Racism in Shakespeare’s “Othello”

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Table of Contents

Introduction
The structure of Shakespeare’s play and the forms of racial representation
English racial and cultural consciousness at the time of staging Othello
Iago and racism
Conclusion
References

Introduction

The purpose of this essay is to detect and analyze various traits of racism in Shakespeare’s famous piece Othello and how it relates to the character of Othello.

Racism in literature considerably differs from its manifestations in politics and ideology. Thus, it is useless to search for mechanical coincidences between racist postulates that are widely known and racism in literature.

First of all, one should note that literature form is something that opposes political as political. Its discourse, of course, has referents in reality like for instance racist prejudices of the author and his social and cultural environment but what is more important they come into interplay with such structural characteristics of the literature work as plot, a discourse which may be described as self-reflective components. Therefore, our strategy is to trace racism as it occurs in the description of characters and their behavior, the plot. This racism is more likely to be cultural rather than biological, placing more emphasis on specific traits of character and behavior rather than on declaring inhumanness.

The structure of Shakespeare’s play and the forms of racial representation

The racist connotations can be already found in the circumstances that oriented Shakespeare to write Othello. It doesn’t mean that Shakespeare was himself racist because racism was entirely formed as capitalist ideology, but it is more relevant to interpret his choice of the main character as the choice of ‘marketable’ spectacular material to be set on stage since Moors were regarded as exotics in England of that period.

The connotations of this attitude exemplify the cultural otherness of Moor and various prejudices that arise from the Difference; today it of course can be regarded as racism. The opening scene of the play proves our assumption. It completely exoticizes Othello referring to him not by name but as ‘Moor’ and ‘extravagant stranger’ thus putting a certain mental boundary between him and the audience.

Blacks in English society of that time were perceived with negative connotations and are regarded as monsters therefore the play has frequent references to monstrosity. Of course, this step is ideological and is needed to establish the link between audience and performance. In this way, it can be described as a ‘marketing’ strategy’. English at the beginning of the 17 century often regarded blacks as monsters from the outside world and connected black skin with moral monstrosity. Bartels (1990) for instance states that postulating racial difference was regarded as a means for protecting one’s identity.

These racial prejudices are developed within the frames of Renaissance discourse. Thus, using racist characteristics of the main character and its connotations for the perception of the play the link between the playwright and his audience is established. Such racial mood characterizing England at the beginning of the 17 century is well-documented and it is not accidentally that it found its representation in literature.

Thus, Shakespeare exploits the theme and mood presented in Englishmen’s consciousness. In the starting scene, when Iago is openly expressing his dislike or rather hatred for Othello who has chosen Cassio for lieutenancy he already plans the revenge (“I follow him to serve my turn upon him”). Roderigo is chosen by Iago as an assistant to his plan since he feels the same mixture of racial, cultural hatred that automatically transforms into personal disgust for Othello. Rodrigo and Iago, thus are the racist protagonists in Shakespeare’s play but the discourse of cultural and racial difference goes far beyond simple racial references and utterances but is embedded in the discursive fabric of the play and literary means of expression such as metaphors and allegories.

Roderigo expresses his racial prejudices in such words: “What a full fortune does the thick lips owe / If he can carry this!” The word thick lips can be described as a completely disparaging reference to the facial characteristics of the dark-skinned race’ members. The starting scenes have such examples in abundance and will later discuss them but it is important that our analysis of racism in Othello and how it refers to the character of Othello being conceptual and this we have to outline the main forms in which racial meaning are embedded.

The whole system of racial hatred presented in Othello can be divided into several main interrelated elements. The first one is a literal reference to racial characteristics or direct offensive utterance and comparisons of Othello with the ugly and inhumane beast. The second one is racial or culturally determined stereotypes used to denote the features of character peculiar to Othello. They mainly concern the available and widely used narratives of the black race existing in the English cultural space of that period, even though events of the play take place in another country. And at last, the third element of racialization is the structurally determined fabric of the play and literary expressive means. These three elements form the system of racial representation of Othello and are something that determines the unraveling of the plot.

In the first scene of the play, Iago wakes up Brabantio crying that “an old black ram / Is tupping your white ewe” (1.1.89-90), the image of Othello which is aimed at horrifying Desdemona’s father. Iago then tries to represent their sexual ties saying: “your daughter covered with a Barbary horse” (1.1.112). Using reminding Desdemona’s father that with Othello they will produce monsters. Iago further continues this racist narrative saying to Brabantio that “you’ll have your nephews neigh to you,” (1.1.112-18).

The starting scenes of the play thus prepare the audience for perceiving Othello as inhumane in which Shakespeare’s irony lies since at the end of the play we will find out that Iago is less humane than Othello. This strategy of Shakespeare should be regarded as overcoming racism through racism. In the second scene metaphors and other expressive means applied to Othello have more political and social characteristics and overtones. Brabantio now refers to Othello as a foul thief’ whose emotionality that enchanted his daughter made her flee from ‘wealthy curled darlings of our nation’ to ‘the sooty bosom'(1.2.62-72).

Brabantio is more prone to see Othello’s offense as mere political claiming that due to his blackness has no moral and political rights to deserve his daughter as other worthy men of ‘our nation’. Thus, here racist connotations are sublimated to political ones. A union between African and Venetian women was something unnatural for the majority of English aristocracy which perceived relations between men and women in limited space of aristocracy and its traditions.

Aristocracy traditionally represented a high level of social endogamy preventing people from the lowest sections of populations to have access to it. Thus, for Shakespeare’s audience, such a description of Othello and the stance Brabantio took was quite natural and understanding. Desdemona’s choice in their eyes thus was something going beyond all moral rules and was regarded as politically and socially monstrous.

Othello’s self-justification when he comes to court in the third scene is aimed at persuading the English audience not of his virtues but contrary to increasing their moral and social sentiments. To tell how he had captivated Desdemona Othello has to mention several exotic races he had told her about: “The Anthropophagi and men whose heads / Do grow beneath their shoulders” (1.3.146-47). These stories while having a frightening effect on Desdemona made her think positively about the stranger who narrated them – Othello. Thus, the exotics of the stories merged in Desdemona’s consciousness with the exoticism of Othello.

English racial and cultural consciousness at the time of staging Othello

Of course, Othello’s most obvious difference is his skin color, a sign of his African origin. Othello is a black moor is marked with a difference from the dominant cultural norms and perceptions of the audience and is different from other characters on the stage which represent white cultural and social traditions.

Therefore the audience is likely to have a negative attitude to this character and compare Othello with some mystical and frightening monster that they imagine from the existing literature on travels to Africa and other distanced lands. There exists another historical evidence of the fact that theatergoers would be astonished and confused seeing Othello on the stage. A black person was still something rarely met in the middle age England and there is well-documented evidence that their number in England was not very high and began to grow only from the beginning of the 17 century when West Africans were for the first time introduced to London.

Ruth Cowhig for instance has written that “there were several hundreds of black people living in the households of the aristocracy and landed gentry, or working in London taverns,” so she thinks that “the sight of black people must have been familiar to Londoners.” (Michael, 1989, p.45) Notwithstanding the fact, the majority of Londoners have already seen black people it was weird for them to watch Othello on the stage speaking and even expressing some thoughts and feelings.

The policy of Queen Elizabeth to bring new blacks ‘in the realm’ of England was regarded by many as a challenge to their interests and here the feeling of social, religious, cultural, and racial difference came into play. The dominant groups of society especially the rising bourgeoisie were against this policy that paralyzed the traditional social interactions.

The model of understanding of African blacks as opposite to ‘English’ further strengthened the idea of Africa and its inhabitants as an exotic, mysterious continent.

The literature of that period reinforced the idea of blacks’ otherness, low mental and moral standards. The language of Moor’s monstrosity and childbearing often appears in Shakespeare’s play, frequently following the traditions of the prodigious birth which hints at definitely ominous events to come.

Iago and racism

In the closing scenes of the first act, Iago addresses Roderigo to make a plot against this ugly Moor: ‘[L]et us be conjunctive in our revenge against him; if thou canst cuckold him, thou does thyself a pleasure, and me a sport. There are many events in the womb of time, which will be delivered’. (1.3.369-72). Iago’s perception of time as a womb that issues and reproduces events gives him a certain role similar to that of Edward Gresham, a pamphleteer who constantly warned that monstrous births predicted future tragedies and calamities.

Though Iago is a more cheerful prophet since he realized himself not as a human victim but as a universal divine ordinator putting to order various supernatural events. “I have It. It is engendered. Hell and night / Must bring this monstrous birth to the world’s light” (1.3.404-05). Iago can not be regarded as God or devil, he is conceiving offspring and ‘hell’ and ‘night’ are not causative but instead enabling moments. Iago’s desire to make a plot against Othello is motivated not only by social and economic reasons as one may think but also by purely racial hatred and contempt. It thus may be said that the interplay between vanity and racial difference constitutes Iago’s personality and his ambition to ‘destroy’ Othello.

Iago’s abovementioned metaphor is interesting in terms of equivalence between the idea and birth, the concept and conception – this is a metaphor that constantly recurs. This idea that the brain gives birth to human thoughts and the body gives birth to human children or monsters was very widespread in England of that period. The mindset that created them can be named vulgar materialism merging with religious and moral claims.

Thus, this combination of thoughts created an extraordinary negative perception of blacks and was even more barbaric than their culture. Other instances of the same problem may be found in Shakespeare’s sonnets dedicated to ‘their only begetter’. In Othello metaphors are used intentionally, sometimes almost literally so it becomes evident that the relation between mental conceptions and physical birth becomes linear – i.e. understandable for the audience.

Iago plays with this metaphor in the middle of the Second Act when Desdemona asks Iago to compose praise; he narrates how his ‘beautiful’ invention taxes his brain and then announces: “But my Muse labours, / And thus she is delivered” (2.1.127-28). As further this comparison is developed in the context of Iago plot theatergoers are once again reminded of this metaphor relation with the conceptions of biological generation and may also remember Iago’s words at the end of Act One concerning the impending ‘birth’ as being ‘monstrous’; as far as a metaphor becomes conscious it helps to understand a morally monstrous nature of Iago’s ‘conception’.

In ACT three Iago gives his monstrous conception including the basic idea of Desdemona’s infidelity to Othello and thus makes the first step for its realization. Othello makes a comment that Iago echoes his doubts concerning Cassio: “[a]s if there were some monster in his thought, / Too hideous to be shown” (3.3.111-12).

Othello then translates his idea to Iago saying that there must be reason for Iago’s being concerned when they were speaking about Cassio: [Thou] didst contract and purse thy brow together As if thou then hadst shut up in thy brain Some horrible conceit…. /[Thou] weight’s thy words before thou giv’st them breathe/ Therefore these stops of thine fright me the more; /For such things in a false disloyal knave /Are tricks of custom, but in a man that’s just /They’re close dilations, working from the heart /That passion cannot rule (1.3.118-29).

The first lines where ‘horrible conceit’ figures represent an evident continuation of Iago’s language of the generation that presented Iago’s thoughts as the hideous progeny waiting for birth and reduced to the womb of his brain.

The pursuing and contracting of Iago’s brow can be regarded as certain symptoms of the metaphorical labor which is to bring force the birth of offspring and to represent this idea to Othello who certainly is afraid of it.

The description regarding Iago’s taking pauses before saying his words creates the atmosphere of the birth process which is constantly accompanied by breathing and as a literal declaration of the fact that Iago thinks properly before he says something; although ‘stops’ are something that Othello refers to be the symbols of Iago’s hesitation, namely these ‘stops’ is something that gives birth to his thought and they no doubt look similar to the breathing of the future mother.

This well-designed pattern of the references to the process of childbirth provides good justifications for the Folio reading of the ‘dilations’ and not the ‘denotements’ from the Fist Quarto because dilations may serve the role of another reference to the process of birth which ‘passion cannot rule’. These images help Shakespeare to constitute the idea that Iago gives birth to the monstrous idea as some abstract mother may carry a monstrous child in the womb (Jones, 1965).

As the play unravels Iago however does not continue to breed his monstrous thoughts but instead transfers this mental pregnancy to Othello. He gives Othello the possibility to give birth to them himself thus taking away responsibility for his monstrous plans. Many researchers claim that the metaphor breaks down with this transfer of Iago’s thought to Othello. Sacks for instance tried to explain this process of transfer as some kind of ‘theft’ since womb in the late Middle Ages was often compared with purses, which were easy to stole and become a possessor of their contents.

So according to Sacks, Othello managed to steal somewhat ‘psychosexually’ the Iago’s ‘purse’ filled with ugly and trashy thought. The pregnancy didn’t naturally shift from Iago to Othello but it was a little bit difficult process that can be described as mental and verbal communication which generates stable conceptions and patterns in the person who is ready to adopt them. Thus, it can be claimed that Othello had a thought embryo saying to his mind that Desdemona was infidel to him. But the role of Iago in giving form and substance to this idea, in making it somewhat obvious and material can not be undervalued here.

The idea of Desdemona’s infidelity was generated by mental and verbal communication and intercourse between these men which is analogous to the sexual intercourse of Iago (as a male) and Othello (as female), impregnated thoughts through his ears. This process can be understood in terms of the Aristotelian theory of Animals’ genesis which states that a male’s seed is not just left in the female, and not just joined with female seeds in the womb but on the contrary, it shapes the nature of female’s seed.

This process is described by Aristotle in comparison to the carpenter’s job when he says that the carpenter only gives form to material and not joins it himself: “the active partner is not situated within the thing which is being formed” (113). Laquer has summarized this idea saying that “conception is for the male to have an idea, an artistic or artisan conception, in the brain-uterus of the female.”(29) and thus understood something essential to Iago’s role in Shakespeare’s play. The mental impregnation postulates the sublimation of racial prejudices on the level of practical realization of the monstrous plot.

Thus, racial and cultural characteristics of ugliness are redirected from Othello to Iago as ‘practically’ monstrous person and Othello’s discursive ugliness stays aside in theatergoers’ consciousness before he realizes the impregnated ideas of Iago. This act redistributes monstrosity between Moor and ‘civilized’ Iago, showing that racially worthy can be also morally ugly but at the same time leaving the taste of racial hatred to Othello which can not be driven out by the mere theater play. Thus, it can be said that the idea that Iago tries to impose on Othello is kind of a formative seed Aristotle mentioned and Othello’s brain is a womb or simply unformed material that needs to be shaped to realize the plot of Iago.

The racial characteristics dominant in English society of this time can be traced to Othello’s behavior. Though many commentators claim that Othello was jealous it is not true since his realization of Iago’s ideas and plot may be described in terms of complete trustfulness. Jealousy may be described as a syndrome of obsessive states when every step of the object of jealousy is regarded by a jealous person as treason or infidelity.

This is not the case if we think of Othello’s behavior. Instead, he may be described as trustworthy. His complete trustfulness plays the role of ‘negative’ racism in Shakespeare’s play. It aims to show that cultural, racial, and mental differences make Othello unarmed in the encounter with the virtues of Western civilization – intrigues, rationality, and cold calculations. Othello’s naivety thus serves the role of postulating cultural difference and has positive connotations. The author of the play seems to hint to the audience that Othello is morally pure and natural in his behavior, not contaminated with false features of ‘western civilization’ such as hypocrisy and moral grubbiness.

By taking into consideration the fact that the final point of theater’s plays is audience but not the author’s ideas, there is no denying importance of the fact that this ‘negative’ racism was understood by theatergoers quite positively and they were inclined to ascribe all amoral causations to Othello rather than to Iago – their instigator.

After Iago impregnated Othello with his ideas and plot, he as a pregnant woman having irrational desires for abstract ‘something’, insists that his wife Desdemona show him the handkerchief well ornamented with strawberries – which is a fruit widely associated with maternity and frustrations of ‘strawberry marks’ on the children. Thus, from this time on the gestalt of trustfulness which was impregnated by Iago quickly transforms into a ‘green-eyed’ obsession with Desdemona’s infidelity.

But it is not jealousy because a jealous person trying to find the source of infidelity is afraid of finding it. After all, she seeks to maintain relations. For Othello, it is not jealousy but rather the fact of infidelity which is enough to transform him into a ‘green-eyed monster’. It is ‘natural’ without any taste of civilization and Shakespeare emphasizes it.

Even though the metaphorical language is discreet and sometimes is not properly consistent it continues to inform the plot of the play. Further in Act Three Othello thinks of cuckoldry as a problem of destiny: “Even then this forked plague is fated to us / When we do quicken” (3.3.282-83). The theatergoers hear the statement that has a purpose of constructing Othello’s fatalism, which makes him plagued while he is suspecting cuckoldry and thus, this reinforces his monstrosity as he is quickening the pendulum of his womb.

A few moments later Othello says: “I have a pain upon my forehead here” (3.3.290) as if the monstrous thought kicked his head seeking for freedom. It can be also described as certain anticipation of the idea’s birth. In the following scene, Emilia makes a comparison of Othello’s feelings to ‘a monster/ Begot upon itself, born on itself.” Desdemona replies to it “Heaven keep that monster from Othello’s mind!” (3.4.161-63).

Everybody watching the play already knows that Othello is bearing some ugly intentions in his mind and wants them to be realized if his doubts are confirmed and Desdemona’s is an infidel to him. The racial prejudices further transform in some form of mockery of Othello because of his ability to understand the truth but of course, they are suppressed by the tragedy of the moment. Othello following his actualized thoughts says to Desdemona in the Fifth Act:… confess thee freely of thy sin/For to deny each article with oath/Cannot remove, nor choke the strong conception/That I do groan withal/Thou art to die(5.2.56-59). The contemplation of the murder is for Othello the midwifery for his deformed and monstrous ‘child’ birth and the actualization of his monstrous conception.

Conclusion

Othello is one of Shakespeare’s interesting and moving dramas but its racial connotations move the audience sometimes in different directions. The mentalities of the audience who are the main interpreters and the point of the plot’s destination depend significantly on the cultural setting and conditions. If in Shakespearean England the racial prejudices were only becoming dominant, Britain in 18-19 century represented the paramount of biological and cultural racism. Notwithstanding these facts, Othello contains racial prejudices and patterns independent of their later or earlier interpretations because we possess a well-articulated notion of racism. This fact of course can’t obscure Shakespeare’s desire to overcome racism through its articulation.

Maybe he didn’t understand it but his play shows that negative features of character and bad morality are peculiar to every man notwithstanding their cultural or racial background. It may be said that Shakespeare not only reproduced the culture that created racial prejudices to blacks – he attempted to overcome them, though only we, ‘modern’ understand it.

References

Bartels, E. C (1990). Making More of the Moor: Aaron, Othello, and Renaissance Refashioning of Race. Shakespeare Quarterly 41: 454.

Jones, E. (1965). Othello’s Countrymen. The African in English Renaissance Drama London: Oxford UP.

Michael, N. (1989). Unproper Beds: Race, Adultery, and the Hideous in Othello. Shakespeare Quarterly, 40:409.

Shakespeare, W. Othello. (1980) The Complete Works of Shakespeare, ed. David Bevington, 3d edition. Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman.

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