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Othello (p. 728-826)

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1. Othello only–discuss the theme of race

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‘An essence that’s not seen’: The primal scene of racism in Shakespeare Quarterly; Fall 1993; 44, 3; ProQuest pg. 304 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. 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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Othello and Racism Dorothea Kehler o acknowledge the historical context of drama in ¿ Shakespeare’s lifedme, we have only to recall that the supporters of Essex commissioned the Lord Chamberlain’s Men to play Richard II on the eve of his insurrection, a performance subsequently investigated by the Queen’s officials. Othello similarly invites historical understanding, having been written within some three years of the second and last of Elizabeth’s deportation edicts directed against blacks. Considering Othello not as a text outside time and place, but as part of a broader social text, bids us focus on the issue of racism. Attention to this face of Elizabethan/Venetian sodety illuminates the confiicted nature of Othello and his vulnerability to Iago’s pornographic practices. Historical placement is particularly germane to a text written for public enactment. Othello’s race would have been as visually obtrusive to an Elizabethan audience for whom a black tragic hero was a noveltyi as was Mephostophilis’s religion in Doctor Faustus, in which Mephostophilis is garbed from his first lines in the habit of a Franciscan friar. The strikingly contrastive appearance of the paint-blackened protagonist2 dominates the stage. No less striking are the presentahonal images of the wedded black man and white woman and of the bed where they become one flesh. How would Shakespeare’s audience have received such images? What cultural beliefs had taken root in a nafion bound by commercial advantage to Africa? 156 Dorothea Kehler Cultural beliefs and economics keep close company. In 1596 and again in 1601 Elizabeth attempted to rid England, plagued by famine and a faltering economy, of a highly visible minority, perforce competing against indigenous Englishmen for the means of existence; that the deportation edicts were issued, and tliat they failed—since free blacks were able to evade them and slaves were protected by their owners as valuable property^—suggests the ambivalence prevalent towards blacks. While blacks were sometimes seen as unspoiled, godly innocents ripe for proselytism, more often they were associated, thanks to such writers as Edward Topsell and James I, with carnality, apes, and devils.^ This ambivalence informs John Davies of Hereford’s Microcosmos (1603), which adumbrates the popular stereotype of the African: For South-ward, Men are cruell, moody, madd. Hot, blacke, leane, leapers, lustfuU, vsd to vant. Yet wise in action, sober fearefull, sad. If good most good, if bad exceeding bad.s Less gifted than Sir John Davies the satirist, Davies of Hereford is all the more credible as a recorder of popular attitudes, unlikely to transcend his time and milieu but, like Poins, inclined to keep the roadway, thinking as every man thinks. What a representafive Elizabethan/Venefian thinks is that field command may be one thing, intermarriage another. That is to say, the edicts were thwarted not by liberal magnanimity but by white self-interest. Shakespeare’s England, Othello’s Venice, had achieved an uneasy compromise between utility and racism. The services of blacks, free and enslaved, were valued—to a point. In England the locafion of that point was tested by the edicts; blacks could co-exist with whites because, despite the economic problem thej^ intensified, as an underclass blacks did not threaten the ideological underpinnings of the nation. In Othello’s Venice the threat is greater. The belief systems of Venetian society that maintain the status quo are also based in part on sexual separatism of the races but are challenged directly by Othello’s intermarriage. Yet both tradifional and iconoclastic crifics deny l:he threat Othello’s intermarriage poses to white privilege. According to Folger Library editors Louis B. Wright and Virginia A. LaMar, “There is little to indicate that Shakespeare or his contemporaries Othello and Racism 157 would have interpreted the union of Othello and Desdemona as a problem in mixed marriage or would have regarded the racial differences as of vital interest.”6 More surprisingly, Leslie A. Fiedler maintains that “the whole notion of miscegenation had not yet been invented.”^ Granted, interracial marriage did not become a social problem—and often a criminal offense—in Europe as it did in the New World, and that the term “miscegenation” is not recorded prior to 1864 in the American South,» yet intermarriage was not unknown in Elizabethan England. The language of a nominally disinterested account (1578) of such a union and its issue bespeaks the underlying attitudes of Shakespeare’s contemporaries: I my self have seene an Ethiopian as blacke as cole brought into England, who taking a faire English woman to wife, begat a sonne in all repects as blacke as the father was . . . whereby it seemeth this blacknes proceedeth rather of some natural infection of that man, which was so strong that neither the nature of the Clime, neither the good complexion of the mother concurring, could any thing alter. . . . blackenesse proceedeth of some naturall infection of the first inhabitants of that country, and so all the whole progenie of them descended, are still polluted with the same blot of infection (my emphasis).’ We may assume that the intervening quarter of a century did not change English popular feelings about infected, polluted blacks in any way likely to have made intermarriage an irrelevant concern in Othello. Not only Brabantio’s frantic reaction to the stolen marriage but also Roderigo’s easy acceptance of Iago’s racial canards indicate that cultural forms and beliefs have been violently breached. Intermarriage was at least as unacceptable in the seventeenth century as it is in the twentieth. G. K. Hunter concludes his historical investigation of racial prejudice in Othello by asserting that “the whole social organism pictured is one we recognize as our own, and recognize as necessarily geared to reject ‘extravagant and wheeling strangers.'”!” 158 Dorothea Kehler “Begrim’d and black/As mine own face” The repressed social programming of Ofhello’s unconscious is neverfheless apparenf from fhe language of fhe play, alerfing us fo fhe cenfralify of racism. Ofhello need nof hear lago refer fo himself as “his Moorship’s ancienf” (I.i.33)” or hear Roderigo’s epifhef “fhe fhick-lips” (I.i.60)i2 to be aware of his precarious social posifion and undesirable image. His speeches imply fhaf he, foo, finds himself repellenf. S. N. Gamer insisfs, “For she had eyes, and chose me” (III.iii.189) musf be read “she married him despite his blac:kness.”i3 Searching for fhe harshest simile for Desdemona as adulferess, Ofhello finds her name as “begrim’d and black/As mine own face” (III.iii.387-388). She becomes a “black weed” (IV.ii.69).i4 To asserf as Leslie Fiedler does fhaf Ofhello “uses fhe epithet “black’ as a pejorafive almosf as defachedly as if he were himself whife,”i5 in order fo argue fhe play’s lack of concem wifh racism, is fo miss fhe poinf: Ofhello is represenfed as a conflicfed personality, trapped in fhe hosfile white language of a hosfile whife culfure.^^ Thaf Ofhello finds if necessary fo elope wifh Desdemona delineafes fhe race-governed boundaries of fhaf culfure. He may visif fhe home of a Senafor, buf he cannof ask for fhe hand of fhe Senator’s daughfer. He makes no affempf fo compensate for his race by revealing his royal ancesfry. His friumphs in baffle, his military rank (all known to Brabanfio) are equally irrelevanf fo fhe one damning facf—”Haply, for I am black” (III.iii.263). As a pirivileged rank, his generalship is undermined long before his occupation’s gone. It confers no negotiable social sfafus; since he cannot frade on if fo win himself a wife of fhe ruling class, if becomes a hollow fifle awarded fo a falenfed hired killer.i^ By eloping Ofhello demonsfrafes his awareness of social boundaries and chooses fo transgress fhem.is Af fhe level of fhe surface fable, he does so for love of Desdemona. Buf subfexfually fhe racial issue bears heavily on his love. As opposed fo fhe bought acceptance of fhe brofhel fhaf Ofhello enacfs in Acf FV, scene 2, freely given sexual accepfance by an arisfocrafic whife woman counterbalances, if if cannof cancel, fhe pain of emofional aparfheid—or so Ofhello fhinks. We cringe when Brabanfio pur\s bifferly on fhe “general mock” (Lii.69) awaifing a whife woman who fakes a black Othello and Racism 159 husband, who seeks “the sooty bosom/Of such a thing as thou” (I.ii.71). The stage is crowded as Brabantio speaks these words, but no one demurs. Indeed, the Duke’s consolatory speech to Brabantio, uttered within Othello’s hearing, only confirms the Venetian prejudice that Othello has fatally absorbed: “If virtue no delighted beauty lack/Your son-in-law is far more fair than black” (I.iii.289-290).i9 Swallowing this, Othello then represses his sexuality. Although he is to speak privately and harrowingly of how “the sense aches” at Desdemona (IV.ii.69), before the Senate he unmans himself: “the young affects/In me defunct” (I.iii.263-264). It is possible that Othello hopes by minimizing his sexuality to convince the Senate that he will give first priority to his military duties,2o or that he is attempting to undermine the dangerous association of blacks with lasciviousness^i that Roderigo counts on Brabantio’s recognizing when he awakens him to announce that Desdemona lies in “the gross clasps of a lascivious Moor” (I.i.126). But more important, Othello denies as much to himself as to the Senators Davies’ stereotype of “hot . . . lustfull” blacks. After all, Othello cannot take the measure of his own sexuality; he cannot compare his desires with those of his fellows. He knows only what he himself feels—and what he has been told. Venice tells blacks they are satyrs. By possessing Desdemona—”that whiter skin of hers than snow/And smooth as monumental alablaster” (V.ii.4-5), Othello aspires to being snow-cooled and afforded the honor we associate with monuments; that is, he attempts to break through racial stereotypes and barriers. Eldridge Cleaver’s observation is apt: “the white man made the black woman the symbol of slavery and the white woman the symbol of freedom.”22 Cleaver penetrates a mode by which cultural beliefs establish control without external compulsion. Othello, largely controlled by the religious and secular constructs of the white community, perhaps as a price of his clearance even adopts the faith that considers him a cursed son of Ham, fit only for servitude,23 that regards his color as “the adjective appropriate to the ugly and the frightening, to the devil and his children, the wicked and the infidel.”24 Yet, revelling in the military prowess that makes his ambition virtue, he adapts to every crippling white code, living unhoused and alone until he drops his guard and takes Desdemona as wife. Othello the Moor who woos Desdemona is the risk-taking. 160 Dorothea Kehler heroic rebel against a Venice where separatist attitudes thinly mask a dichotomization of the races that gives precedence to whites. Tragically, he woos his own destrucfion, not realizing the extent to which he is controlled by communal beliefs. What happens to Othello is Venice’s rail-safe device at work: Othello self-destructs. Having internalized Venefian values, he cannot believe in Desdemona’s love for a man “begrim’d and black.”25 Such love would erode the habits of thought that give him his sense of self and make the world comprehensible, would make black white. But how can white dominate—^be white—if there is no black to overlord?26 Nor can Othello believe in his own worthiness except as a defender of the superior race. As general he must protect Venice from such interlopers as himself, who dare to challenge this essential dichotomy between white power, Christian by birth, and such “Bondslaves and pagans” (I.ii.99) as he, whom no conversion or earned rank can alter.27 He is the Turk v/ho beat (read married) a Venefian and thus traduced the state. He resolves the conñict between his desire for acceptance and his sense of himself as enemy Other by killing the white woman who dared to accept him. Killing her, he destroys the outlawed marriage. Othello the Venefian kills his wife because he cannot live with love that will blur the polarizafion of the races; he cannot live within the intermarriage that dissolves color in its issue and threatens to rend apart the fabric of the society that has become the source of his selfhood. Othello’s desire for acceptance and emotional security also provides plausible motivation for the murder. Killing Desdemona allows Othello briefly to displace an intolerable sense of rejecfion; by accepfing Iago’s story, Othello chooses to believe “she couldn’t love me—she loved another—she was a whore” rather than “she couldn’t love me because as a black man I am unlovable.”^» Yet the sense of rejection is never absent. The fury of his resolve;—”I will chop her into messes! Cuckold me!” (IV.i.200)—is an outcry not just against one faithless woman but against the enfire white race in which he had garnered up his heart and which has xxsed and betrayed him. He kills Desdemona because “to be once in doubt” (III.iii.179) is intolerable. Better to kill the cause of doubt than to confront his confiicted self and the truth about the sodety whose creature he is. Othello’s fear lest chaos come again is a universal Othello and Racism 161 fear of lack of belief in the cultural values that create, shelter, and finally mutilate us. “Thoughts Unnatural” Holding the spark to Othello’s self-destructive fuse is lago, the supreme decoder of cultural values, who moves Othello from disillusion with a faithless wife to the determination to kill her. Gnawed as if by poisonous minerals, lacking a daily beauty in his life, lago discovers society’s grab-bag of horrors in his own mind, the “thoughts unnatural” (IILiii.233) Europeans have been taught not to think. lago penetrates Venetian social codes by adducing, like Montaigne, the confusion of nature and culture-bound custom, which Desdemona has an inkling of at her death: The lawes of conscience, which we say to proceed from nature, rise and proceed of custome: each man holding in special regard, and inward veneration the opinions approved, and customers received about him, cannot without remorse leave them, nor without applause applie himselfe unto them. .. . But the chiefest effect of her [custom’s] power is to seize upon us, and so to entangle us, that it shall hardly lie in us, to free our selves from her hold-fast, and come into our wits againe, to discourse and reason of her ordinances. . . . And the common imaginations we finde in credit about us, and by our fathers seed infused in our soule, seeme to be the generall and naturall. . . . But let us retume to customes soveraignty: such as are brought up to libertie, and to command themselves, esteeme all other forme of policie, as monstrous and against natur«. Those that are enured to Monarchie doe the like. . . . custome doth so bleare us that we cannot distinguish the true visage of things.^» The technique of persuasion that lago successfully employs is based on his understanding that the unnatural consists of states and acts 162 Dorothea Kehler not inherently distasteful but made distasteful by societal conditioning—by custom. Shared taboos lend coherence to a culture; the culture, therefore, endorses these sexual practices but bans those as unnatural. Shared taboos entrench power structures. Where men are privileged, women who assert themselves are deemed urmatural; where the white race is privileged, intermarriage is deemed unnatural. An apt student of his society, of the language and icons of power, lago seizes upon and entangles first Brabantio, then Othello, by triggering their conditioned responses to the unnatural. In Act I lago delights in plaguing Othello by incensing Desdemona’s father. Brabantio’s rash accusations against Othello are Iago’s accomplishment. Although Brabantio is often played as a commedia dell ‘arte puntalone, he may just as well be seen as Iago’s distraught victim, like Othello “perplexed in the extreme” (V.ii 346). He is, after all, a respected Senator whose “counsel and . . . help” the Duke values (I.iii.51) and therefore not inclined, even in anger and dismay, to press charges based only on “thin habits and poor likelihoods/Of modern seeming . . .” (I.iii.108-109). Besides, despite the racial prejudice that makes him balk at intermarriage, Brabantio was Othello’s friend, or so Othello thought him: “Her father lov’d me, oft invited me . . .” (I.iii.l28). What drives Brabantio to intemperate words and a bitter death is not alone the marriage but rather the unnatural way in which lago encourages him to imagine the union. In Act III the stakes are higher. Iago’s self-imposed task is more crucial than angering Brabantio. Now he must prime Othello to murder the woman he loves. After lago first suggests that Desdemona has been false, Othello soliloquizes. If I do prove her haggard. Though that her jesses wore my dear heart-strings, rid whistle her off, and let her down the wind To prey at fortune. (III.iii.260-263) To “whistle her off” is to dismiss her (that is, to divorce her or put her away) as one would release an untamable hawk; like the hawk, Desdemona would have to make her way in the world as best she could. Hardship, however, is not death. But after his next encounter with lago, Othello speaks no more of dismissal but instead cries furiously: “I’ll tear her all to pieces!”