|
Home |
Curriculum Vitae |
Milton Pages | Writing |
Teaching |
Wine |
Links
Turn, and Turn,
and Turn Again: The Discourse of Honesty and Whoredom in Othello
Michael
Bryson
The
discourse of race in Shakespeare's Othello has received a
great deal of critical attention. Virginia Mason Vaughn, in her
book Othello: A Contextual History, surveys this critical
history, beginning with Marvin Rosenberg's 1961 book The
Masks of Othello (a book documenting the nineteenth-century
tendency toward representing Othello as light-skinned), and
continuing through to Jack D'Amico's 1991 book The Moor in
English Renaissance Drama. According to Vaughan herself,
"The effect of Othello depends . . . on the
essential fact of the hero's darkness, the visual signifier of
his Otherness" (51). Arthur L. Little, Jr., in his article
"'An essence that's not seen': The Primal Scene of Racism
in Othello," claims that "The three crucial
structural elements of Shakespeare's play are Othello's
blackness, his marriage to the white Desdemona, and his killing
of her" (306, emphasis added) as if there were no other
"crucial structural elements." It is not my intention
to undercut or undervalue the attention that has been given to
the discourse of race, the opposition of black and white, in Othello;
however, I contend that an exclusive focus on this
discourse radically reduces and simplifies the play, and I wish
to focus on a different discourse, a different opposition in the
play-the discourse of honesty and whoredom, the opposition of
falseness and loyalty.
Dympna
Callaghan, in her book Women and Gender in Renaissance
Tragedy, makes the point that "Mysogynistic discourse .
. . leads, directly or indirectly, to the death of the female
tragic transgressor [among whose number in Renaissance drama she
counts Shakespeare's Desdemona and Cordelia, and John Webster's
Duchess of Malfi and Vittoria] . . . . [and such discourse]
constitutes a substantial proportion of the discourses in
Renaissance tragedy" (123). The discourses of Renaissance
misogyny can be seen clearly in such pamphlets as Joseph
Swetnam's The Araignment of Lewd, Idle, Froward, and
Vnconstatnt Women (1616): "For women have a thousand
ways to entise thee, and ten thousand waies to deceiue
thee" (15); "they lay out the foldes of their haire,
to entangle men into their loue; betwixt their brests is the
vale of destruction, & in their beds there is hell, sorrow
& repentance" (16); "Eagles eat not men till they
are dead, but women deuoure them aliue: for a woman will pick
thy pocket, and empty thy purse, laugh in thy face and cut thy
throat" (16); "They will play the horse-leach to suck
away thy wealth, but in the winter of thy misery shee will flie
away from thee" (16). Women are here figured as deceiving,
dishonest, and dangerous creatures concerned solely with the
entrapment and destruction of men. They are portrayed as uncontrollable.
The concern over the sexual fidelity of women-in reality a
concern for masculine control over feminine sexuality-is
reflected in John Raynolds' A Defence of the Ivdgement of the
Reformed Churches (1610): "the truth deliverd by our
Saviour Christ alloweth hime whose wife commiteth fornication,
to put her away, and to marrie another" (2); "it is
lawfull for him who hath put away his wife for whoredome to
marrie another" (3).
I
do not mean to imply that Renaissance discourses concerning
women are exclusively misogynistic; Raynolds implies that
it is men, husbands, who have in his day gotten
out of control: "the inordinat fansies and desires of our
corrupt nature have so inveigled Adams seede in manie
places, that men have accostomed to put awaie their wives vppon
every trifling mislike & discontentment" (1). Raynolds
goes on to say that "This perverse opinion & errour of
theirs our Saviour Christ reproved teaching that divorcements
may not be made for any cause save whoredome onely" (1).
Thomas Gataker, in a sermon entitled A Good Wife God's Gift
(not printed until 1637), says "There is a more special
providence of God in a Wife than in Wealth" (138), and
"Children are the gift of God; but the Wife is a more
speciall gift of God: shee cometh in the first place, they in
the second" (139). Such a defense of women, more
particularly of "good" (obedient, chaste) wives may
very well strike the late twentieth-century reader as
misogynistic in its own way, but Gataker is certainly no Swetnam.
A stronger defense of women against the misogynistic strains of
Renaissance discourse on women is to be found in a poem entitled
An Apologie For Womenkinde (1605): "sundry times of
women I haue read, / Which for their honours, now long since are
dead. / As Lucia and chaste Lucretia, / The
Damesels Hyppo and Orythia: / But of one man as
yet I neuer heard, / Who for his chastitie tooke such reward. /
Then fondlings cease the female sexe to blame, / None truth can
speake that turneth to their shame. / Their very paines by God
to them enioyn'd, / Shewe how their mindes to goodnes are
enclin'd. / For 'tis a rule; God sends his troubles such / As be
his creatures able, less or much" (C). The entire female
sex is here figured as more naturally virtuous than the male
sex.
The
important point is that both the attacks upon, and the defenses
of, women center around the issues of chastity, sexual
faithfulness to a single man, and honor/honesty. The three
female characters in Othello are all figured in terms of
honesty and whoredom, and it is within this discourse that I
will consider Othello, with its reproduction and
representation of these discourses.
The
first mention of honesty in Othello comes from the lips
of Iago, and it is, unsurprisingly, a negative reference:
"You shall mark / Many a duteous and knee-crooking knave /
That (doting on his own obsequious bondage) / Wears out his
time, much like his master's ass, / For nought but provender,
and when he's old, cashier'd. / Whip me such honest knaves"
(I.i.44-49; all references are to The Riverside Shakespeare
edition of 1974). Hereafter, much of the play turns on honesty
(in the dual sense of truthful representation of self and
events, and sexual chastity and faithfulness), as Iago
masterfully gives the appearance of honesty to Othello, while
undermining the appearance of honesty in Cassio and Desdemona.
Early in the play, Othello assumes and relies on the honesty and
faith of both his wife and his ensign; after Desdemona's father,
Brabantio, warns Othello, "Look to her, Moor, if thou has
eyes to see; / She has deceiv'd her father, and may thee"
(I.iii.292,293), Othello exclaims, "My life upon her
faith!" and then tells "Honest Iago" (I.iii.294)
that he is leaving Desdemona with him. Othello expresses his
belief (or at the very least his will to believe) in Iago's
honesty throughout the play, right up until the final moments.
"Iago is honest" says Othello to Cassio at II.iii.6;
"I know thou'rt full of love and honesty" he says to
Iago at III.iii.118; "I do not think but Desdemona's
honest" says Othello to Iago at III.iii.225, even as Iago's
rhetorical poison has begun to do its work.
It
is in the crucial seduction scene, III.iii., that honesty and
whoredom begin to come together forcefully. After Iago has
exited the scene, Othello is left alone with his new-born
suspicions: "This fellow's of exceeding honesty, / And
knows all qualities, with a learned spirit, / Of human dealings.
If I do prove her haggard,1
/ Though that her jesses were my dear heart-strings, / I'ld
whistle her off, and let her down the wind / To prey at
fortune" (III.iii.258-263). To "let her down the
wind" is drawn from falconry, as is the image of
"jesses [as] dear heart-strings." What is at work here
is male ownership and control of female sexuality: the jesses
(straps used to fasten the falcon's leash to the falconer's
wrist) of Othello's heart strings are what would be loosed in
order to "let her down the wind," thus putting
Desdemona away, in Raynolds' sense, for unfaithfulness, for
whoredom. This issue of control is further developed in
Othello's lines on the "curse of marriage": O curse of
marriage! / That we can call these delicate creatures ours, /
And not their appetites! I had rather be a toad2
/ And live upon the vapor of a dungeon / Than keep a corner in
the thing I love / For others' uses" (III.iii.268-273). In
the context of Iago's suspicion-mongering, "others'
uses" are specifically sexual uses.
Othello
later demands that Iago "prove [Desdemona] a whore"
(III.iii.359); Iago asks Othello if he would "grossly gape
on? / Behold her topp'd?" (III.iii.395,396) literally watch
Desdemona in the act of adultery. Iago, knowing of course that
he is inventing Desdemona's whoredom, responds that "Were
they as prime as goats, as hot as monkeys"3
(III.iii.403), it would be impossible to provide such proof.
Iago provides indirect "proof" in IV.i. as he
manipulates Cassio (who yet believes that Iago is assisting him
by encouraging his suit to Desdemona for intercession with
Othello) and Othello (who, hidden, watches Iago and Cassio speak
to each other). As Iago and Cassio talk of Bianca, a courtesan
with whom Cassio has been involved, Othello mistakes (as he is
intended to) talk of Bianca's reputed sexual nature for that of
Desdemona: "She gives it out that you shall marry her . . .
. I marry her! What? A customer! . . . . This is the monkey's4
own giving out" (IV.i.115-127). Thus Desdemona is once
again, if only for Othello, figured as whorish, as
uncontrollable (specifically by males, more specifically by
Othello) in her sexual nature.
Later,
Othello questions Emila about whether she has seen any evidence
of an affair between Desdemona and Cassio. Emilia denies that
any such affair is going on, saying of Desdemona, "if she
be not honest, chaste, and true, / There's no man happy; the
purest of their wives / Is foul as slander" (IV.ii.17-19).
After Emilia exits the scene Othello refers to her as "a
simple bawd"5
and calls Desdemona "a subtile whore" (IV.ii.20,21).
When Emilia returns with Desdemona, Othello's discourse of
honesty and whoredom hits a new peak; as Desdemona protests that
she is his "true / And loyal wife" (IV.ii.34,35),
Othello tells her, "Swear thou art honest" (IV.ii.38),
following that up with "Heaven truly knows that thou art as
false as hell" (IV.ii.39). When Desdemona replies "I
hope my noble lord esteems me honest," Othello compares her
honesty to that of "summer flies . . . in the shambles"6.
Finally, Othello hurls the word "whore" into
Desdemona's face: "Was this fair paper, this most goodly
book, / Made to write 'whore' upon?" (IV.ii.71,72).
Desdemona is a "public commoner" (a euphemism for
"whore"), that even the "bawdy wind, that kisses
all it meets" does not wish to hear of (IV.ii.73, 78); she
is an "Impudent strumpet," and the "cunning whore
of Venice7/
That married with Othello" (IV.ii.81,89,90).
Emilia,
protesting on behalf of her mistress, complains to Iago that
Othello has "bewhor'd" Desdemona, bitterly complaining
that "A beggar in his drink / Could not have laid such
terms upon his callet"8
(IV.ii.115,120,121); the discourse of honesty returns in the
figure of the "cogging, cozening slave" (terms,
respectively, for cheating and deceiving) who Emilia blames for
having "devis'd this slander" (IV.ii.132,133).
The
discourses of honesty and whoredom are engaged in by women
outside the presence of men as the ever-present Renaissance
figure of the Cuckold makes his appearance in the conversation
between Emila and Desdemona in IV.iii. In response to
Desdemona's question, "Woulds't thou do such a deed
[cuckold a husband] for all the world?" Emilia replies
"who would not make her husband a cuckold to make him a
monarch? I should venture purgatory for't" (64,75-77).
Emilia, in her "hath not a woman eyes" speech of line
84-103, goes farther than any other character in the play to
challenge misogynistic discourse: "I do think it is their
husband's faults / If wives do fall" (86,87), a defense in
agreement with that of An Apologie for Womenkinde.
"Let husbands know / Their wives have sense like them; they
see, and smell, / And have their palates both for sweet and
sour, / As husbands have" (93-96), as direct a refutation
of Joseph Swetnam as Shakespeare has to offer.
Despite
this one possibly redemptive moment, however, the discourses of
honesty and whoredom ultimately take their misogynistic course.
Iago, who has just gotten through stabbing Cassio in the leg,
and killing Roderigo by stabbing him in the chest, publicly
explains Cassio's misery as "the fruits of whoring"
(V.i.116). Iago is referring, of course, to Cassio's affair with
Bianca, whom Iago has just moments ago called a "notable
strumpet" (V.i.78). Emilia, after arriving on the scene,
also refers to Bianca as a strumpet (V.i..121). When Bianca
protests that she is "no strumpet, but of life as honest /
As you that thus abuse me" (V.i.122,123), Emilia rejects
the comparison of her honesty with that of Bianca, thus
undermining the anti-misogynist tone of her earlier scene with
Desdemona in the very act of confirming the discourses of
honesty and whoredom in her judgment of Bianca.
In
perhaps the most misogynist moment of the entire play, Othello
determines that Desdemona "must die, else she'll betray
more men" (V.ii. 6). In the moments before and after
killing Desdemona, Othello refers to her as "perjur'd
woman," "strumpet," "whore,"
"false," "a liar," and "foul,"
playing as one thundering chord all of the play's notes of
honesty and whoredom. Emilia, who uncovers the plot near the
play's end, is rewarded for her honesty by being called a "Villianous
whore' (V.ii. 229) and then fatally stabbed by Iago. With her
dying breaths she defends Desdemona, saying to Othello,
"she was chaste" (V.ii.249).
Perhaps
the supreme irony of the misogynist discourses that permeate
this play is that of the three women who are each, at one point
or another, figured as whores, the only one who is not murdered
is Bianca, who is described in the list of Dramatis Personae
as "a courtezan." This term is not unambiguously a
synonym for whore or prostitute, as the OED lists the oldest
meaning of the word as a figure attached to the court of a
prince or a pope; however, a usage that would translate as
prostitute or whore is current in Shakespeare's time. Cassio
refers to his relationship to Bianca as one of (or to) "a
customer" (IV.i.119), a word that in Shakespeare's time
could carry the twin meaning-in a sexual context-of purchaser and
seller;9
Iago refers to Bianca as "a whore" at IV.i.177, and as
a "notable strumpet" at V.i.78; Emila also refers to
Bianca as a "strumpet" at V.i.121. Given the notably
anti-female discourse which pervades this play (with the
exception of Emilia's speech in IV.iii. 84-103), I do not
believe that there is any reason to regard these
characterizations as especially trustworthy. Why, for instance,
would a prostitute, a "customer," express what is
apparently the jealousy that Bianca gives voice to in III.iv and
IV.i over the issue of where Cassio obtained the handkerchief he
gives her?
The
tragedy of the fall of Othello and the deaths of Desdemona and
Emilia is perhaps also the tragedy of the dominance of the views
of Joseph Swetnam over those of Thomas Gataker and the anonymous
author of A Defence of Womenkinde. The figure of the
woman who simply cannot be trusted, of the woman who must be
killed, "else she'll betray more men," is stamped all
over Othello. This is an aspect of the play that I think
has been under-examined in recent criticism. Adding an awareness
of the pervasive nature of the discourses of honesty
(specifically female honesty in the sense of chastity and
sexual faithfulness, maintaining-or failing to maintain-an
obedient state as the exclusive sexual property of the husband)
and whoredom (any and all falls from the aforementioned state of
chastity and sexual obedience) to the current discussions of the
racial discourse in this play is necessary if we are to reach as
full an understanding as we are able of Shakespeare's tragedy.
Combining analyses of race- and gender-based discourses in this
play will better serve the richness of the play and the
complexities of our response to it, in a society still
struggling with similar issues, nearly four hundred years after Othello.
Notes
1)
A theriomorphic image for Desdemona. A haggard is defined by the
OED as a wild female hawk caught when in her adult plumage, and
as a wild and intractable (female) person. This reference thus
bestializes Desdemona and paves the way for the whore, strumpet,
and bawd references that come later in the play. Back
to main text
2)
A theriomorphic image for Othello. Toad can carry the sense of a
base and slavish person (thus resonating with the racist
discourse in this play). Shakespeare has earlier put toads in a
curiously sexual context in Troilus and Cressida, where
Ajax says (in reference to Ulysses), "I do hate a proud
man, as I do hate the engend'ring of toads" (II.iii.159). A
similar sexual context is employed in Iv.ii.57-62 of Othello,
where Othello speaks his refusal to "keep" the place
where he has "garner'd up [his] heart . . . . The fountain
from which the current runs . . . . as a cestern for foul toads
/ To knot and gender in!" Back to
main text
3)
Further theriomorphic imagery associated with uncontrollable
sexual passion. Back to main text
4)
This time, a theriomorphic image for Bianca, one that works
nicely in the deception of Othello, considering Iago's earlier
use of the same image to describe Desdemona. Back
to main text
5)
A Pander or Pimp. After 1700 "bawd" became exclusively
associated with a female figure, a procuress, whereas in
Shakespeare's time a bawd could be female or male. Back
to main text
6)
Parasites feeding on the blood of slaughtered animals-possibly a
reference to the ever-present possibility that Othello, as a
warrior, may be slaughtered in battle. Back
to main text
7)
An image certainly meant to evoke the Whore of
Babylon-Christendom's (especially Protestant Christendom's)
female figure of absolute human evil and degradation. Back
to main text
8)
Another word for strumpet, drab, or whore. Back
to main text
9)
See the usage in All's Well That Ends Well at V.iii.286
where the King says to Diana, "I think thee now some common
customer." Diana responds, at V.i.292, "Great King, I
am no strumpet, by my life." Back
to main text
Works Cited
|