Another idea behind this could be the foundation of the couple’s relationship; they are very much in love at the start, yet by the climax the audience is left wondering on how genuine this love was. Indeed, Othello in his story on how he fell in love, suggests that Desdemona loved him for the ‘dangers he had passed’ and he loved her because she ‘pity’d’ him, it is plausible that their relationship was doomed because there was no true love and hence trust between them in the first place, if there was, Othello would surely have asked Desdemona about his suspicions, and Desdemona would not have lied about losing his handkerchief, hence avoiding the play’s tragic end.
Othello the ‘valiant moor’ with Desdemona behind him is strong, noble and confident. He stands up to Brabantio, and is a decorated war hero, he is proud of his good name’ so much so that he’s described as ‘egotistical’ by F.R Leavis. The couple support one another, in the confrontation with Brabantio, Othello asks for Desdemona to be fetched so she can ‘speak of him before her father’ when Desdemona arrives, she convinces her Father to ‘give thee that’ will all his heart. It is again, interesting that once Iago is in Othello’s ear, he forgets this instance of loyalty; in fact instead of seeing Desdemona as loyal because of it, he uses it as a point against her after Iago suggests that she was willing to be disloyal to her own father, so she is likely to be disloyal to him. As Ania Loomba puts, Desdemona passes from being Othello’s ‘ally who would guarantee his white status’ to his ‘sexual and racial other’ when he sees her as an adulteress.
At the time the play was written, women were seen as promiscuous creatures, who ‘rise to play and go to bed to work’ as Iago puts, therefore Othello’s insecurities might not have been about only race, but about gender too, it was common thinking at the time for women to be seen as objects, Othello who ‘won her from her father’ could be sympathising with this point, perhaps as suggested before, Othello and Dedemona’s relationship is destroyed easily because Othello sees Desdemona as his possession, and it angers him for her to be taken from him, he is worried about his reputation, and what his peers would think.
This is quite a sad viewpoint, as Desdemona merely does what was expected of an upper-class woman in the 17th century, to be Othello’s ‘true and loyal wife’. Desdemona’s character remains contradicting in her relationship with Othello, her ‘soft simplicity’ as Johnson says can be both a positive and negative characteristic. On one hand she is strong; she lies to Othello, argues with Iago over women, and defies her Father, yet at the same time, she doesn’t stand up to Othello when it really counts. She is submissive ‘let nobody blame him, his scorn I approve’ and therefore she accepts she will die a ‘guiltless death’, one could argue she is so submissive in regards to Othello because she truly loves him and does not want to anger him, however it could also be argued Desdemona is merely naive and ‘silly woman’ as Rhymer puts, she is a weak character who fears her husband’s wrath, she could have stopped her death if she had admitted she lost the handkerchief, nonetheless it is obvious she is a good and ‘obedient’ wife, at the end of the play we see Othello is nothing without her.
Finally, Othello loses himself without Desdemona in the way he speaks. The confident Othello we see at the start of the play speaks in verse; he is coherent as speaks in iambic pentameter, in Shakespeare’s play, only the upperclass characters speak like this, while the lowerclass characters speak in prose. Othello speaks in an incoherent prose at the end of the play, after he loses Desdemona by killing her; he loses this sense of articulacy ‘OhBlood! Blood! Blood!.. Goats and monkeys’. Desdemona is vital to her husband’s confidence in himself and reputation, without her he becomes what society expects him to be, a black ram not who doesn’t fit with the white upper-class of venetian society he desires.
Ameer Patel, Ms Steele.
