UNIVERSITATEA DIN CRAIOVA

FACULTATEA DE LITERE
STUDII ANGLO-AMERICANE

LUCRARE DE DISERTAIE

CRAIOVA
- 2013 -

UNIVERSITATEA DIN CRAIOVA

FACULTATEA DE LITERE
STUDII ANGLO-AMERICANE

SEXUAL DIFFERENCE AND INTERNAL

DEVIATION IN OTHELLO
(DIFEREN SEXUAL I DEVIERE
INTERN N OTHELLO)

CRAIOVA
- 2013-

Abstract

Othello, the Moor of Venice explores anxious preoccupation with perversity as a disordered and
disordering movement. Here extravagant condenses deviation, perversion, and vagrancy. In one
sense the metaphors of truth, linearity, and deviation point simply to duplicity; but also signified is
a willful disarticulation of traditional relations between authority, service, and identity. The
opposition of woman as passive/active correlates closely with that of women as madonna/whore.
That she is actually attempting to live out the prescribed subject position for a woman within
sexual difference only confirms that because the subordinate is so often the subject of
displacement there is never safety in obedience. Sexuality undoubtedly acts as the catalyst within
Desdemona and Othello's demises, working through a mixture of Othello's mental state, Iago's
conflicting sexual orientation, and treacherous plan. Shakespeare wrote Othello with more sexual
overtones and a more realistic sexual theme than any other of his plays; sexuality became the
major theme behind the tragedy.

Contents
1. Introduction..............................................................................5
2. Sexual Difference Theories......................................................7
3. Race as Sexual Difference........................................................13
4. Desdemona, the Errant Woman................................................19
5. Iago's Repressed Homosexuality..............................................27
6. Conclusion................................................................................35
7. Bibliography.............................................................................37
8. Summary in Romanian.............................................................39

Introduction
In many of his works, William Shakespeare explores ideas of gender differences and racial
tensions. Othello, a play whose characters are judged again and again based on appearances and
outward characteristics, is one such work. The protagonist's different ethnic background provides
a platform for probing ideas of racial conflict. Similarly, the presence of well-developed yet
opposing female characters adds a dimension of gender conflict and feminist views. These
seemingly separate themes of Othello-sexual difference and racial conflict-are closely connected
because of similar ties of prejudgment and stereotype. The play's treatment of sexual difference
and gender roles strengthens Othello's racist tones and complicates ethnic tensions. This
dissertation aims at analyzing the relation between the characters sexual difference and their
internal deviation.
In the first chapter I will discuss about sexual difference theories. Freud believes that the infant
begins life in a state of polymorphous perversity, and, to the extent that unsublimated perversion is
incompatible with civilization, it might even be said to be beyond civilization if and when the
conflict between the two is resolved in the favor of the former. Freud also identified perversion as
being, or remaining, at the very center of civilization. Polymorphous perversity is fundamentally
incompatible with the demands of civilization and incompatible with sexual difference- itself a
central principle of social organization. So in growing to adulthood, and thereby becoming
positioned within sexual difference- masculine or feminine- perverse desire is not eliminated but
transformed, via repression and sublimation, into other kinds of energy which civilization then
draws upon. Freud describes homosexuality as the most important perversion of all as well as the
most repellent in the popular mind. The homosexual is significantly implicated in both sexual and
cultural difference. The homosexuals were perceived as a threat to the state and to the social order.
Even more disturbing in certain aspects than the homosexuals was the wandering woman,
perversely straying and inviting others to do the same. The errant woman communicated a
narrative of fall and conversion. If she refused conversion and social inclusion, her absolute
isolation confirmed a separation between mayhem and order; while, if she accepted, her piety
certified the process of purification.
The second chapter presents race as sexual difference. The portrayal of Othello, the Moor of
Venice stands at the complicated crux of contemporary belief about black people and Muslims.
Black-skinned people were usually typed as godless, bestial, and hideous, fit only to be saved (and
in early modern Europe, enslaved) by Christians. Both blacks and Muslims were regarded as given
to unnatural, sexual and domestic practices, as highly emotional and irrational, and prone to anger
and jealousy; both existed outside the Christian fold. Othello yokes together and reshapes
available images of blackmoors and Moors, giving us a black Moor who has both a slave past
and a noble lineage, a black skin and thick lips as well as great military skill and rhetorical
abilities, a capacity for tenderness as well as propensity to violence. In spite of his all qualities, the
patriarchal society cannot overlook Othello's skin color and accept his marriage with a white
woman. This fact leads to Othello's alienation. He moves from being a colonized subject existing
on the terms of white Venetian society and trying to internalize its ideology, towards being
marginalized, outcast and alienated from it in every way, until he occupies his true position as its
other. His precarious entry into the white world is ruptured by his relation with Desdemona, which
was intended to secure it in the first place, and which only catalysis the contradictions in Othellos
self-conception. So instead of the unified subject of humanist thought, we have a near
5

schizophrenic hero whose last speech graphically portrays the split- he becomes simultaneously
the Christian and the Infidel, the Venetian and the Turk, the keep of the State and its opponent.
The third chapter is dedicated to Desdemona. In the early modern mind, it was supremely
unnatural for a white woman to want a black man. That Desdemona should so err from nature
would be indicative of her unnatural therefore, wrong, gender performance. The very fact of her
miscegenation marriage, both within the script of the play and the societal script that existed in the
culture in which the play was created, makes Desdemona deviant from her gender performance. At
the beginning, Desdemona is described as passive, a maiden never bold, but as she expresses her
desire for the black men, she becomes sexually active and perceived as a whore. Though she
claims her right to speak, Desdemona remains a dominated daughter, a dominated woman in a
patriarchal society that will not allow women to grow up, to assert themselves in their adult lives,
or even to act in their own defense. In her attempt to be a good wife, she loses her vitality and selfconfidence, drawing her identity from her husband's perceptions. As Othello murders her, she
becomes the ultimate embodiment of the feminine ideal: silent, cold,and chaste, as beautiful as a
marble statue. In her death, Desdemona finally becomes the perfect Renaissance woman.
The last chapter deals with Iago's repressed homosexuality. Iago's 'motiveless malignity' does not
exhaustively justify his evil machinations. Master of words, Iago manipulates the audience into
believing that he hates Othello because he has slept with his wife, Emilia, and also because
Othello has made him an injustice in naming Cassio his lieutenant. It is very unlikely that Iago is
hateful for being betrayed by his wife, given his lack of respect and apparent disinterest in her.
Given this conspicuous lack of a persuasive explanation for Iago's hatred, the interpretation that he
has a homoerotic desire for Othello begins to seem more convincing. In the case of erotic love
triangles, such as the one Iago believes to exist between Othello, Emilia and Iago, there is an equal
amount of erotic tension between all members of the triangle. In any erotic rivalry, the bond that
links the two rivals is as intense and potent as the bond that links either of the rivals to the
beloved. If Iago believes that Othello has slept with Emilia, this would explain why he feels so
much emotion, and erotic feelings, towards Othello. The scene in which Iago describes to Othello
Cassios nighttime confession of his love for Desdemona is evidence of his homoerotic thoughts
about Othello. Iago creates a substitution for a sexual interaction with Othello; instead of pursuing
him physically, he uses his words to create a homoerotic scene in Othellos head. Since the play
began, Iagos been fighting with himself over his sexuality; expressing his true desires would put
him in a vulnerable position, and he would probably be ostracized for them; his potentially
homosexual orientation would be exposed for daws to peck at.

1. Sexual Difference Theories

For all psychoanalysts the development of the human subject, its unconscious and its sexuality go
hand-in-hand, they are intertwined. A psychoanalyst could not subscribe to a currently popular
sociological distinction in which a person is born with their biological gender to which society
generally environment, parents, education, the media adds a socially defined sex, masculine or
feminine. Psychoanalysis cannot make such a distinction: a person is formed through their
sexuality, it could not be added to him or her. The issue of sexual difference can never simply be
the outcome of social construction. One of the reasons for this is that it is exactly through the
assumption of a sexual identity the unconscious process of taking on a feminine or masculine
identification that the subject comes into being as a social and symbolic entity. This means that
the designation of sexuality is not something that occurs in addition to, as a kind of top up to a
subject who is already formed, it is rather the case that there is no subject prior to this process. The
taking on of a sexual identity is the means through which the subject as a social being is
constituted in the first place.
For psychoanalysis it is exactly through the process of taking on a sexed role that we are able to
enter the social and symbolic world. If this is the case, then it makes no sense to think of a subject
who assumes a given gender role, who is gendered by a set of social processes after she or he is a
socially-competent speaking agent. How we come to be sexed, to unconsciously adopt a
psychical masculinity or femininity, is exactly how we enter the world of culture, rules, language,
society. Put in stronger terms, the issue of ones sexual identity is not something that is divisible
from the unconscious core of the human subject. Gender is not stable, but fluid, so it changes
from person to person and from context to context. Like gender, self identity is performativethat
is, what one does at a particular time, place, and context determines ones gender and identity, not
a universal concept of who we are. Our identities are not connected to our supposed essence
(essentialism) but to what we do and are. Our identities are the effect, not the cause, of our
performances. (Bressler, 2007:260)
The human subject is conceived in terms of an essential, intrinsic lack; it is a fragment of
something larger and more primordial, whose existence is dominated by the desire to recover its
missing complement (Silverman,1983: 152). But the complement remains forever out of reach and
desire becomes, for Lacan, a kind of 'derangement', with the subject 'caught in the rails- eternally
stretching forth towards the desire for something else- of metonymy' (1996: 167). But the subject
is not only split in the sense of needing the other to complete itself; it is also split because its
identity is actually informed by the other, by what it is not: If the unconscious means anything
whatsoever, it is that the relation of self and others, inner and outer, cannot be grasped as an
internal between polar and opposites but rather as an irreducible dislocation of the subject in
which the other inhabits the self as its condition of possibility (Weber, 2000: 32-3).
Jacqueline Rose revealed the disruptive power of the unconscious regarding identity and sexual
difference: The unconscious constantly reveals the 'failure' of identity. Because there is no
continuity of psychic life, so there is no stability of sexual identity, no position for women (or for
men) which is ever simply achieved. Nor does psychoanalysis see such 'failure' as a special-case
inability or an individual deviancy from the norm. 'Failure' is not a moment to be regretted in a
process of adaptation, or development into normality, which ideally takes its course... Instead
'failure' is something endlessly repeated and relived moment by moment throughout our individual
histories(1986:90-1). The psychoanalytic rationalization of sexual difference as a tragic split
7

which in turn effects the failure of identity often goes along with an account of the alleged
narcissistic limitations and failures of homosexuality. This returns as to the association of
homosexuality with sameness. As Mitchell observes 'the homosexual was choosing not another of
the same sex, but himself in the guise of another' (1990: 34).
The principal task of civilization is to defend us against nature. It demands high levels of sexual
repression, the energy of the sexual instincts being 'displaced' (Freud, Civilized Sexual
Morality, pp. 39-40) or sublimated into increased or higher cultural activity and development. But
there is a limit to the extent to which can work, and in practice the result is that in avoiding the
pressure to sublimate, the individual may turn to perversion and other forms of deviation which
run counter to the requirements of civilized sexual morality. Most notably, such deviations
undermine marriage, the institution which is central to that morality. Perversion and deviation
characterized those who contradicted nature. The fallen, says Milton, 'pervert pure nature's
healthful rules/ To loathsome sickness' (Paradise Lost, xi. 523-4). This means that binary
opposition between nature and the unnatural is literally what makes perversion and deviation
conceivable, both as demonized categories, and as forms of cultural resistance. Francis Bacon
writing in 1622 nicely illustrated the connections between nature, power, hierarchy, perversion,
and resistance as then conceived: 'for these cases, of women to govern men, sons the fathers,
slaves freemen, are total violations and perversions of the laws of nature and nations'
('Advertisement',33-4). Binary opposites are violent hierarchies. The natural/ unnatural opposition
has been one of the most fundamental of all binaries, and one of the most violent of all hierarchies.
OED defines perversion as an erring, straying, deviation, or being diverted from a path, destiny, or
objective which is understood as natural or right. The explicitly sexual sense of perversion appears
only in the 1993 Supplement, and then cautiously. In the 1993 Supplement the 'pervert' is defined
in a non-sexually specific way as 'one whose instincts have been perverted', although the single
citation from the 1906 issue of the Journal of Abnormal Psychology makes the sexual sense clear
and with reference to 'the most abandoned sexual perverts'. Of the earlier definitions of perversion,
one especially is related to the later sexological/psychoanalytic sense; this is the medical meaning
which defined perversion as 'one of the four modifications of function in disease' (1842). In the
nineteenth century, as Arnold Davidson observes, the sexual instinct was conceptualized primarily
in terms of reproductive function, with the perversions being understood as a deviation from or a
disregard of that function.
Freud saw perversion as pre-cultural or before civilization: the infant begins life in a state of
polymorphous perversity, and, to the extent that unsublimated perversion is incompatible with
civilization, it might even be said to be beyond civilization if and when the conflict between the
two is resolved in the favor of the former. Freud also identified perversion as being, or remaining,
at the very center of civilization. Polymorphous perversity is fundamentally incompatible with the
demands of civilization and incompatible with sexual difference- itself a central principle of social
organization. So in growing to adulthood, and thereby becoming positioned within sexual
difference- masculine or feminine, with each of these governed by a prescriptive heterosexualityperverse desire is not eliminated but transformed, via repression and sublimation, into other kinds
of energy which civilization then draws upon. In their sublimated form especially, the sexual
instincts place 'extraordinarily large amounts of force at the disposal of civilized activity', and this
because they are able to exchange their original aims (sexual) for other ones (social) without their
intensity being diminished (1962: viii.84; xii. 39, 42). The clear implication is that civilization
actually depends upon what is usually thought to be incompatible with it (perversion).
8

For Foucault also, perversion is endemic to modern society, though not in Freudian sublimated
form, and not because of a process of desublimation or some other kind of breakdown in the
mechanisms of repression. It is one of the main arguments of Foucault's History of Sexuality that
perversion is not repressed at all; rather, our culture actively produces it. We are living through
what he calls the 'perverse implantation'. Perversion is the product and the vehicle of power, a
construction which enables it to gain a purchase within the realm of the psychosexual: authority
legitimates itself by fastening upon discursively constructed, sexually perverse identities of its
own making. So Freud's and Foucault's respective theories of perversion are quite different,and, in
important cases, opposed. In the one case (Freud) society requires both the repression of
perversion, and the reconstitution of its energy in a sublimated form; in the other (Foucault)
perversion is not so much a repressed, transformed, and redeployed energy as a construct enabling
social organization and control. Nevertheless, Freud and Foucault share a conviction that
perversion is not only central to culture, but indispensably so given culture's present organization.
Freud described homosexuality as the most important perversion of all (xv. 222) as well as the
most repellent in the popular mind (viii. 84), and as one which, for these reasons and others,
obsessively preoccupies many cultures, including our own. He also found homosexuality to be so
pervasive in human psychology, and made it so central to psychoanalytic theory, that he became
unsure as to whether or not it should be classified as perversion. The general importance which
Freud attributes to perversion is most apparent in Three Essays, first published in 1905. He says:
'the abandonment of the reproductive function is the common feature of all perversions. We
actually describe a sexual activity as perverse if it has given up the aim of reproduction and
pursues the attainment of pleasure as an aim independent of it' (i. 358). On this account, especially
since the arrival of the post-modern, we are presumably all perverts now, actual or aspiring. A
more specific definition is clearly required, and Freud provides it: perversions are sexual activities
which involve an extension, or transgression, of limit in respect 'either to the part of the body
concerned or to the sexual object chosen' (viii. 83).
In Freud's theory the human infant begins life with a sexual disposition which is polymorphously
perverse and innately bisexual. It is a precondition for the sucessful socializing and gendering of
the individual- i.e. for the production of the subject within hetero/sexual difference- that the
perversions be renounced, typically through repression and/or sublimation. In this way not only is
the appropriate human subject produced but so also is civilization reproduced- and doubly so:
civilization protects itself against the anarchic nature of perversions while at the same time tapping
them as a source of ordering energy. Repressed and sublimated perversions help to form, and are
intrinsic to, normality. They might also be said to be the cement of culture, helping 'to constitute
the social instincts' (xi. 437-8); providing 'the energy for a great number of our cultural
achievements' (viii. 84; cf. Xii. 41). If it is true that one does not become a pervert but remains one
(viii. 84), then the real conservative is the pervert (Freud claims that his discoveries have 'quite
remarkably increased the number of people who might be regarded as perverts': vii.86). It is
sexual perversion, not sexual 'normality', which is the given in human nature. Indeed, sexual
normality, as with ideological formations more generally, is precariously achieved and
precariously maintained: the process whereby the perversions are sublimated can never be
guaranteed to work; it has to be reenacted in the case of each individual subject, and is an arduous
and conflictual process, a psychosexual development from the polymorphous perverse to
normality which is less a process of growth and more one of restriction (vii. 57). Sometimes it
does not work; sometimes it appears to, only to fail at a later date. Civilization, says Freud,
remains precarious and 'unstable' (i. 48) as a result.
9

Freud also sees an important connection between the repression of the perversions and hostility
towards psychoanalysis: 'Society believes that no greater threat to its civilization could arise than
if the sexual instincts were to be liberated and returned to their original aims. For this reason
society does not wish to be reminded of this precarious portion of its foundation' (i. 48). What
causes the failure of repression and sublimation? For one thing the individual's innate sexual
instinct may simply be too strong to submit. This idea suggests the hydraulic theory of sexuality
for which Freud has been justly criticized. But he has another account of why it fails. In the article
' Civilized Sexual Morality and Modern Nervous Illness' (1908) he makes especially clear a
thought which runs through his analysis, namely that there is something counter-effective in the
very mechanism of repression, and indeed within the entire civilizing process: instead of
transforming perverse desire into civilized achievement, it counter-productively coerces the
subject into a perverse or neurotic existence; the pain of normality is not just the consequence of a
more or less successful renunciation but the effect of a radical contradiction, an extreme
dysfunction. This contradiction operates not just between civilization and the instincts, but within
civilization.
The homosexual is significantly implicated in both sexual and cultural difference, and for two
main reasons. First because he or she has been regarded as one who fears the difference of the
'other' or opposite sex, and, in flight from it, narcissistically embraces the same sex instead. Adult
homosexual structure is regarded inherently pathological, disturbed, and perverse, and this
because of an inbuilt, narcissistic desire for the same: 'homosexuality is of necessity a narcissistic
condition, as the name itself betrays. Loving homo- the same as me not hetero- the other,
different... Heterosexuality can be more or less narcissistic, it can be very disturbed or not so. In
homosexuality it's inbuilt' (Segal, Interviewed, 212). In some cases 'sameness' can be seen as the
tyranny of Western patriarchal metaphysics, and homosexuality its practice, or its metaphor. The
second reason why the homosexual is involved with difference is because he or she has, in
historical actuality, embraced both cultural and racial difference. Sexually exiled from the
repressiveness of the home culture, homosexuals have searched instead for fulfillment in the realm
of the foreign. Not necessarily as a second best: over and again in the culture of homosexuality,
differences of race and class are intensely cathected. That this has also occurred in exploitative,
sentimental, and racist forms does not diminish its significance.
Luce Irigaray elevates the metaphor of homosexuality as a kind of anti-difference into nothing less
than a far-reaching theory of patriarchal society. She argues that 'the exchanges upon which
patriarchal societies are based take place exclusively among men' and that 'this means that the very
possibility of a sociocultural order requires homosexuality as its organizing principle... all
economic organization is homosexual'. But such homosexuality must be repressed; overt
'masculine' homosexuality is subversive because it openly interprets the law according to which
society operated and in so doing threatens it: 'once the penis itself becomes merely a means to
pleasure, pleasure among men, the phallus loses its power (1985: 74, 24-8, 128, 192-3). Irigaray
has discovered that phallic sexual theory, male sexual science, is homosexual, a sexuality of
sames, of identities, excluding otherness. Heterosexuality, once it is exposed as an exchange of
women between men, reveals itself as a mediated form of homosexuality.
For Rochlin, the homosexual is a sexual coward who will not risk the competitiveness of male
rivalry: 'they've submitted to men... They can't meet the standards of manhood. That takes
incredibly high performance, competitiveness, winning all. Being 'gay' gets you out of the
competition of manhood' (1990: 84-5). Rochlin's theory of heterosexual masculinity remains
10

dependent on a precise and hostile positioning of the homosexual vis--vis the heterosexual male.
The male homosexual is someone who refuses to risk himself in relation to the other, but now the
risk is in relation to the same sex as rival. In this account homosexuals are essentially failed men,
and the arbiters of what it takes to be a successful male are of course not women but other males.
The masterless, without a fixed place, identity, or occupation, were perceived as a threat to the
state and to social order. Even more disturbing in certain aspects than the masterless man was the
masterless, wandering woman, perversely straying and inviting others to do the same. Margaret
Soltan has observed how the 'errant woman' communicated a narrative of fall and conversion. If
she refused conversion and social inclusion, 'her absolute isolation confirmed a separation
between mayhem and order; while, if she accepted, her piety certified the process of purification...
inscribed upon the body of the female vagabond was a foretold linear sequence of conversions
back to culture' (1991:109-10). She also remaked the gender distinctions of errancy: whereas
female errancy typically involved a turning away or downward movement from innocence to
corruption, male erring (as in knight-errant) might imply virtue, initiative, and courage. She
connected this gender difference with the linguistic history of the concept: the Old French errer
meaning to rove or wander, especially in search of adventure, and the identically spelled errer
meaning to stray from what is right. Soltan also remarks a later development whereby the errant
woman came to be linked to the 'penetration of errancy into the heart of civilization' (1991: 109110).
Although the 'modern' sexual pervert does not appear in the OED, the wayward woman figures
prominently as one of the two kinds of pervert who recur in the original dictionary's numerous
citations for the perverse and its cognate terms. The other is the religious heretic. At the start of the
Christian narrative they went together. As Milton put it in Paradise Lost, justifying the ways of
God to men, Satan created a perverted kingdom and Eve was the first convert. Or rather his first
pervert, since 'He in the serpent... perverted Eve' (x.3). In theological discourse perversion may
describe the opposite of conversion, signifying that terrible, unforgivable deviation from the true
faith to the false. It is this use which suggests the first of two central and related paradoxes of the
perverse, and another reason why it is so despised and feared- namely that perversion has its
origins in, or exists in an intimate relation with, that which it subverts. In one sense this is the case
by definition: to err or stray from the right literally presupposes that one was once in the right
place. It goes even deeper than that: in Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) it is not his
discussion of what sexologists including Freud would later call the sexual perversions that
produces the paradoxical sense of the word, but his discussion of what might be thought to be their
opposite. Quite near the beginning of the Anatomy he declares that it is not our bestial qualities
that are potentilly the most dangerous, but our civilized ones: 'Reason, art, [and] judgement',
properly employed, much avail us, 'but if otherwise perverted, they uin and confound us'
(Partition I, 136).
Fear of aberrant movement finds its counterpart in the affirmation of stasis as a metaphysical
ideal. Human endeavour, governed by mundane laws of change, decay, and deviation, is ever
thwarted in its aspiration, ever haunted by its loss of an absolute which can only be regained in
transcendence, the move through death to eternal rest, to an ultimate unity inseparable from a full
stasis. This metaphysical vision has its political uses, especially when aiding the process of
subjection by encouraging renunciation of the material world and conceiving present suffering as
the result of providence or fate, rather than contingent historical circumstance. We might call this
the fatalist metaphysic because ultimately it sees movement as at once the stuff of life and what
11

drives life to death. It also tends to see evil as essentially abberant movement, and desire as a
powerful manifestation of this, For Augustine, sexual arousal- literally the 'involuntary' movement
of erection- epitomized fallen human nature out of control of itself. Man's first transgression was
what brought death into the world; and since it was the movement of desire which led to that
transgression, desire itself is intimately bound up with death (City of God, xiv. xvi-xvii). But
metaphysics, as a legitimating structure of human society, cannot rest with the perfection of stasis.
To a degree it will convert the idea of stasis into notions of order, structure, and law, but these can
never adequately organize the productive energies of society. Because movement itself has to
receive a degree of metaphysical legitimation, there is always a need for what we might call an
activist metaphysic as well a fatalist metaphysic.

12

2. Race as Sexual Difference

Othello is both a fantasy of interracial love and social tolerance, and a nightmare of racial
hatred and male violence. In this play, a white woman flouts the established social hierarchies
of clime, complexion and degree to marry a black man, an act that betrays, in the eyes of
some beholders, Foul disproportions, thoughts unnatural! (III.iii.235-8). Location, skin color,
and class are seen to add up to nature itself. But the real tragedy of the play lies in the fact
that these hierarchies are not external to the pair. Iagos machinations are effective because
Othello is predisposed to believing his pronouncements about the inherent duplicity of women,
and the necessary fragility of an unnatural relationship between a young, white, well-born
woman and an older black soldier. Ideologies, the play tells to us, only work because they are
not entirely external to us. Othello is a victim of racial beliefs precisely because he becomes an
agent of misogynist ones.
The portrayal of Othello, the Moor of Venice stands at the complicated crux of contemporary
belief about black people and Muslims. Black-skinned people were usually typed as godless,
bestial, and hideous, fit only to be saved (and in early modern Europe, enslaved) by Christians.
On the other hand, commentators such as Henry Blount wondered whether Muslims, with their
tightly organized religion and sophisticated empires, were absolutely barbarous or whether
they had another kind of civility, different from ours(Blount, 1638:2). Both blacks and
Muslims were regarded as given to unnatural, sexual and domestic practices, as highly
emotional and irrational, and prone to anger and jealousy; both existed outside the Christian
fold. Othello yokes together and reshapes available images of blackmoors and Moors, giving
us a black Moor who has both a slave past and a noble lineage, a black skin and thick lips as
well as great military skill and rhetorical abilities, a capacity for tenderness as well as
propensity to violence.
This cocktail has provoked fierce debates about Othellos appearance and racial origins.
Various characters in the play (including himself) harp upon his sooty bosom and his thick
lips; recalling age-old stereotypes of black people, they call him a devil, old black ram,
and a Barbary horse, all images which attached to sub-Saharan Africans. But the lascivious
Moor with his sword of Spain also evokes the image of the turbaned Turk to whom he
compares himself at the end of the play. In an earlier period, critics who wanted to rescue
Shakespeares hero from the taint of blackness were eager to prove that even if dark or
African, in Shakespeares imagination, Othello could not possibly be Negroid. Ridleys
efforts to prove Othellos non-negroid racial origins are notoriously and crudely racist: There
are more colors than one in Africa, and that a man is black in color is no reason why he should,
even to European eyes, look sub-human. (1958: p.Ii) Fiedler says that for Shakespeare, black
does not describe an ethnic distinction fair has a primarily moral significance; that there
was no racism in Elizabethan England, that the kind of horror that contemporary audiences
might feel at a black/ white mating is no part of the play; since miscegenation had not yet
been invented we are to read the blackness of Othello as primarily symbolic(1974:143-5).
A more significant impulse, however, has been the widespread critical assumption that
Shakespeare's plays depict not the particularities but the essentials of the human condition.
A.C. Bradley, for example, asserts that in regard to the essentials of his character Othello's
race is unimportant, and that Shakespeare would have laughed if anyone had congratulated
him on the accuracy of his racial psychology(Bradley, 1904:187). Robert Heilman calls
13

Othello a 'drama about Everyman, with the modifications necessary to individualize

him(1956:139). Harold Clarke argues that Othello is 'neither a Negro nor a Moor' but 'any
man who is more beautiful within than he is without(Clarke,1974:81). Jane Adamson claims
that Othello's Moorishness matters only in so far as it is part of a much larger and deeper
issue-the distinction in life between the 'fated' and the 'free' aspects of the self(Adamson,
1980:7-8). This tendency to transcend the particulars of race or culture is not restricted to those
critics most sympathetic to Othello, for, in their famous critiques of Othello's egotism and selfdelusion, neither F.R. Leavis nor T.S. Eliot even alludes to such matters; both treat Othello's
moral flaws as universals. The weight of critical tradition, then, presents a Shakespeare who
finds racial and cultural difference insignificant and who assimilates his Moor into the
"human" condition.
Critics impressed by the importance of Othello's Moorishness have tended to respond in two
quite different ways. Some, like Albert Gerard and Laurence Lerner, have argued that Othello
is fundamentally savage. For Gerard, "Othello's negroid physiognomy is simply the emblem of
a difference that reaches down to the deepest levels of personality. . . . Othello is, in actual
fact, what Iago says he is, a 'barbarian'(1977:13). Laurence Lerner calls Othello the story of a
barbarian who (the pity of it) relapses and concludes that Shakespeare suffered from color
prejudice(1959:360). For such critics the play is a study of a character whose innate savagery
is disguised by a thin veneer of civilization and Christianity. A more persuasive and influential
response to Othello's Moorishness has been to contrast Shakespeare's treatment of race with
that of his contemporaries. Both G.K. Hunter and Eldred Jones, in particular, have argued that
Shakespeare invokes the negative Elizabethan stereotypes of African only to discredit them.
The play manipulates our sympathies, supposing that will have brought to the theatre a set of
careless assumptions about Moors. We will find it easy to abandon these as the play brings
them into focus and identifies tem with Iago, draws its elaborate distinction between the
external appearance of devilishness and the inner reality.
There is little questioning that in choosing Othello for his protagonist Shakespeare sought to
create a realistic portrait of a Moor. The protagonist in his source, Cinthio's Gli Hecatommithi,
is a mere stereotype, noteworthy in Venice only for being black, jealous, and vengeful.
Shakespeare's protagonist is not only richly complicated but individualized and set apart from
Venetian society in almost every respect-in his blackness, his past, his bearing, and, above all,
his language, with its unusual rhythms, grandeur, and exoticism. As Lois Whitney has shown,
moreover, many of Othello's specific attributes probably derive from Shakespeare's reading of
Leo Africanus, whose Geographical Historic of Africa, translated by John Pory, was published
in London in 1600. Whitney shows that Pory's description of Leo's life is remarkably like
Othello's. He too was a Moor of noble descent, an inveterate wanderer in exotic lands, a
convert to Christianity; he too was once sold into slavery and redeemed. Leo's descriptions of
the Moors, in addition, emphasize many of the attributes that critics have noted in Othello:
simplicity, credulity, pride, proneness to extreme jealousy and anger, and courage in war. If
Shakespeare depended upon Leo Africanus for such details, he must have been much more
interested in 'racial psychology'(Whitney, 1922:470-83). His interest, of course, was not
anthropological in the modern sense. As Whitney makes clear, he seems to have constructed
not a member of a particular society but a composite 'African,' a synthesis of details drawn
from Leo's descriptions of both 'tawny' and 'black' Moors. In this, he was doubtless encouraged
by the looseness of Leo's own terminology, which blurs distinctions among the various groups
he describes.
14

If we consider the African attributes that Shakespeare probably took from Leo Africanus, we
can see in the characterization of Othello complex gestures towards cultural differentiation.
Othello's African qualities are presented from two sides. Iago calls Othello a credulous fool
(IV.i.45), for example, but he also alludes to his free and open nature (I.iii.399). Othello's
pride appears at times as vanity, at times as rightful self-respect. His passionate nature leads to
murderous violence, but it also contains deep love and tenderness. His courage serves him well
in war but is ill-adapted to the complexities of peace. Othello's reactions to the stress created
by lago bring to the surface what seem to be latent or repressed aspects of his 'Moorishness':
his uncontrollable passion, for example, his superstitious interpretation of the handkerchief, or
his ritualistic attempt to make the murder of Desdemona a sacrifice. But neither his character
nor the cause of the tragedy can be reduced to some innate savage impulse. Shakespeare's
portrayal of Othello takes important steps towards cultural concreteness but does not end in
psychological determinism. Othello is neither Everyman nor an inhuman savage. In
responding to Othello, then, it is important to recognize both the concreteness and complexity
of his Africanness. Paradoxically, however, Othello's Africanness is crucial to his tragedy
not because of what he is, innately or culturally, but because of how he is perceived, by others
and by himself. In this sense, Othello is a tragedy of perception.
Colors have been invested with moral connotations. G.K. Hunter identifies a powerful and
ancient tradition associating black-faced men with wickedness (which) came right up to
Shakespeares own day(Hunter, 1967:35). Part of this tradition derived from a Bible-centered
conception of the world in which humanity was graded according to its geographical distance
from the Holy Land- hence black people were devilish because they existed outside both the
physical and the conceptual realm of Christianity. Blacks became identified with the
descendants of Ham, and their color a direct consequence of sexual excess. The devil and his
associates were inextricably linked with blackness: a damned soul may and doth take the
shape of a blackmoore (Hunter, 34). Hunter also includes a general cultural hostility to
strangers as a factor influencing racial prejudice, but erroneously locates this to a response to
the basic antinomy of day and night which to him explains the sense of racism all over the
world (even in darkest Africa) from the earliest to the latest times(Hunter, 32). This
dangerously universalizes and naturalizes white racism, whose various histories indicate
interlinking situations of oppression rather than a trans-historical color consciousness.
Eldred Joness study Othellos Countrymen established that Shakespeare did not depend on
literary sources for his portraits of black people and that there was a growing black presence in
England with evidence of its widening contact with white inhabitants. Black presence was
both perceive and constructed as a threat by the state. Royal proclamations and state papers
point to the great numbers of negroes and blackmoors in the country, of which kind of people
there are already too manye. Queen Elizabeth's correspondence with the Privy Council,
seeking to deport eighty-nine black people, is significant. A warrant issued on 18 July 1596
contrasts black or those kinde of people with the white subjects or Christians people in a
passage illustrative of the Orientalist split between a superior European culture, constituting
us, and the inferior non-European peoples and cultures, constituting them. This split is a
crucial component in establishing the hegemony of the former. Elizabeth's commnique also
crucially puts forward argument that blacks will create unemployment, 'want of service', for
her white people. Here again she evokes the myth of a rampant black sexuality and their
'populous' numbers, seeking to limit and control black presence in the imperial country. Its
15

echoes in today's immigration and deportation laws are not accidental but are ensured by a
continuous reworking of past prejudices in later relations of dominance.
There is a historical dependency between patriarchalism and racism. In Europe, the increased
emphasis on heterogeneity of peoples and grouping occurs alongside the escalation of
patriarchal discourses on the separateness of female identity from masculine. Helen Carr
points out that colonist, racist and sexist discourse have continually reinforced, naturalized
and legitimized each other during the process of European colonization(Carr, 1985:46).
Although the specificity of racism and patriarchy should not be blurred by this analogy, the
connections are important. Both women and racial others are posited as biological and
natural inferiors and similar characteristics are attributed to them: in the language of
colonialism, non-Europeans occupy the same symbolic space as women. Both are seen as part
of nature, not culture, and with the same ambivalence: either they are ripe for government,
passive, child-like, unsophisticated, needing leadership and guidance, described always in
terms of lack- no initiative, no intellectual powers, no perseverance; or on the other hand, they
are outside society, dangerous, treacherous, emotional, inconstant, wild, threatening, fickle,
sexually aberrant, irrational, near animal, lascivious, disruptive, evil, unpredictable (Carr, 50).
Thus, the operations of patriarchialism seek to extend the control and authority of man as
father over women, and white man as father over black men and women.
Othello perception as an outsider is influenced by both racial and sexual difference. He moves
from being a colonized subject existing on the terms of white Venetian society and trying to
internalize its ideology, toward being marginalized, outcast and alienated from it in every way,
until he occupies his true position as its other. His precarious entry into the white world is
ruptured by his relation with Desdemona, which was intended to secure it in the first place,
and which only catalysis the contradictions in Othellos self-conception. So instead of the
unified subject of humanist thought, we have a near schizophrenic hero whose last speech
graphically portrays the split- he becomes simultaneously the Christian and the Infidel, the
Venetian and the Turk, the keep of the State and its opponent. At the same time, Desdemona
passes from being his ally who would guarantee his white status to becoming his sexual and
racial other.
Perhaps the most pervasive sign of Othello's alienation is to be found in the use or, more
precisely, the avoidance of Othello's name. The Folio title, Othello: the Moor of Venice,
presents two alternatives: the one implying assimilation, the other alienation. Within the play,
broadly speaking, characters can be divided by their preference for one or the other: the more
racist the character, the less the inclination to use Othello's name. Iago refers to Othello by
name only five times; he calls him the Moor more than twenty times. Roderigo never refers
to Othello by name, calling him the Moor twice, the thicklips once. Brabantio too never
uses Othello's name, nor does Emilia; the former calls him the Moor three times, the latter,
eight. Among these characters the naming of Othello becomes an exercise in reducing the
individual to a class, the person to an object. Othello is a thing long before the image of his
body and Desdemona's poisons sight.
Characters without overt racial hostility tend to use Othello's name more often, and when they
call him the Moor, as they almost all do, they tone down the label's negative connotations by
means of positive adjectives, as in Montano's the noble Moor (II.iii.138). Montano uses the
name twice, the epithet three times. Cassio uses the name once, the epithet once. Desdemona
16

refers to Othello only once by name, four times by epithet, softening it twice in the phrases
the Moor, my lord (I.iii.189) and my noble Moor (III.iv.26). The only character in the play
who restricts himself to Othello's name is the Duke, who does so twice in the trial scene, for
obviously political reasons: he almost ignores Brabantio's entrance, so intent is he upon
securing valiant Othello's assistance in the present emergency. That even the play's
sympathetic characters tend to label Othello the Moor betrays the pervasiveness of his
alienation. Iago's malicious I hate the Moor (I.iii.366) is a far cry from Desdemona's loving,
the Moor, my lord. But even her phrase implies an awareness of difference that estranges.
Throughout the play, the naming of Othello keeps an audience subtly conscious of the
impossibility of Othello's complete assimilation and gives to his numerous self-references, as
in That's he that was Othello (V.ii.284), a special weight.
Othello never defends his blackness; nor does he defend the religion or culture that lies behind
him. The most rootless of Shakespeare's tragic heroes, he has no geographical or cultural
anchor to his being. He is not only a convert but has been, from the age of seven, a wanderer;
in Roderigo's sarcastic phrase, he is an extravagant and wheeling stranger / Of here and every
where (I.i.136-37). Given the lack of information available to Elizabethans on African
cultures, even in Leo Africanus, Shakespeare might have had Othello's rootlessness virtually
forced upon him; representing a homeless wanderer perhaps offered him a way of dramatizing
alienation without the necessity of creating a credible cultural background. If so, Shakespeare
turned this ethnographic defect into an imaginative virtue, for Othello's very lack of a cultural
identity becomes a powerful ingredient in his tragedy. Othello's alienation goes deeper, for he
is estranged not only from Venetian society but, as a wheeling stranger, from his own.
Throughout the play, Othello sees himself either as an exotic Venetian, a convert in the fullest
sense, capable of complete assimilation, or he sees himself as a barbarian, worthy of
destruction. His failure to break free of this constricting framework, to achieve a true sense of
personal identity, is one of the play's most powerful sources of tragic feeling.
Such a claim may seem paradoxical for a character whom critics often accuse of pride and
whose first appearance seems to demonstrate a magisterial self-confidence. Othello's first
action in the play is to brush aside Iago's warning of Brabantio's challenge to the marriage.
My parts, my title, and my perfect soul, / Shall manifest me rightly (I.ii.31-32), he claims. He
asserts that his own social status is worthy of Desdemona-I fetch my life and being / From
men of royal siege (I.ii.21-22)-and that his past services to the state will guarantee his
security: My services, which I have done the signiory, / Shall out-tongue his [Brabantio's]
complaints (I.ii.18-19). Here and throughout the play Othello's language is often rhetorically
inflated; Shakespeare even calls attention to this quality in Iago's mocking allusion to Othello's
bumbast circumstance (I.i.13). The inner cause of this language is not pride, however, as
moralistic critics contend, but insecurity. Challenged by Brabantio, Othello surely knows that
he has crossed a dangerous line; he has, after all, eloped. In asserting so grandly his
imperviousness to attack, Othello is not proud and foolishly complacent but, as later events
confirm, somewhat naive and secretly insecure.
When his marriage is challenged, Othello rests his defense upon his abilities, his rank, his
virtue, and his service to the state. As the attitudes of lago, Roderigo, and Brabantio make
clear, however, none of these is relevant to the most fundamental threat he poses, that of
miscegenation, embodied in lago's nightmarish image of the beast with two backs. Brabantio
calls attention to the disparities in years, social status, and religion that separate Othello from
17

Desdemona, but his anguish centers on the unnaturalness of the marriage; what obsesses him
is Othello's sooty bosom, his status as a thing. Othello has no defense against such
unreasoning hatred, and it is no surprise that he does not recognize overtly the possibility of its
existence. The threat of miscegenation is the play's hidden nightmare, and it cannot be
overcome by arguments about virtue or service to the state.

3. Desdemona, the Errant Woman

18

In the early modern mind, it is supremely unnatural for a white woman to want a black man.
That Desdemona should so err from nature would be indicative of her unnatural therefore,
wrong, gender performance. The very fact of her miscegenation marriage, both within the
script of the play and the societal script that existed in the culture in which the play was
created, makes Desdemona deviant from her gender performance. That the belief that
Desdemonas desire for a man not of her clime, complexion, and degree(III.iii.263) would
have been deemed deviant was deeply ingrained in the psyche of the males in the play is seen
by the fact that it is Othello himself who first comments, when Iago first begins to plant the
seeds of Desdemonas disobedience in his mind: I do not think but Desdemonas honest.[]
And yet, how nature erring from itself-(III.iii.259, 263). Iago, seeing the opening, jumps in
immediately, driving home the fact that Desdemonas rejection of any man of her own
clime, complexion, and degree, whereto we see in all things nature tendsFoh! One may
smell in such a will most rank, foul disproportion, thoughts unnatural( III.iii.263-266).
Cowhig locates Desdemonas love in the context of a white womans fantasies for the exotic
male: is she not more attracted to the exotic myth of otherness than to the real man?
Given the enormous popularity of travel books among white women can we not say that
Desdemona was an early travel book fanatic?(1985:13) If we are not to subscribe to the
usual myths about female propensity for romance, however, the susceptibility of Desdemona
to the proverbial outsider must be viewed in the additional context of the confinement of the
woman and the increasing restriction of her mobility and freedom. Desdemonas fascination
indicates her desire to break the claustrophobic patriarchal confine. Travel, adventure, and
freedom being male domains, she first wishes that heaven had made her such a man and
then begins to love Othello for the dangers I had pasd (I.iii.163,167) Projected on to the
outsider are all the fantasies of freedom and love, both of which are unable to be even
visualized from within the world. It is true that Desdemona only invokes the right to owe duty
to her husband and not her own autonomy. But in doing so she defies patriarchal control over
her desires. Desdemonas eroticism is particularly disturbing in its explicit and frank avowal of
the downright violence of her passion and her claim to the rites for why I love him
(I.iii.248, 252)
Therefore, the fact of Desdemonas breaking the script, as it were, by her desire for a black
man is just as incriminating as her act of disobedience. These two errors in her gender
performance are the keys to her destruction. Conversely, even perversely, however Desdemona
would be doomed by the script, even if she had never errd from nature. It is not only the
places where Desdemona follows the script that dooms her; it is the script itself. Iago ties
together the arguments that because Desdemona violated the script once, she must do it again
with the argument that all women, sooner or later, will become sexually transgressive. It is
against nature, Iago argues, for Venetian women to sleep with Black Men. Fair enough, but
then he continues to argue, and it is nature of women, (particularly Venetian women) to be
unfaithful to their husbands. It would seem that, at least in the mind of Iago, and Rodrigo, and
finally, Othello himself, because a woman defies the script in some ways, (disobedience,
marrying outside her race) does not mean that she will not stick to the script in others,
particularly in those ways in which women are prone naturally to badness.
Alternately canonized and criticized for loving Othello, Desdemona has been praised for her
devotion and censured for her sexuality, described as deceptive, proud, and manipulative or as
helplessly passive. She is herself a tragic paradox. A spirited, courageous young woman,
19

Desdemona is moved by the depth of her love to conform to a static and fatal ideal of feminine
behavior. Among those critics for whom she shines as a saintly ideal, Irving Ribner said that
in the perfection of her love Desdemona reflects the love of Christ for man,(1960:95) and G.
Wilson Knight found her a divinity comparable with Dante's Beatrice(1954:109). Yet W.H.
Auden observed One cannot but share Iago's doubts as to the durability of the marriage,
predicting that given a few more years of Othello and of Emilia's influence and she might
well, one feels, have taken a lover(1962:268-9). Jan Kott, too, found her strong sexuality
disturbing: Of all Shakespeare's female characters she is the most sensuous... Desdemona is
faithful but must have something of a slut in her(1974:104). Beyond a doubt, Desdemona is
affectionate and sensual, but this does not make her a slut any more than the absence of
sexuality would sanctify her. Too often her critics themselves have fallen victim to the virginwhore complex, the false dilemma that dominates the perception of women in traditional
society. A few critics have recognized the simple fact that Desdemona is both a virtuous and a
passionate woman.
The elopement can be interpreted as the proof of her courage or evidence of her deceptive
nature, a measure of her determination to have a life that seems to offer the promise of
excitement denied to her as a sheltered Venetian senator's daughter. We may laugh at Thomas
Rymer's oversimplified reading of the play as a caution to all Maidens of Quality how,
without their Parents consent, they run away with Blackamoors and a warning to all good
Wives, that they look well to their Linen(1956:132-34) Desdemona's critics range from the
sublime to the ridiculous. Predominantly male, they have seen her as either willful and
manipulative or helplessly passive: a determined young woman... eager to get her own way;
her advocacy for Cassio demonstrating her desire to dominate Othello, revealing a strong case
of penis envy. Arthur Kirsch saw her advocacy as concern for her husband, realizing that his
continued alienation from Cassio was unnatural and injurious to them both,(1978:44) while
Auden called this merely another demonstration of her pride: In continuing to badger Othello,
she betrays a desire to prove herself and to Cassio that she can make her husband do as she
pleases(1962:269). Bradley, by contrast, found her helplessly passive, an innocent, loving
martyr: Desdemona is helplessly passive. She can do nothing whatever. She cannot retaliate
even in speech; no, not even in silent feeling. And the chief reason of her helplessness only
makes the sight of her suffering more exquisitely painful. She is helpless because her nature is
infinitely sweet and her love absolute... Desdemona's suffering is like that of the most loving
of dumb creatures tortured without cause by the being he adores(1905:179). In a similar vein,
Bernard McElroy wrote, The inner beauty and selflessness of her character are exactly what
render her most vulnerable to the fate that overtakes her(1986:114). As Carol Thomas Neely
observed, for traditional critics, the source of her sainthood seems a passivity verging on
catatonia(1987: 84).
That Desdemona is neither goddess nor slut Shakespeare makes very clear. He evidently
realized that he would have to defend his characterization of her more against the idealization
of the essentially good characters than the denigration of the villain. Consequently, though he
undermines both extremes, he expends his main efforts in disarming Desdemona's champions
rather than her enemy. In her first two appearances, Shakespeare establishes her character and
thus holds in balance the diverging views, but he goes out of his way to make her human rather
than divine. He carefully shapes Othello's account of Desdemona to counter Brabantio's initial
description of her as "A maiden never bold, / Of spirit so still and quiet that her motion /
Blushed at herself" (I. iii. 94-6). Because Brabantio is unwilling to believe that Desdemona's
20

"perfection so could err" (I.iii.100) that she would elope with Othello, he accuses him of
seducing her by witchcraft or drugs. In Othello's eloquent defense (I. iii. 127-69), he shows not
only that Brabantio's accusations are false but also that it was Desdemona who invited his
courtship. His description of her coming with "greedy ear" to "devour" his tales of cannibals,
anthropophagi, and his own exploits suggests that she is starved for excitement and fascinated
by Othello because his life has been filled with adventure. She loved him, he says, for the
dangers he had passed. So far is Desdemona from being Brabantio's "maiden never bold" (I.
iii. 94) that she gave Othello "a world of kisses" (I. iii. 159) for his pains and clearly indicated
that she would welcome his suit:
She wished
That heaven had made her such a man.
She thanked me,
And bade me, if I had a friend that loved her,
I should but teach him how to tell my story,
And that would woo her. Upon this hint I spake. (I. iii. 162-66)
The scene is carefully managed so as to create sympathy for both Othello and Desdemona.
Because Desdemona initiates the courtship, Othello is absolutely exonerated of Brabantio's
charge. His cautiousness acknowledges the tenuousness of his position as a black man in
Venetian society and is appropriate and even admirable. The Moor cannot be confident of
Desdemona's attraction to him, and he undoubtedly knows that marrying him would isolate her
from her countrymen. Recognizing Othello's reticence and undoubtedly its causes, Desdemona
makes it clear she loves him but, at the same time, maintains a degree of indirection.
Shakespeare does not wish to make her seem either shy or overly forward.
When Desdemona finally appears, she strengthens the image Othello has presented. Before the
senators, she answers her father's charges forcefully and persuasively, without shyness or
reticence. More significantly, it is she, and not Othello, who first raises the possibility of her
going to Cyprus. Othello asks only that the senators give his wife "fit disposition" (I. iii. 236),
but when the Duke asks her preference,Desdemona pleads:
If I be left behind,
A moth of peace, and he go to the war,
The rites for why I love him are bereft me,
And I a heavy interim shall support
By his dear absence. Let me go with him.(I. iii. 255-59)
Her wish not to be left behind as a "moth of peace" is a desire not to be treated as someone too
fragile to share the intensity of Othello's military life. As though she might have overheard
Brabantio tell Othello that she would not have run to his "sooty bosom" (I. ii. 69), she
confirms her sexual attraction to him as well as her own sexuality by insisting that she wants
the full "rites" of her marriage.
21

Shakespeare's delicately poised portrayal of Desdemona to this point prepares us for the
splendid antithesis between Iago and Cassio in the middle of the second act:
Iago. Our general cast us thus early for
the love of his Desdemona; who
let us not therefore blame.
He hath not yet made wanton the night with her, and she is sport for Jove.
Cassia. She's a most exquisite lady.
Iago. And, I'll warrant her, full of game.
Cassia. Indeed, she's a most fresh and
delicate creature.
Iago. What an eye she has! Methinks it
sounds a parley to provocation.
Cassia. An inviting eye; and yet methinks
right modest.
Iago. And when she speaks, is it not analarum to love?
Cassia. She is indeed perfection. (II. iii. 14-28)
Such a carefully counterpointed exchange invites us to adjust both views. Iago distorts
Desdemona's character by suppressing the side of it that Cassio insists on and emphasizing her
sensuality. His suggestions that she is "full of game" and that her eye "sounds a parley to
provocation" call up an image of a flirtatious and inconstant woman. Iago's view is clearly
limited by his devious purpose and also by his cynical notions about human nature in general
and women in particular. But Cassio's view is limited as well. He idealizes Desdemona as
much as her father did. It is evident1y clear to Iago that his efforts to persuade Cassio of his
vision will fail when he pronounces Desdemona "perfection," as had Brabantio before him (I.
iii. 100). The extravagance of language Cassio uses earlier in describing Desdemona must also
make his view suspect. For example, he tells Montano that Othello hath achieved a maid:
That paragons description and wild fame;
One that excels the quirks of blazoning pens.
And in the. essential vesture of creation
Does tire the ingener.(II. i. 61-5)
After the safe arrival of Desdemona and her companion in Cyprus, Cassio rhapsodizes:
Tempests themselves, high seas, and howling winds,
The guttered rocks and congregated sands,
22

Traitors ensteeped to enclog the guiltless keel,

As having sense of beauty, do omit
Their moral natures, letting go safely by
The divine Desdemona. (II. i. 68-73)
This idealization gives as false a picture of Desdemona as Iago's denigration of her. Cassio's
lines in fact comment more on his character than on Desdemona's. To accept his view of
Desdemona, as many have done, is as grievous a critical mistake as to accept Iago's.
Desdemona is a young woman who transcends any stereotype. In her courage and compassion,
she is androgynous; in her boundless love and goodness she sees beyond the artificial divisions
of the patriarchal hierarchy. She values people not for their social rank, but for themselves. She
has been praised for a man's courage... an extreme example of that union of feminine and
masculine qualities that Shakespeare plainly held essential for either the perfect man or the
perfect woman. Her downright violence and storm of fortunes demonstrates her courage
and defiance of convention as well as the strength of her love (I.iii.250). She loved Othello
for the dangers [he] had pass'd, recognizing in his bold spirit a counterpart of her own,
longing for adventure denied by her confining role as a Venetian senator's daughter. Othello
lov'd her that she did pity them, her feminine compassion equal to her masculine courage
(I.iii.167-8).
Critics have found an echo of the traditional father-daughter relationship, pointing to Othello's
age, which makes him a father surrogate, and noting that he was her father's friend before the
elopement. Some psychological critics have seen her choice of him as motivated by an
Oedipus complex, in which she sought either to marry someone like her father or to punish her
father for being faithless to her in childhood. They explain her subsequent passive behavior as
moral masochism, motivated by guilt of her incestuous urgings. But one need not resort to
incest and Oedipus complexes to explain Desdemona's behavior. We have seen in her love for
Othello a highly idealistic strain as well as a passionate attachment, an almost religious fervor
and dedication. All her young life she had longed for a heroic mission, a cause. Because she is
a woman, unable to pursue her heroic ideals, she finds her cause in loving Othello,
subordinating herself in her role as his wife, even as he subordinated his ego to the demands
of war. It is not only Othello who agonize[s]/ A natural and prompt alacrity... in hardness
(I.iii.232-34). Desdemona as well longs for heroic commitment and sacrifice. Given the limits
of her culture, she can find this only indirectly, some would say masochistically, by devoting
herself to Othello.
The early modern state was not only increasingly misogynist but made explicit the usefulness
of patriarchalism for tightening its authoritarian controls. State legislation strengthened the
household as an instrument of social control, and laws against every category of potentially
deviant people- the poor, vagrants, prostitutes, witches and even alternative religious ordersattempted to sweep the population within the boundaries of the household and strengthen the
authority of the father. Desdemona poses a specifically Jacobean assault on monarchy when
she assumes authority over her body and persuades the senate to assert the priority of a
contractual relationship over and against the will of the patriarch (Tennenhouse,1986:127).

23

Lawrence Stone hypothesizes that there was an increased enforcement of patriarchy during the
early modern period: The growth of patriarchy was deliberately encouraged by the new
Renaissance state on the traditional grounds that the subordination of the family to its head is
analogous to, and also a direct contributory cause of, subordination of subjects to the
sovereign(1979:152). Stone further writes: Patriarchy for its effective exercise depends not
so much on raw power or legal authority, as on recognition by all concerned of its legitimacy,
hallowed by ancient tradition, moral theology, and political theory. It survives and flourishes
only so long as it is not questioned and challenged, so long as both the patriarchs and their
subordinates fully accept the natural justice of the relationship of the norms with which it is
exercised. Willing acceptance of the legitimacy of the authority, [] are the keys to the whole
system. (1979: 109)
If the entire system of patriarchal authority depends on the willing acceptance of those
subjected by it, (as well as those who must, perforce do the subjecting) Desdemonas action in
eloping is without a doubt a socially transgressive action, but can also be classified as a sexual
transgression for several reasons. First among these reasons is that she disobeys her father to
whom she owes life and education for, all intents and purposes, sex. While it is easy to
discount the sexual aspect of marriage when dealing with historical periods in which
contractual marriage was the norm, the sexual element must not be overlooked, not least of
which because of the procreative nature of marriage. To a man such as Brabantio, a nobleman
who has no other child besides Desdemona, it is not only her fortunes that are now tied to
the Moor, but Brabantios genetic lineage and monetary wealth as well; the overarching
importance of dynastic marriage, the purpose of passing on wealth and family traits is one the
tools that Iago uses so effectively to raise Brabantios ire against his daughter and new son in
law: the devil will make a grandsire of you. [] youll have your nephews neigh to you;
youll have coursers for cousins, and gennets for germans (I.i.99, 124-126).
Therefore, what should seem a private choice becomes a matter for dynastic concern. Butler
explains the depth of Desdemonas transgression in her refusing to perform her role as
daughter: The bride functions as a relational term between groups of men; she does not have
an identity, and neither does she exchange one identity for another. She reflects masculine
identity precisely through being the site of its absence.[] As wives, women not only secure
the reproduction of the name (the functional purpose) but affect a symbolic intercourse
between clans of men. []the woman in marriage qualifies not as an identity, but only as a
relational term that both distinguishes and binds the various clans (1990: 39). Thus,
Desdemona has forced her father to intercourse with a patrilineal group he did not choose.
Further, by eloping she rejects her role as a reflection or symbolic exchange and instead
claims an identity for herself, rejecting her identity as Brabantios daughter.
Desdemonas speech to her father in I.iii. offers further insight into Desdemonas willingness
to subvert the patriarchy. While couched in the language of dutiful submissiveness, there is a
streak of will; a will most rank in the mind of a patriarchal traditionalist such as Iago
(III.iii. 265):
My noble father,
I do perceive here a divided duty.
To you I am bound for life and education;
24

My life and education both do learn me

How to respect you. You are the lord of duty; 11
I am hitherto your daughter. But, heres my husband;
And so much duty as my mother showed
To you, preferring you before her father,
So much I challenge that I may profess
Due to the Moor my lord. (I.iii.198-207)
Even while using the words of submissive words appropriate to a daughter addressing her
father, Desdemona is disrupting the patriarchal control her father seeks to exert over her.
Desdemona is completely unapologetic for her disruption. Throughout Act I, Desdemona has
been identified as object, i.e., my daughter, his daughter, my wife, etc. But here, Desdemona
steps out of the role of object and becomes a subject, in the process making Brabantio and
Othello objects, my father, my husband. Brabantio never identifies himself as Desdemonas
father, Othello never as Desdemonas husband, reserving for themselves an identity separate
from her. By referring to Othello as my husband and Barbantio as my father, it is she who
objectifies the men, claiming for herself the separate identity. While Desdemona is respectful
in her dissent (she consistently uses the more respectful you appropriate for addressing
someone of higher rank than oneself), she is unapologetic.
It is not only the way Desdemona addresses her father in this speech that makes her words
transgressive, but also the way she speaks of herself. To further understand the subversion
inherent in Desdemonas speech, let us look at Butlers explication of the use of the word I
by a woman: A woman cannot use the first person I because as a woman, the speaker is
particular (relative, interested), and the invocation of the I presumes the capacity to speak
for and as the universal human. []This privilege to speak I establishes a sovereign self, a
center of absolute plenitude and power; speaking establishes the supreme act of subjectivity.
This coming into subjectivity is the effective overthrow of sex and hence, the feminine; no
woman can say I without being for herself a total subjectthat is ungendered, universal,
whole (1990:117). Desdemona, seemingly without fear or apology, claims the privilege to
speak I in this speech. Not only does she with her first line of speech change her father from
a subject, one who claims my daughter repeatedly, to an object, my father, but with the
second line she takes for herself full subjectivity; effectively overthrow(ing) her gender. This
is, of course, a complete subversion of her gender performance.
Her transformation from a woman who confronts both her father and the Venetian Senate to
the wife who submits to her husbands insults is a manifestation of the contradictions imposed
upon her by a racist, patriarchal and bourgeois society. As Alan Sinfield says, Desdemona
seems even more discontinuous than Othello because she is less a developing consciuosness
than a series of positions that women are conventionally supposed to occupy (She) makes
sense not as a continuous subjectivity but in terms of stories about women that were and are
told in patriarchal ideology (1992:20-2). Female inconsistancy is a complex amalgam of
being scripted by men, not only literally, but also generally, in patriarchal society.
25

Desdemona knows how to be a dutiful daughter, the traditional role she rejects in courageously
following Othello and her heroic dreams. Her short-lived self-affirmation however turns to
bondage in marriage. Both Othello and Desdemona err in conforming to traditional male and
female stereotypes, adopting persona behavior which prevents real intimacy and trust.
Desdemona's chastity becomes more important to both of them than Desdemona herself.
Othello kills her and she sacrifices herself to affirm the traditional ideal. In the world of
traditional male-female roles, males act and females react. Desdemona cannot change
Othello's perceptions. Her loving unselfishness becomes compulsive compliance which
actually prevents her from defending herself. Iago's assessment of Desdemona is correct. She
attempts to please everyone, fulfilling the role of the good woman. She is of so free, so kind,
so apt, so blessed a disposition, she holds it a vice in her goodness not to do more than she is
requested (II.iii.325-28). Desdemona's error is that of the traditional woman who loves for
others, choosing goodness over selfishness. In attempting to nurture everyone around her, she
fails herself. She pleads eloquently to the duke about her love for Othello. In her boundless
empathy, she pleads for Cassio, but, characteristically woman, she cannot plead for herself.
Unable to speak in her own behalf, Desdemona becomes practically monosyllabic.
Enslaved by the traditional ideal that not only dominates her behavior but distorts her
perceptions, Desdemona sinks into passivity until in IV.ii.98 she tells Emilia she is half
asleep in shock. Attempting to conform to what should be, she fails to see what is,
refusing to recognize Othello's jealousy and the danger it represents. The traditional norms
have given her no means of defending herself. She is told only to bear chiding with all
patience and obedience, and so she does. The idealism and all-consuming nature of her love
lead her into a closed-image syndrome not uncommon among battered wives: she refuses to
believe all this is happening. Othello cannot really be jealous; she never gave him cause. Every
shock to her system is met with a new denial, a new affirmation of her innocence and
obedience in the role of perfect wife. Her inability to accept Othello's jealousy is compounded
by her previously sheltered life, which did not prepare her for anything like this. In loving
Othello, she has risked everything, given up home, father, and country. Her identity as
Othello's wife has become her only identity; her belief system at this point will not tolerate his
rejection, which would make her a nonentity and turn her world to chaos.
Desdemona is a dominated daughter, a dominated woman in a patriarchal society that will not
allow women to grow up, to assert themselves in their adult lives, or even to act in their own
defense. In her attempt to be a good wife, she loses her vitality and self-confidence, drawing
her identity from her husband's perceptions. Despite her forebodings, she lies in bed waiting
for him in V.ii. And as he murders her, she becomes the ultimate embodiment of the feminine
ideal: silent, cold,and chaste, as beautiful as a marble statue: Cold, cold, my girl!/ Even like
thy chastity (V.ii.275-76). The element of necrophilia in Othello's adoration of her sleeping
form is no accident (Be thus when thou art dead, and I will kill thee/ And love thee after
(V.ii.18-19). Carried to its logical extreme, the traditional ideal represents a woman's denial of
her thoughts and desires, her very essence, an ultimate obliteration of the self. In her death,
Desdemona finally becomes the perfect Renaissance woman.

26

4. Iago's Repressed Homosexuality

Our culture is constructed around a set of dichotomies that regulate our thinking and our
behavior in significant ways. This is especially true for our assumptions about the relations of
the sexes. In Western culture, the most accepted and, indeed, promoted relationship is that
between a man and a woman, preferably institutionalized within marriage. This basic pattern
of man and woman seems to comprehend a whole universe of binary oppositions such as
Culture/Nature, Reason/Feeling, Public/Private, and so forth. Cixous (1986:63) quite rightly
wonders in The Newly Born Woman, Is the fact that logocentrism subjects thought all
concepts, codes and values to a binary system, related to the couple, man/woman? Yet in
spite of its seeming universality, the diversity of the couple is one of a line between two points:
there is A and B, or B and A. The introduction of a third term means an explosion of
possibilities. The triangle resists the categorization into binary terms, it transgresses the
boundaries produced by the dichotomous order, it opens up a third space, as Bhabha has it. Far
from being merely a figment of postmodern thought, however, the triangle proves to have
always been a substantial part of Western narrative. In her seminal study of Bisexuality and the
Eroticism of Everyday Life, Garber (2000:423) contends that the fundamental romantic
courtship narratives of Western culture are stories of how the lover won the beloved from a
rival or tragically failed to do so: It is as though love can only be born through an obstacle.
In Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire, Eve Kosofsky
Sedgwicks theorizes that frequently men have homosocial desires for one another, which
offers some evidence to this claim. Sedgwick explains that in the case of erotic [love]
triangles, such as the one Iago believes to exist between Othello, Emilia and himself, there is
an equal amount of erotic tension between all members of the triangle. In any erotic rivalry,
the bond that links the two rivals is as intense and potent as the bond that links either of the
rivals to the beloved (Sedgwick, 1985: 21). If Iago believes that Othello has slept with
Emilia, this would explain partially why he feels so much emotion, and erotic feelings,
towards Othello. Sedgwick goes on to argue that the whole patriarchal system in which women
and men participate uses women as a way for men to form relationships with one another.
Heidi Hartmanns (1979: 34) definition of patriarchy in terms of relationships between men,
in making the power relationships between men and women appear to be dependent on the
power relationships between men and men, suggests that large scale social structures are
congruent with the male-male-female erotic triangles. Patriarchal heterosexuality can best be
discussed in terms of one or another form of the traffic in women: it is the use of women as
interchangeable, perhaps symbolic, property for the primary purpose of cementing the bonds
of men with men. For example, Levi-Strauss writes, The total relationship of exchange which
constitutes marriage is not established between a man and a woman, but between two groups
of men, and the woman figures only as one of the objects in the exchange, not as one of the
partners(1969:115). Here it is the woman who circulates as an object of exchange between
two groups of men, the father's and the husband's. This structure masks a repressed and,
hence, disparaged sexuality, a relationship between men which is, finally, about the bond of
men, but which takes place through the heterosexual exchange and distribution of women
(Butler, 1990: 40). For both Butler and Eve Sedgwick, the social contract of marriage is based
on this homosocial bond, which suppresses and displaces the possibility of any homosexual
bond.
27

Iago's demeaning view of women fits well into this patriarchal world where women figure
only as the objects in the exchange, not as one of the partners. Iago has little interest in his
wife. He has little affection for her, calls her foolish, and believes that she talks too much. The
fact that he focuses more on Othello than he does his wife when he thinks about the affair is
evidence to Sedgwicks theory that hes been using his wife to get closer to Othello. Although
Emilia may not function as an object of exchange because she and Iago are already married,
Iago is certainly able to use her as a tool to justify the intensity of his emotions, which he
claims to be hateful, towards Othello. Despite his claims of hatred, Iago succeeds in securing a
partnership between himself and Othello in a scene that critics have named the Wedding
Scene. The figurative wedding between Iago and Othello demonstrates how a woman can
function as a symbol to secure a relationship between two men. Sedgwick argues such
exchanges are congruent with large-scale social structures, and these structures are also
evident in the play. Iago actively participates in the patriarchal society that relies on
relationships between men. In fact, he claims his anger comes from his being passed over for
the job of lieutenant, which is itself a power relationship between men and men. It thus
stands to reason that Iago has been using the patriarchal system and the (probable) fantasy of a
sexual relationship between Emilia and Othello as a means of forming a closer relationship
with Othello.
This, then, is why Iago is so upset. Rather than being angry at Othello for sleeping with his
wife or at Cassio for getting the position as lieutenant, Iago is upset because he wants to be
closer to Othello; hes hurt that Othello has ignored him and chosen another, younger, man
over himself to be his lieutenant, and hes jealous of Desdemona, who has become Othellos
wife and the most important person in his life, or the captains captain (II.i.75). Any jealousy
involved in his supposed cuckolding is probably aimed at his wife, who is able to sleep with
Othello. Although many of these emotions probably take place at a subconscious level, they
shine through in Iagos speech.
Iago never expresses warm feelings towards Othello that cant be attributed to his playing a
role in order to manipulate him. However, his very denial of these feelings to himself and
Roderigo can serve as evidence of his attraction to Othello. As someone who uses words as his
weapon, its appropriate that he would believe in their power to make his hatred real to
himself. Iagos conversations with Roderigo, in which he repeatedly denies his desire for
Othello, actually serve as proof of his attraction. When explaining why he pretends to love
Othello as his captain, Iago says, I do hate him as I do hell pains./ Yet, for necessity of present
life,/ I must show out a flag and sign of love,/ which is indeed but a sign (I.i.155-58). Iago
keeps repeating how much he hates Othello and denying that he loves him, as though saying
this will make it true. His repetition seems obsessive. Why does he feel the need to tell anyone
this, let alone the desperate and pathetic, jilted-by-love, Roderigo? It would be especially out
of character for a man of secrecy and manipulation to let his feelings of hate consume him to
the point where he rants and repeats them. A more appropriate explanation for his relating
these denials to Roderigo is that he can relate to him. Roderigo is rejected by Desdemona at
the same time that Iago is rejected by Othello when they get married. Iago is indeed feeling
upset, but his pain comes more from Othellos rejection and his jealousy of Cassio and
Desdemonas closeness to Othello. However, feeling the need to cover this up, Iago explains to
Roderigo why he pretends to like Othello in public:
For when my outward action doth demonstrate
28

The native act and figure of my heart

In compliment extern, tis not long after
But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve
For daws to peck at: I am not what I am.
(I. i.67-71)
This is an especially interesting passage in that he says here that hes only pretending to follow
and love Othello because he doesnt want to make his actual feelings known. However, Iago is
a man who rarely speaks the truth, let alone shows his weaknesses. Why should we believe
that hes being honest with Roderigo here? Perhaps the only way to examine whats going on
inside Iagos head is to read his words more closely, and in this case, turn them against him.
The above passage could be interpreted as an explanation for why Iago is pretending about
pretending, or why hes hiding the fact that hes actually attracted to Othello. Expressing his
true desires would put him in a vulnerable position, and he would probably be ostracized for
them; his potentially homosexual orientation would be exposed for daws to peck at. When
read closely, this line is a surprisingly vulnerable one. He fears what others might do to him if
he were to be open with his feelings. The passage ends with an attempt at a cover-up: Iago
says, I am not what I am, but what he means is, I am not what I say I am. It remains up to
interpretation whether this applies to what he says about his feelings for Othello in public or in
private with Roderigo, but I would argue that this statement could apply to the very
conversation in which he says it, thus negating his claims about hating Othello and exposing
the truth: that he desires him.
More evidence as to why Iago keeps this desire a secret is made apparent in another of Iagos
conversations with Roderigo; when consoling him after Desdemona marries Othello, he
says:
Tis in ourselves that we are thus
Or thus. Our bodies are our gardens, to the which
Our wills are gardeners.

If the balance of our lives had not one

Scale of reason to poise another of sensuality, the
Blood and baseness of our natures would conduct us
To most preposterous conclusions: but we have
Reason to cool our raging motions, our carnal
Stings, our unbitted lusts.
(I. iii.322)
29

Although he intends these lines to apply to Roderigo, they could also hold true for Iago; his
base attraction to Othello is something that he uses his will and words to control, and keep
under wraps. Otherwise, such lust could bring him to preposterous conclusions.
When sex is on his mind, however, Iago demonstrates that hes thinking about Othello in
sexual ways with the words he uses, whether he means to or not. The fact that Iago thinks
about sex so often, especially when he considers Othello, can also serve as evidence for his
attraction to Othello. For example, in the beginning of the play, Iago approaches Desdemonas
father to tell him that she and Othello have married. Here, he already begins to use crude
sexual language when referring to Othello having sex: I am one, sir, that comes to tell you
your daughter/ and the Moor are now making the beast with two backs (I.i.115-16). He also
says, Even now, now, very now, an old black ram/ is topping your white ewe (I.i.98-99).
Why is it necessary to use sexual imagery when approaching Desdemonas father? Wouldn't it
have also been effective to tell him that she and Othello had married? Throughout the play,
Iago uses such innuendo only when speaking to Othello about Desdemona, or speaking about
Othello. This use of language shows that his mind immediately focuses on sex when it comes
to thinking about Othellos marital relationship, thus supporting the claim that Iago has at the
very least, erotic, if not homoerotic thoughts about Othello. The imagery he uses could be
sexually arousing for Iago in that he creates vivid sexual pictures in the minds of those he
speaks to, in some cases other men, and in some cases Othello himself. In the case of the lines
quoted above, his arousal could stem from his power to create a sexual scene inside another
mans head, not to mention one involving the object of Iagos desire and the daughter of the
man hes speaking to. He could also enjoy talking about these images out loud because speech
makes them more vivid inside Iagos head. Its likely that Iagos arousal could stem from both
of these explanations.
More substantive homoerotic thoughts are evident in Act III, Scene III when Iago describes
Cassios nighttime confession of his love for Desdemona to Othello:
I lay with Cassio lately;
And, being troubled with a raging tooth,
I could not sleep.

In sleep I heard him say Sweet Desdemona,

Let us be wary, let us hide our loves;
And then, sir, would he gripe and wring my hand,
Cry O sweet creature! and then kiss me hard,
As if he pluckd up kisses by the roots
That grew upon my lips: then laid his leg
Over my thigh, and sighd, and kissd; and then
Cried Cursed fate that gave thee to the Moor!
30

(III. iii. 413-15, 419-26)

If we didnt suspect that Iago had homoerotic thoughts about Othello, we would probably
wonder why he described this dream in such vivid detail (not to mention why Iago wouldnt
wake Cassio up were he to start kissing him hard). Given what we know, though, this scene
can be interpreted as Iagos substitution for a sexual interaction with Othello; instead of
pursuing him physically, he uses his words to create a homoerotic scene in Othellos head.
This is another example of Iago transforming a heterosexual interaction, in this case a dream
about Cassio and Desdemona, into a homoerotic situation, such as the one Iago creates
between himself and Cassio. It is possible to interpret this as another sexually arousing
alternative to actual intercourse with Othello, an option which Iago will not allow himself to
take part in because of his unwillingness to wear his heart upon his sleeve, the probable
shame at feeling this way, and many other emotional, social, and political complications as
well.
In another scene between Othello and Iago, christened the wedding scene by many critics,
speech plays an incredibly important role in Iagos homoerotic pursuit of Othello. Both
characters on their knees, Othello begins the ceremony by saying, In the due reverence of a
sacred vow/ I here engage my words (III iii.461-62). Iago then responds, Witness that here
Iago doth give up/ the execution of his wit, hands, heart,/ to wrongd Othellos service!
(III.iii.466-68). This scene establishes that Iago will replace Othellos wife as the most
important person in Othellos life. The stage directions instruct both Othello and Iago to kneel,
emphasizing once again how similar to a marriage ceremony this scene is. Aside from the
homosexual nature of a figurative wedding between two men, this scene has other implications
for Iagos homoerotic desire for Othello; it incorporates a speech act thats similar to the one
involved in actual Christian weddings (I now pronounce you man and wife) to bind the two
characters together when Iago vows I am your own for ever (III.iii.482). Given his attraction
to Othello, this statement is, perhaps unnervingly for Iago, true in that Iago would really like to
be Othellos own.
Conversely, Desdemonas official marriage, in which she is able to have sex with Othello, is a
source of jealousy for Iago. In his essay, John Wall describes the relationship between Othello
and Iago as a perversion, or inversion, of the relationship between Othello and Desdemona:
In this connection, Othellos ear and Iagos tongue become displaced organs of generation,
and Iago is revealed as the Moors aural-sexual partner. Iagos words thus become the seed
which impregnates Othellos mind through his ear so that it will produce the monstrous birth
of jealousy, the green-eyed monster. (Wall, 1979: 361)
In another article called Iagothello: Psychological Action and the Theme of
Transformation in Othello, William Toole compares Iagos tricking Othello (into thinking that
Desdemonas unfaithful) with seduction when he says, in passing, the seduction of Othello
begins when Iago arouses his suspicion of Cassios relationship to Desdemona (1976: 73).
These passages both demonstrate the fascinating way in which Iago uses his flair for speech
and manipulation to both pursue his desire for Othello and also seek revenge for the pain it
causes him. This dual role of speech works well for Iago because hes a man who uses words
to deceive and manipulate, so he wouldnt want to express his true feelings or his true motives.
It would also be a contradiction for him to say that he has feelings for Othello if he is actively
seeking revenge and trying to destroy Othellos closest friends. His admission of these feelings
31

would probably remove him from his position as the person closest to Othello after the
marriage scene. Were he to speak honestly about how he felt, Iago wouldnt be able to seek
his revenge.
Part of Iagos revenge comes in his implicitly encouraging Othello to kill Desdemona. His
main motive, jealousy, comes from Desdemonas ability to be both physically and emotionally
involved with Othello, where Iago can only speak and control him on a superficial, verbal
level. Arthur Kirsch also says that Iago is Desdemonas sexual antagonist. Where she
luminously represents a union of affection and desire, Iago wishes to reduce love merely to
a lust of the blood, and a permission of the will (I. Iii.222) (1978:734). This confusion of
love with lust could be an explanation for why Iago uses speech in such a deceitful,
manipulative way to pursue his attraction to Othello. Not wanting to wear his heart upon his
sleeve, Iago would avoid pursuing any real feelings of love because, being so dishonest
himself, he probably fears being tricked or manipulated by someone he admits to loving.
Iago is able to gain revenge on Desdemona, the formerly most important person in Othellos
life, by convincing Othello himself to kill her. Othello stifles the voice that he used to hold so
dear at Iagos command when he smothers Desdemona. Even before Othello murders
Desdemona, he cant hear her because Iago has so masterfully taken control of Othellos ear.
This silencing of Desdemona is exactly what Iago wants because, as mentioned earlier, his
power of manipulation comes from his ability to be heard over all opposing, conflicting
voices: Iagos power resides in his ability to shape the reality seen by Othello and other
characters through his skill in making his voice heard, to the exclusion of other, alternate,
contrasting voices (Wall, 1979: 365). Othellos murder of his wife demonstrates Iagos
victory in drowning out the ultimate opposing voice, Desdemona, so that Iago can manipulate
how Othello perceives his marriage.
Some critics may argue that Othellos act of murdering Desdemona, where he smothers her in
bed, is a displaced sex act that evidences Othellos lingering love for her. However, if the act
has anything to do with sex, its only because Iago suggested it be this way:
Othello: Get me some poison, Iago, this night. Ill not
Expostulate with her, lest her body and beauty unProvide my mind again. This night, Iago.
Iago: Do it not with poison, strangle her in her
Bed, even the bed she hath contaminated.
Othello: Good, good. The justice of it pleases.
(IV. i. 216-21)
By appealing to Othellos jealousy at Desdemonas adultery, Iago convinces Othello to kill her
in a much more hands-on way. Othello had planned on poisoning Desdemona, an act without
much sexual connotation. In fact, hes even afraid that her body and beauty will change his
mind so that he wont be able to go through with killing her. Clearly, he had planned on
avoiding too much close contact with Desdemona. However, its at Iagos suggestion that
Othello goes to her in bed and murders her. In Iagos mind, the marriage bed is a good location
32

for this murder to take place: Iago may take pleasure out of imagining Othello killing his
former love in a very sexual way, clearing the way for Iago to take her place both sexually and
in her influence over Othello. Perhaps Iago sees this as Othello destroying his heterosexual
attraction to Desdemona in the hopes that Othello will eventually return his homoerotic
desires.
The marriage bed also plays an important role at the end of the play. After Othello kills himself
and lies down on the bed, Lodovico addresses Iago: Look on the tragic loading of this bed, /
This is thy work (V. i.363-4). If we do examine the bed as Lodovico advises, we may
discover something more about same-sex relationships. Depending on how the director of the
play chooses, the bed can be arranged so that Emilia and Desdemona are lying next to and
facing one another. Although Othello is on the bed too, there is a period of time where only
Emilia and Desdemona are lying together. This emphasizes, and perhaps intentionally sends
the message, that the bond between the women of the play is stronger than the bonds between
husband and wife, especially since both women were killed by their husbands. If, after Othello
dies on the bed, Iago lies down on the bed, too, the message about same-sex relationships is
even stronger. Indeed, many versions of Othello, such as Oliver Parkers film adaptation of the
play, have staged the final scene this way. Such an arrangement, with the two women on one
side and the men on the other, emphasizes the bonds between Desdemona and Emilia, and
Iago and Othello. This implies that such same-sex bonds are stronger, and perhaps more
important, than the bonds between the sexes. If read in such a way, the arrangement of the
marriage bed ironically criticizes and diminishes the relevance of the institution of marriage.
Iago has accomplished his goal of taking Desdemonas place next to Othello in the marriage
bed.
Although Iago succeeds in finding his place next to Othello and convincing him to kill
Desdemona, the play ends without Iago achieving true revenge when he loses his control of
the power of words; he fails to silence all conflicting voices. Iago, a man of words and not
actions, cant quiet the voices of Cassio and Roderigo. He attempts to kill Cassio, but Cassio
survives to tell everyone (including Othello) that he had never committed adultery with
Desdemona. Though Iago is able to kill him, Roderigo gets his own revenge on Iago through
an incriminating letter that explains Iagos plan to kill Cassio. Iago is also unable to stop the
voice of his wife, who insists on being heard and explaining to Othello that Iago planted the
handkerchief on Cassio, until its too late. He kills her, but not before her speech is heard.
Words, it seems, have turned their back on Iago.
Interestingly, Iago uses speech to his disadvantage when he admits to everyone that he
convinced Othello of Desdemonas infidelity:
Emilia: Disprove this villain, if you best a man:
He says thou toldst him that his wife was false:
I know thou didst not, thourt not such a villain:
Speak, for my heart is full.
Iago: I told him what I thought, and told no more
Than what he found himself was apt and true.
33

Emilia: But did you ever tell him she was false?
Iago: I did.
(V.ii.208-215)
Why would Iago admit to such an incriminating deed, here? Were he to deny it, everyone in
the room would probably have believed honest Iago over Othello, the Moor who has just
murdered his wife. Knowing that Desdemona didnt commit adultery, the only reason he
would maintain that she did could be for Othellos sake. Claiming that Desdemona was
unfaithful, and that he told this to Othello, automatically assigns him guilt in her murder. This
strange twist of plot implies that Iago cares for Othellos opinion of him. Though he has duped
Othello, he cares more that Othello believe him than the rest of the people in the room, who
will catch him lying.
After being revealed as a liar and the plotter behind the deaths of Desdemona and Roderigo,
the game is up for Iago. Master of speech and manipulation, he cannot talk his way out of this
situation. Demand me nothing, he says. What you know, you know: / From this time forth I
never will speak word (V. ii.356). This refusal to speak represents Iagos defeat. Though some
may read it as an unwillingness to incriminate himself, I propose a more sympathetic reading
of this passage: Iagos words have always defended him, and now he chooses not to speak.
Could it be that he doesnt want to defend himself? Perhaps Othellos devastation and
disappointment in him have caused some amount of regret in Iago, and he recognizes how
destructive his words can be. After he vows never to speak, Othello responds, Well, thou dost
best (V.ii. 258). If Iago does have some sort of homosexual desire or love for Othello, such
anger aimed at him from Othello would probably be at least upsetting, and could have made
Iago rethink his actions. Alternatively, this passage could also be interpreted as Iagos refusal
to say more for fear he will incriminate himself as desirous of Othello. Unless he has
something to hide, what can be gained by refusing to speak? Everyone will already know what
hes done, whether he says anything or not. His eternal silencing of himself, then, either serves
to protect himself from admitting his attraction or love for Othello, or to stifle the divisive
power of his voice forever.
This is Iagos final trick. Othello dies never knowing the real reason behind why he killed his
wife, or that Iago cared for him. By giving up his speech, Iago remains secretive, taking his
motives for revenge to the grave and manipulating the worlds opinion of him. Even in silence,
Iago is a master of words. His final refusal to speak is not just a way to conceal his thoughts,
however. Speech functions as a tool that allows Iago to pursue a homoerotic love, but hes
restricted by his own secrecy from ever allowing this love to transcend the realm of speech.
Not only are his homoerotic urges confined to words, but Iagos inability to speak openly
about love demonstrates how deeply he buries his feelings in his speech. His silence
symbolizes the closet and serves as a metaphor for that of which he cannot speak. Iago
demonstrates his ultimate control of words when he recognizes that he can no longer use them
to protect himself and silences his own voice. Revealing his true feelings towards Othello
would be so controversial that even Iago knows he would be unable to talk his way out of his
demise. Iago would rather be remembered as the man who murdered Desdemona, Emilia, and
Roderigo than the man who loved Othello.

Conclusion
34

The historical development of racial relations between Shakespeare's time

and our own has virtually compelled twentieth-century critics of Othello to
consider the title character's status as a black man in a predominantly white
society. Othello's blackness is not only a mark of his physical alienation but a symbol, to which
every character in the play, himself included, must respond. The audiences could only be repelled
by the figure of a "coal-black Moor" on stage , although they could find Othello admirable in the
reading. Othello's sexual difference, then, is central to the play. It is important not merely because
Shakespeare portrays Othello as a Moor or because racial tension and anxiety pervade the
atmosphere of Venetian society, affecting Othello's relationship with every character and
increasing his susceptibility to lago's appeal; it is important because Othello himself, in his
aspirations towards assimilation and anxieties about his blackness, internalizes a false dichotomy
that can only dehumanize him. A rootless wanderer, Othello defines himself in Venetian terms, as
an exotic European or a brutal savage, or, in the final paradox of his death, as both. He tries to
unite the opposing images of his own oppression.
I have suggested that in representing Othello's "Africanness" without resorting to negative
stereotyping of racial difference or to abstract universalizing of the human essence, Shakespeare
stretched the mental framework of the age, thrusting upon audiences a more sympathetic
understanding of the alien than was customarily available. Shakespeare's most penetrating insight
into the nature of alienation, however, does not arise from his characterization of Othello as a
Moor, which is inevitably deficient in cultural depth and resonance, but in the way in which the
racial atmosphere that Othello breathes determines his own responses to his tragic predicament.
The most disastrous consequence of racial alienation in Othello is not the hostility or estrangement
of the Venetians but his own acceptance of the framework within which they define him. In his
incapacity to break free of this mental construct, to affirm his own identity, Othello becomes a
double victim of the early colonial imagination, an alien to others and himself.
On the Renaissance stage, lovers who challenge familial authority are usually romanticized, even
if they ultimately meet a tragic fate. But married (even widowed) women who disobey their
husbands or other male figures of authority are usually punished, even if these men are tyrannical.
Thus the play help propagate a new ideal of companionate marriage in which romance is not
antithetical to matrimony, but women's chastity and obedience are still crucial. Desdemona not
only disobeys her father and chooses her own husband, she defends her choice in front of the
Senate, openly affirming her sexual passion for Othello. Desdemona's free banter with Iago and
her spirited defence of Cassio, although innocent, stages a model of behavior that was
controversial in the culture at large. So does Emilia's outspokenness, even though it is her
submission to her husband, and not her defiance, which allows the handkerchief to be used as
evidence against Desdemona. It is hard to conclude whether violence against outspoken or
transgressive women on the stages of the time had the effect of reinforcing patriarchal attitudes to
women, or of unsettling them. The effect of stage narratives are likely to have been diverse,
tapping as they did into a wide spectrum of changing beliefs about gender roles. It is even harder
to assume that all audiences, who included both men and women of different classes, would have
responded uniformly to stage characters such as Desdemona and Emilia. However, the point is that
such figures speak to widespread contemporary anxieties and debates about appropriate female
behavior, and in Desdemona's case the question of wifely submission is especially complex
because the husband is a Moor. For all their heterogeneity in terms of class and gender, Othello's
original audiences and actors would have been mostly English entirely white.
35

I will not be wrong to affirm that the play's tragic ending is the result of Iago's machination. Iago's
'motiveless malignity' does not fully justify his evil plans. This is partly because many of Iago's
statements are often regarded as irrational, and as evidence of his almost mythic, hardly human
wickedness. The passage in which he confesses to love Desdemona illustrates the way in which
sexual desire is expressive of power struggle in a specifically racist context. Iago's 'love' speaks of
a racial and patriarchal bonding whereby he becomes the protector of all white women from black
men. More specifically, as a white woman, Desdemona belongs to him rather than to Othello.
Iago's resentment derives from a projection of Iago's unconscious homosexual wishes for Othello
and Cassio. The main basis for this is Iago's highly eroticised description of sleeping with Cassio,
when Cassio in his sleep is alleged to mistake Iago's body for Desdemona's. To find the true
meanings in Shakespeare's Othello, one must look beneath the surface. Iago's motivation for
Cassio's and Othello's ruin runs deeper than a desire for a military position or enhancement of
social status, it is Iago's latent homosexuality that drives him to deceive and manipulate. Since the
play began, Iagos been fighting with himself over his sexuality; the end of Act V reveals to us his
true nature that hes been trying to find all along: the core of a broken man.
The play's tragic ending can have two interpretations: on the one hand, it makes the case for a
tolerant society. In order to erase the stereotypes about the Other, the society's members has to be
open to diversity and to be willing to meet and understand the Other. On the other hand, the play
can be a warning to the disobedient daughters and also to open societies who let in outsiders,
especially black ones. The patriarchal society can prove to be tyrannical and implacable in its
punishment of the deviant behavior. I personally sympathize with the first interpretation because I
think it fits better with our time. Encounters between individuals from different cultures are not
only more probably to happen than in Shakespeare's period, but they are also encouraged. The
modern society does not fear the difference, but embraces it!

36

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Summary in Romanian
38

In multe dintre piesele sale de teatru, William Shakespeare explora conceptii legate de diferenta
sexuala si tensiunile rasiale. Othello, o piesa de teatru ai caror personaje sunt judecate continuu
dupa aparente si caracteristici exterioare, este o asemenea piesa. Spatiul cultural diferit din care
provine protagonistul ofera un context pentru a analiza conflictele rasiale. De asemenea, prezenta
unui personaj feminin bine dezvoltat adauga o noua dimensiune conflictului dintre genuri si o
interpretare feminista. Aceste teme aparent separate- diferenta sexuala si conflictele rasiale- sunt
foarte interconectate datorita unor legaturi similare de prejudecati si stereotipuri. Abordarea
diferentei sexuale si rolurile de gen intareste tonul racist al lui Othello si complica tensiunile
etnice.
In primul capitol am discutat despre teorii legate de diferenta sexuala. Freud crede ca bebelusul isi
incepe viata intr-o stare de peversitate polimorfa. Perversiunea polimorfa este fundamental
incompatibila cu cererile civilizatiei si incompatibila cu insasi diferenta sexuala. Astfel, in trecerea
la maturitate si fiind pozitionat in diferenta sexuala- masculin sau feminin- dorinta perversa nu e
eliminata, ci transformata prin refulare si sublimare. Homosexualitatea este perversiunea cea mai
importanta si de asemenea cea mai respingatoare pentru societate. Homosexualii sunt perceputi ca
o amenintare pentru ordinea sociala. Chiar mai deranjant decat persoana homosexuala este femeia
devianta, care rataceste pervers si ii invita si pe alti sa faca la fel.
Capitolul al doilea prezinta rasa perceputa ca diferenta sexuala. Portretul lui Othello, Maurul din
Venetia cuprinde un amalgam de prejudecati despre oamenii negri si musulmani. Oamenii de
culoare erau de obicei descrisi ca pagani, barbari si hidosi care trebuie sa fie mantuiti de catre
crestini. Othello remodeleaza imaginile disponibile despre mauri, redandu-ne un maur negru care
are un trecut ca slav dar si o descendenta nobila, o piele neagra si buze groase precum si niste
abilitati militare extraordinare, o capacitate pentru blandete cat si o predispunere la gelozie. In
ciuda tuturor calitatilor sale, societatea patriarhala nu poate ignora culoarea pielii si nu accepta ca
el sa se casatoreasca cu o femeie alba. Acest lucru va conduce la alienarea lui Othello.
Capitolul al treilea e dedicat Desdemonei. In epoca elisabetana era considerat nenatural ca o
femeie alba sa doreasca un barbat negru. La inceput, Desdemona este descrisa ca pasiva, o
fecioara niciodata indrazneata, dar cand isi exprima dorinta pentru un barbat de culoare,
comportamentul ei este considerat deviant. Desi isi revendica dreptul de a vorbi, Desdemona
ramane o fiica si o sotie dominata intr-o societate care nu permite femeilor sa se exprime. Cand
Othello o sugruma, devine intruchiparea perfecta al idealului feminin: tacuta, rece, casta si
frumoasa ca o statuie de marmura.
Ultimul capitol abordeaza homosexualitatea reprimata a lui Iago. Maestru al cuvintelor, Iago
manipuleaza publicul sa creada ca il uraste pe Othello pentru ca a avut o aventura cu sotia lui si ca
Othello a gresit fata de el cand l-a ales pe Cassio sa fie locotonentul lui. Iago arata putin respect si
un dezinteres aparent fata de sotia sa ceea ce face ca argumentul lui sa cada la o prima analiza
atenta. Interpretarea ca Iago are dorinte erotice fata de Othello pare mai convingatoare. Scena in
care descrie lui Iago confesiunea lui Cassio in timp ce dormea ca are o relatie cu Desdemona este
foarte relevanta in acest sens. Inca de la inceputul piesei, Iago duce o lupta cu sexualitatea lui caci
exprimarea adevaratelor sale dorinte il pot pune intr-o pozitie vulnerabila. Orientarea sa sexuala il
poate marginaliza in cadrul societatii patriarcale.

39