Dr. Ronald Strickland

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 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.369-70)? 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 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 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 beast-like 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 16th century notions of gender and female sexuality, Desdemona also comes to represent a similar form of immoral 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 16th 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 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 hears[6] 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

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.