a common ground with Othello’s language that its
insinuations are never for one moment irrelevant to Othello’s thinking. Iago
must be cautious in leading Othello to believe them as true: but Othello never
for a moment doubts them as values.9
I propose that the “language” both Othello and Iago share a “common ground” in is
their racist and misogynistic ideas of sexuality and fidelity. The structure of Iago’s
deception, therefore, is: 1) based on his racist beliefs of Othello (as well as Othello’s own
recognition of these beliefs) as an exotic and sexualized “other” who, because of this
identity, is capable of awakening in the pure Desdemona a sexuality as “black” and as
“lascivious” as his own, and 2) the misogynistic belief that this sexuality could cause
Desdemona to be unfaithful. These constructions work together in Iago’s plan to create
in Othello a “jealousy so strong/That judgment cannot cure” (II.iii.288-89), and as
Iago’s plan begins to unfold, he involves these beliefs as he begins to “pour pestilence”
into Othello’s ear and turn Desdemona’s “virtue into a pitch” (II.iii.330, 334).
With Desdemona already pleading for a truce between Othello and Cassio, Iago
perceives a perfect moment of kairos to begin implanting in Othello the seeds of
jealousy. By first making Othello very aware that Cassio “went between” (III.iii.102) the
couple while Othello was wooing Desdemona, Iago proceeds to arouse suspicion in
Othello by reminding him of the threat jealousy has on a man’s “good name” (III.iii.164):
IAGO: […] But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him
And makes me poor indeed.
OTHELLO: By heaven, I’ll know thy thoughts.
………………………………………………………….
IAGO: O, beware, my lord, of jealousy.
It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock
The meat it feeds on. (III.iii.164-171)
9
Newman quoting Greenblatt quoting Burke, 149-150.
As the two continue to discuss the dangerous nature of jealousy on the male “name,”
Othello assures his ancient that his wife is “virtuous” and that he must “see” before he
proves “her haggard” (III.iii.190, 194, 264). This “seeing,” though, is precisely what Iago
is warning Othello to be aware of, for, he reminds his general that “In Venice they
[women] do let God see the pranks/They dare not show their husbands” (III.iii.206-07).
This statement becomes the first of Iago’s generalizations on the behavior of all women,
and it is important that it comes coupled with Barbanzio’s reminder that “She deceived
her father, marrying you,/And when she seemed to shake and fear your looks/She
loved them most” (III.iii.210-12). Together, these statements assert that Desdemona,
like all women of Venice, are apt to hide their sexual actions, deceiving and
undermining the power of men; but Iago is careful to also remind Othello that his
“looks,” his “visage” that Desdemona is acutely aware of (I.iii.251), had something to do
with her desire for him. Karen Newman reminds us that Desdemona’s recognition of
Othello’s “visage” alludes “to her audience’s prejudice against the black ‘visage’ that
both the Senators and Shakespeare’s audience see in Othello” (152). Given this
context, Iago’s reminder to Othello that Desdemona fell in love with his distinct looks
(and consequently, his “monstrous sexuality”) relates directly to the culture of Venetian
women, who “hide” their “pranks” from everyone but God. Iago continues, however, to
appeal to Othello’s misogynistic ideas of the “nature” of women, literally finishing
Othello’s sentence:
OTHELLO: And yet how nature, erring from itself—
IAGO: Ay, there’s the point…
Not to affect many proposed matches
Of her own clime, complexion, and degree,
Whereto we see in all things nature tends.
……………………………………………………….
But pardon me. I do not in position
Distinctly speak of her, though I may fear
Her will, recoiling to her better judgment,
May fall to match you with her country forms
(III.iii.232-44)
This is a pivotal statement, for the “country forms,” of Desdemona’s own “clime” and
“complexion” to which Iago refers is Cassio. Clearly we see that this explicitly racist
belief that a white and “pure” woman like Desdemona will, only “naturally,” seek to
desire a man of her own race, combines with the misogynistic idea that women10, by
nature, will also deceive their lovers to do so. And, as if Othello has already seen it
coming, he affirms these ideologies when he compares himself to Cassio: “Happly, for I
am black,/And have not those soft parts of conversation/That chamberers have….She’s
gone. I am abused [deceived], and my relief/Must be to loathe her” (III.iii.267-69, 27273). This assertion is not merely Othello comparing himself to possible suitor, but more
importantly, he recognizes that his own blackness makes him prone to certain
behaviors that separate him from other male figures. It is within these constructions of
race and gender that Othello begins to suspect his wife of infidelity.
I should point out, however, that since Othello is very aware of his own
“difference,” he also, most likely, recognizes the ways he is constructed by racial
stereotypes. To assume that Othello does not see such constructions would not only
assume a naiveté on Othello’s part, but would also be downright simple-minded. Yet,
given the 16th century context in which this play was written, I think it is safe to
assume that, even on some level, the ingenious Shakespeare is not genius enough to
thwart such ideologies. Perhaps this is why Shakespeare cast Othello as he did—as a
kind of impressionable blank slate to Iago’s wonderful and horrible ability to, as
Greenblatt states, construct “a narrative into which he inscribes…those around him”
(234).
On the flip side, though, it is of vital importance that Othello does recognize the
ways he is constructed as an “other,” for such ideologies are what leave him susceptible
to the very acts of deception he cannot “see” in Iago. At this point, and on some deepseated, ideological level, Iago’s rhetoric has worked; he has found the right “language” to
use to appeal to Othello’s “values,” as Burke would have it, and Othello comes to
connect his own blackness with the belief of Desdemona’s possible infidelity:
Remember that Iago is not “distinctly” speaking of Desdemona. By negation, the, he is
speaking of all women.
10
I think my wife is honest, and think she is not.
I think that thou art just, and I think thou art not.
I’ll have some proof. My name that was as fresh
As Dian’s visage, is now begrimed and black
As mine own face. (Italics mine III.iii.389-393
As Edward A. Snow states, this passage suggests “the possibility of Desdemona’s
infidelity causes him [Othello] to see himself (as if for the first time) as black, and to
regard that blackness as a measure of sexual corruption as well as social disgrace”
(401). For Janet Adelman, this idea leads her to the conclusion that the “play’s
representation of Othello’s experience of race…comes to dominate his sense of himself
as polluted and polluting, undeserving of Desdemona and hence quick to believe her
unfaithful” (126). In a sense, and as these critical commentaries assume, it is Othello
alone who allows himself to become dominated by such destructive racial forces. And
yet, as we have seen, Iago may be considered just as much the culprit by awakening
such racial constructions in his victim. As Michael Neill states, “it would be almost as
difficult to say whether its [the play’s] racial anxieties are ones that the play discovers or
implants in an audience as to say whether jealousy is something that Iago discovers or
implants in Othello” (395). Certainly this applies for Othello as well. But rather than
construct a binary, it is more arguable to say that the racial and misogynistic anxieties
that Othello falls victim to are both implanted by Iago and by Othello himself.
With the assumption that Othello now recognizes (or thinks he recognizes) that
his own racial proclivities are the cause of Desdemona’s infidelity, we can move further
to point out that that Iago no longer needs to create for his victim such suspicions—
Othello will do that on his own. Iago’s only engagement now is to give Othello the
“ocular proof” (III.iii.366) he needs to reclaim his “blackened” name. Since there is in
fact no possibility of “showing” Othello Desdemona’s adulterous affair with Cassio, Iago
must create an image of their affair for Othello. Iago begins this when Othello cries for
the “satisfaction,” the proof, of Desdemona and Cassio’s affair. In reaction to Othello’s
call for proof, Iago asks his victim some important questions: “Would you, the
supervisor, grossly gape on,/Behold her topped?”; “Where’s satisfaction?/Is it
impossible you should see this,/Were they as prime as goats, as hot as monkeys…”
(III.iii.400-01, 406-08). These rhetorical statements serve to give Othello the possibility
of “seeing” his wife and Cassio in the act of intercourse without actually witnessing it,
and combined with Iago’s fictional account of Cassio talking in his sleep, and more
importantly, the handkerchief now in the possession of Cassio, gives Othello more than
mere suspicion of Desdemona’s adultery. Most importantly, though, Iago’s equation of
his wife’s affair with Cassio as bestial and animal-like serves Othello’s belief that he has
somehow tainted his wife’s purity and made her sexuality like his own—“O, monstrous,
monstrous!” (III.iii.431). According to Snow, this is a vital portion of Othello’s jealousy,
a “patriarchal conscience telling him that Desdemona’s illicit behavior with Cassio is
only a repetition of what she first did with Othello, and that he himself has released in
her the boundless appetite she now satisfies with Cassio” (402). It is this “boundless
appetite,” based in oppressive structures of race and misogyny, that is working together
to make Othello believe he sees such immoral behavior in his wife. Hence, Iago’s
invocation of such ideas is in line with Othello’s most intimate fears.
Iago continues to lodge in Othello the image of Desdemona as an adulteress in
the first scene of the fourth act. In this interchange, the possibility of Cassio “lie”-ing
“on” or “with” Desdemona becomes so real for Othello that he “falls down in a trance”
(IV.i.42). While most assume that this blocking not only symbolizes Othello’s jealousy
overtaking his physical presence, but it also shows a sign of weakness in the stoic
Moor. We can, however, re-read this action as Othello’s first instance of “seeing” the
monstrous sexuality he has stimulated in Desdemona. As Othello begins to imagine the
possible act, he exclaims, “Nature would not invest herself in such shadowing passion
without some instruction” (IV.i.38-39). The Oxford translation of this line is this: “It
isn’t natural that I would feel such overwhelming (‘shadowing’) emotion (jealousy)
unless there were some cause for it” (2147). Yet, there is a possibility of another
reading, one that places importance on the words “nature” and “shadowing passion.” If
we believe that Othello feels he has contaminated his white wife by his own, black
sexuality, this line becomes an exclamation about Othello himself: “Nature [my own, my
identity, my realized, defiled blackness] would not invest herself in such shadowing
passion [his own sexuality—intimately connected with his blackness] without some
instruction.” If read this way, we come to see that, as Othello imagines the possibility of
his wife’s sordid sexual act, he again equates this moment of seeing with his own
“nature”—his own blackness. By evoking such possibilities in Othello based on
ideologies race and gender, Iago is once again successful in his deceit, even though he
merely allows Othello to “see” for himself, and hence, fall victim to these beliefs.
Ultimately, and what turns out to be the final “ocular proof” for Othello is the critical
exchange between Iago and Cassio (concerning Bianca) that Othello witnesses, which,
importantly, is also based on a misogynistic idea of women as possessions and
playthings.
As Othello becomes ridden with jealousy, and as the possibility of Desdemona
and Cassio together dominate his psyche, Othello is, like a true hero, also apt to believe
that the love of his life is honest and true. This duality riddles Othello, for while he
deems her a “lewd minx” (III.iii.478) in front of Iago, and believes her “moist hand” a
“liberal hand” of a “young and sweating devil” that “commonly rebels” (III.iv.44, 40-41),
he is also quick to insist on calling Desdemona a “fine woman, a fair woman, a sweet
woman” (IV.i.171-72). Yet, the ever ambitious and conniving Iago is present to quickly
remind Othello that he must “forget that” (IV.i.173):
OTHELLO: Hang her, I do but say what she is—so delicate with her needle, an
admirable musician. O, she would sing the savageness out of a bear! Of so high
and plenteous with and invention.
IAGO: She’s worse for all this.
OTHELLO: O, a thousand, a thousand times! And then of so gentle a condition.
IAGO: Ay, too gentle.
OHTELLO: Nay, that’s certain. But yet the pity of it, Iago. O, Iago, the pity of it,
Iago!
IAGO: If you are fond over her iniquity, give her patent to offend; for if it touch
you, it comes near nobody.
OTHELLO: I will chop her into messes. Cuckhold me!
IAGO: O, ‘tis foul in her.
Here we see that while Othello exclaims the pity of such infidelity on the part of the
“fair,” “fine,” and “sweet” Desdemona, Iago instead gives Othello another version of the
Moor’s wife—one that has deceived, is sexually wanton, threatens the status of Othello’s
name, and is simply “foul.” Iago’s rhetorical maneuver here is to steer Othello away
from believing that Desdemona is at all good and gentle, but that instead she is
inherently evil because of her nature as a woman. Iago does so by explicitly relying on
sexual stereotypes of women as out to betray their husbands, eliminating the possibility
that Othello will give in to his belief of Desdemona as true, thereby leaving Othello to
see Desdemona as Iago constructs her.
Inevitably, Othello comes to not only internalize these misogynistic beliefs, but
he also expresses them. He exclaims to Lodovico that Desdemona “can turn and turn,
and yet go on/And turn again” (IV.i.250-51). Shortly thereafter, he calls Desdemona a
“black weed” (IV.ii.69),11 and asks, “Was this fair paper, this most goodly book,/Made to
write ‘whore’ upon?” (IV.ii.73-74). These short but powerful epithets are important
because they indicate the extent to which Othello has fallen victim to Iago’s, as well as
his own, appeals to racist and misogynistic beliefs. Not only does Othello assume
without evidence that his wife is “that cunning whore of Venice/That married with
Othello” (IV.ii.93-94), but she has become something “black,” written upon with black
ink. It is now safe to assume that by this point Othello has fallen victim to not only
misogynistic ideologies of his own wife, but also his complicity in her actions because of
his own status as a sexualized “other.” The recognition of this duality has come to
Othello, in part, by Iago, but has been fully manifested by his own involvement in such
ideas. Perhaps this explains Othello’s motivation to murder his wife as well as his
intense feeling of guilt when Iago’s deceptive drama unfolds at the end of the final act.
Othello is explicit in explaining “Yet she must die, else she betray more men” (V.ii.6).
For Edward Snow, this represents a “displaced attempt…to put to death something in
According to Janet Adelman, “Desdemona becomes a ‘black weed’ only in the quartos; F omits
the adjective” (126).
11
himself, something that has been sexually engendered in him. He understands that a
principle is involved…, and that in killing her he is acting not just for himself but for
men in general” (393). Very true, for Othello, in his complicity in male ideals of
patriarchal control and female submission must eliminate any threat to his status as a
man with a good “name.” Yet there is more going on here than misogynistic control
over the female body, and we can see an important proclamation in Othello’s final,
guilt-ridden speech:
…Then must you speak
Of one that loved not wisely but too well,
Of one not easily jealous but, being wrought,
Perplexed in the extreme; of one whose hand,
Like the based Indian, threw a pearl away
Richer than all his tribe; of one whose subdued eyes,
Albeit unused to the melting mood
Drops tears as fast as the Arabian trees
Their medicinable gum.
Most see this final speech as the “moral” of Othello. Read on one level, because of his
jealousy, Othello feels he has lost the very valuable “pearl,” Desdemona, and laments
his culpability. Yet we are missing a vital element to this speech. Othello’s list of
metaphors for this loss also includes a list of marked “others” who have been cast
outside of the dominant, European culture, either by their skin color or “exotic” culture.
What Othello is also doing here is equating his extreme confusion—his “perplexity”—to
the confusion of Indians and those familiar with exotic lands (“Arabian trees). In
essence, Othello is invoking an ironic declaration of becoming and falling victim to all
that he has become in the eyes of the Venetians—a wandering, black, Moor, whose
identity casts him as a racist stereotype—an “other.” What Othello is proclaiming, then,
is his own realization of his victimization. What is worse, though, is that all this has
come because he was led to believe in such oppressive constructions. This final
realization, as well as the “punishment” of Desdemona, is what defines Othello as a
truly social tragedy.
And yet, we have to remind ourselves that Othello is indeed a tragedy. In trying
to make meaning out of Othello’s slide from noble general to an “insanely jealous killer”
(Cohen), we are in no way valorizing Shakespeare’s use of such tropes, nor our
recognition of them as playing probably the most important role in the play. What we
are instead doing is truly defining Othello as a social tragedy—a tragedy in the sense
that racist and misogynistic ideologies have claimed victory over truly noble and good
heroes and heroines. Though Shakespeare may have not explicitly intended to outline
the terms of this social tragedy, it is up to modern readers and production companies to
constantly re-examine a texts like Othello to discover such how such nuanced
constructions of race, class, and gender have poignancy for us today. In this vain, I like
what Karen Newman has to say:
The task of a political criticism is not merely to expose or demystify the
ideological discourses which organize literary texts, but to reconstitute those
texts, to reread canonical texts in noncanonical ways which reveal the
contingency of so-called canonical readings, which disturb conventional
interpretations and discover them as partisan, constructed, made rather than
given, natural, and inevitable. (157)
Works Cited
Adelman, Janet. “Iago’s Alter Ego: Race as Projection in Othello.” Shakespeare
Quarterly. 48:2. Summer 1997. 125-144.
Bell, Millicent. “Othello’s Jealousy (Shakespeare’s Tragedy).” Yale Review. 85:2. April
1997. 120-137.
Cohen, Walter. Introduction to Othello. In The Norton Shakespeare. Ed. By Stephen
Greenblatt et. al. New York: W.W. Norton and Company. 1997. 2091-2099.
Eagleton, Terry. “’Nothing’: Othello, Hamlet, Coriolanus. In William Shakespeare.
London: Basil & Blackwell. 1986. 64-75.
Greenblatt, Stephen. “The Improvisation of Power.” In Renaissance Self-Fashioning.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1980. 222-254.
Neill, Michael. “’Mulattos,’ ‘Blacks,’ and ‘Indian Moors’: Othello and Early Modern
Constructions of Human Difference.” Shakespeare Quarterly. 49:4. 1998.
361-373.
---. “Unproper Beds: Race, Adultery, and the Hideous in Othello.” Shakespeare
Quarterly. 40:4. Winter 1989. 383-412.
Newman, Karen. “’And Wash the Ethiop White’: Femininity and the Monstrous in
Othello.” In Shakespeare Reproduced: The Text in History and Ideology. Ed. By
Jean Howard and Marion O’Connor. New York: Methuen, 1987. 142-162.
Parker, Patricia. “Fantasies of ‘Race’ and ‘Gender’: Africa, Othello and Bringing to
Light.” In Shakespeare’s Tragedies. Ed. By Susan Zimmerman. New York: St.
Martin’s. 1998. 167-187.
Shakespeare, William. Othello. In The Norton Shakespeare. Ed. By Stephen Greenblatt
et. al. New York: W.W. Norton and Company. 1997. 2100-2174.
Snow, Edward A. “Sexual Anxiety and the Male Order of Things in Othello.” English
Literary Renaissance. 10:3. Autumn 1980. 384-412.