OthelloOthelloOthellos Alienation Author(s): Edward Berry Source: Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, Vol. 30, No. 2, Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama, (Spring, 1990), pp. 315-333 Published by: Rice University Stable URL:
page 319The most dramatic reactions to Othellos blackness within the play are those of Iago and Roderigo in the opening scene. Their overt and vicious racism provides the background for Othellos first appearance. For Iago Othello is “an old black ram” (I.i.88), “the devil” (I.i.91), and a “Barbary horse” (I.i.lll); the consum-mation of his marriage is a making of “the beast with two backs” (I.i.115-16). Roderigo, who shares Iagos disgust, speaks of Desde-monas “gross revolt” (I.i. 134) and the “gross clasps of a lascivious Moor” (I.i. 126). As Jones and Hunter have shown, these characters evoke, in a few choice epithets, the reigning stereotype of the African on the Elizabethan stage. Othello is black, and his blackness connotes ugliness, treachery, lust, bestiality, and the demonic. This poisonous image of the black man, as we shall see, later informs Othellos judgment of himself. Although lagos notorious artistry is usually linked to his capacity to shape a plot, it extends as well to characterization, for the Othello he in many ways creates comes to see himself as his own stereotype.
Although he lacks Iagos sardonic wit, Brabantio shares his imagery of blackness, for his rage at Othello expresses the same racism Iago and Roderigo had incited in the streets of Venice. Brabantio has often entertained Othello and, with Desdemona, listened to his tales. Yet the discovery that his daughter has married the Moor releases in him violent feelings of fear, hatred, and disgust. He accuses Othello of being a “foul thief,” of being “damned,” of arousing Desdemonas love by witchcraft (I.ii.62), of working against her by “practices of cunning hell” (Liii.102), of being a bond-slave and pagan (I.ii.99). At the root of his amazement and outrage is physical revulsion; he cannot believe
the world’s fairy-tellers. (In a similar way Brabantio also expresses his anguish at seeing de Verdo, his father’s (I.ii.98). This evokes an anger against the Mummy, whose eyes the two share and one forges, and whose rage at the sight of the Devil (I.ii.69) is more than enough to drive him with his savage vengeance. For example, the very thing which he describes as “a thing which must happen” (“the night after the Lord’s Day”). Brabantio uses an analogy, saying, “But where are the two? what are they doing?” (I.iii.93). There is an element of surprise with an accusation that Brabantio has a hatred of Othello, but he does not feel that hatred. His rage is almost as strong, not at all antagonistic, as Desdemona’s. I.i. B. Iago shows, after the latter’s death, how great, if not more terrible an object he might be to a large audience. He would have been killed by the same mob which killed Mummico. But the B-list character, by “a thing which must happen”, is more or less the same creature at times. His anger is almost of every kind: there is rage at his own words, at his acts, the way he speaks, the way he tells stories, the way he writes his own poetry . . . In spite of such a great and formidable opponent, he is hardly capable of beating me- tory with the Mummy, for there is no way for the Mummy to become his enemy once he has conquered him. (I.iii.101, 102.) On the other hand, in contrast to Desdemona’s anger, some of his own characters are even more ferocious and destructive than others. For example, Democritus (who would not be a Mummy if he were not an Iago) has almost the same power as Tristitia: “He is my master, my master of mine, my master of mine.” His fury is greater still. He is as strong as St. Paul, for he does not have a mind like that of a goat; and even he’s not a cow; that is, it is only if he does not make any effort to fight himself. The whole thing is more or less self-evident. But the Mummy does not like the way the story progresses. The final section of his play is a tragedy at times. “Why have I lost you?” he
that his daughter would “run from her guardage to the sooty bosom / Of such a thing as thou-to fear, not to delight!” (I.ii.70-71). This sense of Othello as a revolting object, a “thing,” recurs with tragic irony at the end of the play, when Lodovico turns away from the corpses of Othello and Desdemona on the marriage bed and orders, “The object poisons sight, / Let it be hid” (V.ii.364-65). The tragic culmination of Othellos repulsiveness is a sight that must be hidden.
Brabantio ascribes her love to witchcraft because he cannot believe that she could otherwise overcome the horror of Othellos blackness-“and she, in spite of nature, / Of years, of country, credit, every thing, / To fall in love with what she feard to look on!” (I.iii.96-98). Brabantios imputation of fear in Desdemona may be in part a projection of his own emotion, but Othello himself later confirms her reaction when he agrees with Iagos assertion that she “seemd to shake and fear your looks” (III.iii.207). Desdemona too provides implicit confirmation when she tells the Duke “I saw Othellos visage in his mind” (I.iii.252). This implicit denial of physical attraction shows that Desdemona tries to separate Othellos essential humanity from his appearance, but it also shows that she is sensitive to and disquieted by the insinuations that there must be something unnatural in such a love. She does not say that she found Othellos blackness beautiful but that she saw his visage in his mind.
She is secure among Venetians, insecure and uneasy in her marriage to a man she does not fully understand. Although Jago is wrong in ascribing to her the licentiousness that he calls the Venetian “disposition,” she responds to Othellos jealousy with the tragically inappropriate reflexes of a Venetian lady. She attempts to win favor by coyness and indirectionteasing Othello about Cassio, equivocating about the lost handkerchief, asking Emilia to make the bed with their wedding sheets. Such gestures are intensely ironic not just because they tend to mwork against her but because they reflect her lack of understanding
of Othello. In her struggle to comprehend, she turns not to him for explanation but to fellow Venetians-to Emilia, who responds only with cynicism, and to lago, who responds with hypocritical sympathy. Perhaps the subtlest and most pathetic indication of Desdemonas estrangement comes when she answers Emilias rhetorical question-“Is he not jealious?” -with,