Jealousy In Othelo Flashcards
(13 cards)
More plays alike to ‘othello’
Like The Merchant of Venice, Othello is about an ethnic ‘Other’ who must find his way in a world of white Venetians; and like the ‘Jewish play’, this ‘Moorish play’ is also based on an Italian source text – Cinthio’s Un Capitano Moro (‘A Moorish Captain’), in which a Moorish general falls victim to the evil orchestrations of his Venetian ensign.
Chameleonic character
In a way, Othello is one of Shakespeare’s most chameleonic characters: he is both man and beast; protector and intruder; lover and murderer; captain and criminal; and in the words of the Duke – “more fair than black”, but both fair and black.
Othello is calculating
And the speed with which Othello ‘switches on’ one identity or the other is a barometer of the clarity and control he has over a given situation.
More self-perception than jealousy
The identity of Othello as an alien, however, is central to our interpretation of how hamartia works in this play, because everything the Moor does and says is tied to his self-perception.
As such, his terrible actions are, to some extent, catalysed by a flawed sense of self (and subsequently, by the jealous sentiments this sense of self breeds).
Again, self-perception is the cause; jealousy is but the symptom. He is not motivated by jealousy, but jealousy eggs him on in his quest for acceptance – both from himself and from those around him.
Othello’s obsession, then, is with his place in the world and his reputation in the eyes of others, not really with gaining absolute control over his wife.
‘ i had been happy, if the general camp, pioneers and all, had tasted her sweet body, so I had nothing known’
Would a truly jealous man be happy with ‘sharing’ his wife?
In fact, bar Desdemona, Emilia and Cassio, Othello is arguably the least jealous of the remaining bunch, with Iago, Roderigo, Brabantio and Bianca all exhibiting rather more ‘classic’ signs of jealous behaviour.
- The play ‘othello’ could more aptly be entitled ‘Iago’ . ‘Motiveless malignancy’ and mimetic contagion. PROFESSIONAL JEALOUSY
‘I know my price, i am worth no worse a place’
- these are the words of a wounded ego
The mercenary diction of “my price” and “worth” suggests that Iago sees professional relationships as mere commercial exchanges, which foreshadows the unemotional, ruthless approach he’ll go on to execute his plot of poisoning Othello’s mind.
The word “place” – meaning ‘office or rank’ – reflects Iago’s sense of entitlement, as if there’s a specific position that’s exclusive to him, waiting for him to assume.
Notice, by the way, that he makes this claim of knowing his worth before he relates Cassio’s professional triumph, which tells us that the root of his discontent is this sense that he has been cheated out of what he (believes he) ‘rightfully’ deserves, more so than in any strong jealousy towards Cassio (indeed, it’s arguable if he actually does envy Cassio, whom he disdains as “a great arithmetician” with no more than “bookish theoric” and “mere prattle, without practice [in] all his soldiership”.)
‘I hate the moor … twice my sheets has done my office’
but it’s interesting that Shakespeare uses professional diction to describe a domestic identity.
Perhaps the implication here is that Iago sees his marriage in similar terms as he does his occupation: both are competitions in which he can’t bear to see himself lose – especially not to a racial outsider, whom he alludes to as “black Othello” in 2.3, and doesn’t even regard as human, as he tells Brabantio in 1.1, “your daughter and the Moor are now making the beast with two backs”.
2.1 ‘For that I do suspect the lusty Moor
Hath leap’d into my seat; the thought whereof
Doth, like a poisonous mineral, gnaw my inwards;
And nothing can or shall content my soul
Till I am even’d with him, wife for wife,
Or failing so, yet that I put the Moor
At least into a jealousy so strong
That judgment cannot cure. ‘
Recalling such earlier references to one’s position (“place”, 1.1; “office”, 1.3), we see the notion of a unique station – “my seat” – in this quote. Professionally, Othello may be ranked higher than Iago, but domestically, Iago must maintain his patriarchal dominance, even if it is wield over just one subject: his wife.
To have even this taken away from him is unthinkable, and the last blow that his ego – “my inwards” – will stand for without hostile retaliation. Losing a lieutenancy is bad enough, but to be emasculated is unacceptable. Despite this being no more than a suspicion, Iago evokes in a simile that just “the thought” of it eats away at him “like a poisonous mineral, gnaw[ing] my inwards”.
Such is the fragility of his manhood and ego, which is really what troubles Iago, but instead of confronting his crippling insecurities, he externalises his rage and shame onto the ‘Other’ – “the lusty Moor”. The verb “leaped” in “leaped into my seat” tells us that Iago views Othello as a predatory animal rather than a fellow human being (a more human-appropriate verb would be ‘assumed’, ‘taken’ or ‘usurped’ my seat), and his bubbling plot against the Moor as a savage, bestial undertaking.
Rude am I in my speech,
And little bless’d with the soft phrase of peace:
For since these arms of mine had seven years’ pith,
Till not some nine moons wasted, they have used
Their dearest action in the tented field,
And little of this great world can I speak,
More than pertains to feats of broil and battle,
And therefore little shall I grace my cause
In speaking for myself.
(1.3)
Not only is the Moor not coarse with his words, he is incredibly eloquent – almost poetic. His syntax is marked by the use of hyperbaton (the inversion of normal word order), as in “Rude am I in my speech” (vs “I am rude in my speech”), “And little of this great world can I speak” (vs “I can speak little of this great world”), “And therefore little shall I grace my cause/In speaking for myself” (vs “I shall little grace my cause in speaking for myself”).
This technique shifts the first-person pronouns of “I” and “my” to the back of the line, which enables Othello to convey the impression of self-effacing humility. Of course, he then goes on ‘humble brag’ by relating the rich experiences and stories of his battles and travels, but the point here is that he acutely registers the precarious need to appear hyper-well-mannered to the Venetians.
This awareness, however, belies the self-consciousness he feels as a Moorish outsider in a white Venetian society, as if he has to compensate for his ‘alien’ status by being extra eloquent, extra agreeable, and extra tactful. That’s all good and well at this stage in the play, but Othello’s self-awareness of ‘not belonging’ reveals for us the wobbly foundations of his confident stature, which will later morph into a much deadlier instinct at the hands of Iago’s monstrous meddling
He is shaped into the very embodiment of a mor which he refuted before bc of his poor self-perception.
Othello’s remark that that he is “declined/Into the vale of years” also forebodes the ‘decline’ which characterises his trajectory from this point onwards in the play, and is reinforced by the symbolic image of a dent and a low area of land connoted by the word “vale”.
As Othello becomes more convinced by Desdemona’s ‘falseness’, he equates the alleged dishonour of “her name” with the black complexion of his face –
By the world,
I think my wife be honest and think she is not;
I think that thou art just and think thou art not.
I’ll have some proof. Her name, that was as fresh
As Dian’s visage, is now begrimed and black
As mine own face. […]
(3.3)
As Othello agonises over the tug of paradoxes between thinking his wife is honest and is not; Iago is just and is not, he wavers, but he soon confirms – all without “some proof”. It’s ironic that he should use past tense in his simile of Desdemona’s “name, that was as fresh/As Dian’s visage” (Dian is an allusion to Diana, the Roman Goddess of the Moon and of chastity), because the audience knows that she remains chaste and pure, despite Othello’s misguided accusations.
But he then parallels her ‘sullied’ name with his “begrimed and black… face”; the blackness of his face is a physical, objective truth which does not carry positive or negative connotations in itself, and yet we see that Othello has internalised the stereotypical associations of blackness with evil, which he reaffirms in this false equation of moral fallenness and dark skin.
But even a minor character like Brabantio – Desdemona’s dad and a Venetian senator – is afflicted with this ‘disease’ of what Iago terms “the green-eyed monster” (3.3).
Her father loved me; oft invited me;
Still questioned me the story of my life,
From year to year, the battles, sieges, fortunes,
That I have passed.
I ran it through, even from my boyish days,
To the very moment he bade me tell it;
[…]
(1.3)
Notice the active verbs Othello uses in relation to Brabantio – “loved me”, “invited me”, “questioned me”, “bade me”: the emphasis is that Brabantio was, in a way, the ‘courter’ in their relationship, who took the proactive initiative of inviting Othello over to his house and asking about his exotic life stories
Yet Brabantio, while himself charmed by the Moor’s speech, somehow cannot fathom that his daughter would be equally attracted to the man, and insists that she must have been ‘charmed’ by sorcery instead. Defies logic
Emilia = practical wisdom
In a less sinister iteration of this idea, Emilia offers practical wisdom on the baseless nature of jealousy, and the futility of getting the jealous-minded to see any reason at all. Responding to Desdemona’s bewilderment over the cause of Othello’s rage, Emilia says –
EMILIA:
Pray heaven it be state-matters, as you think,
And no conception nor no jealous toy
Concerning you.
DESDEMONA:
Alas the day! I never gave him cause.
EMILIA:
But jealous souls will not be answered so;
They are not ever jealous for the cause,
But jealous for they are jealous: ‘tis a monster
Begot upon itself, born on itself.
(3.4)
Emilia’s metaphor of jealousy as “a monster” echoes her husband’s earlier reference to “that green-eyed monster”. Her most striking line, though, is “But jealous for they are jealous”, the tautology of which shows that there need not be any premise for the breeding of jealous thoughts or emotions.
The epistrophe in the line “begot upon itself, born on itself” reinforces the vicious circularity of jealousy: It is like a pernicious weed that grows without end, and the more it grows the more it harms its host (which also reminds us of Iago’s characterisation of “the green-eyed monster/which doth mock the meat it feeds on”, 3.3).
The self-echoing homophones of “souls” and “so” in “jealous souls will not be answered so” also suggests a sense of stasis, and in turn, the impossibility of progress in rational dialogue with someone like Othello. This bodes ill for Desdemona, because all she has left to defend herself is her speech.
Jealousy is destructive, the play punishes those who turn to jealousy because they jealous and awards those who abstain
Othello is jealous of Cassio → kills Desdemona → he dies from suicide
Brabantio is jealous of Othello → he dies from grief (allegedly)
Roderigo is jealous of Othello → he dies from Iago’s murder
Iago is jealous of Cassio and Othello → kills Emilia → he is punished by Cassio
Bianca is jealous of Cassio’s supposed “newer friend” → she is not taken seriously by Cassio
But:
Cassio isn’t jealous of anyone → he gets to live and rule over Cyprus
