MOOC: Othello. Misunderstanding

Misunderstanding

Shakespeare's plays are so often marked by a lack of straightforward communication. 'Othello' is a powerful example of this, where the text's tragedy essentially springs from acts of misunderstanding.

The audience's attention rightfully falls to Iago when exploring this idea of miscommunication, as he is the Machiavellian, master deceiver; he withholds information from other characters, "I would rather have this tongue cut from my mouth" (2.3.205) and poses leading questions to manipulate Othello's dormant insecurities about his new marriage to Desdemona, enabling Iago to shape his master in any way he deems fit. 

In Iago's endless efforts to distort comprehension, he changes characters and their perceptions of one another, for example, he leads Roderigo to believe that Desdemona's feelings for Othello are impermanent and fanciful; Cassio's beloved reputation and status is taken from him by Othello, and thus he feels useless without it. One might even argue that Emilia was manipulated by him, as he uses her role as his wife and Desdemona's hand as an advantage to get her handkerchief an continue his growing web of lies and deception.
The handkerchief is an important symbol in Othello and represents ...


The Handkerchief
  • Ironically, some of the audience's first meetings with the handkerchief involve ideas of truth and pure intention. In Act 3 Scene 3, when Desdemona accidentally drops the handkerchief and it is discovered by Emilia; she makes a note to herself to have its pattern remade to 'please' her husband (3.3.301). This scene is almost repeated with Cassio when he finds it and takes such a liking for the craftsmanship that he asks Bianca to replicate for him.
  • In the play, Othello seems to desire that this heirloom of his will bind him and his wife together, like how it did for his mother and father, and yet Iago contrasts this with his scheming and toxic deceit; he changes the loving, magical meaning of this 'token' entirely and gives it juxtaposing connotations of lies, misunderstanding and tragedy.

One might suggest the handkerchief's composition holds an inherent ambiguity, one which Iago plays with and exploits to achieve his own ends. On the one hand, this 'little' piece of white cloth is spun from 'hallowed' silk that emblamitises both the unblemished quality of the couple's affections and Desdemona's sexual purity. Exacerbating this, Othello tells us that the handkerchief's fabric consists, partly, of mummified virgins' hearts. However, this bloodiness, along with its 'spotted' pattern of 'red' strawberries equally suggests to the audience the loss of virginity. This blood represents the beginning of greater sexual experience and the potential dangers of those experiences.

It is this set of connotations and their implications of promiscuity that Iago draws his attention on. This is possibly most pertinent when Iago describes Cassio's lascivious use of the napkin to wipe his beard at dinner, continuing the link between culinary and sexual consumption; rather than serving as a memento of the beloved couple's innocent love, Iago encourages Othello to repurpose his heirloom as an accessory to this false adultery.

Gender

There seems to be a lack of sympathy between genders in the play; it implies that Venetian men have an insufficient grasp of the 'true' character of the female men cannot see women or who they 'really' are. This is a society in which attractive women are dangerously and hyberbolically misconceived as statues made from 'monumental alabaster' (5.2.5). This is a world where, despite female characters often expressing themselves with sharpness, they are seen as duplicitous 'pictures out a' doors' (2.1.109). Emilia fights against this; in Act 4 Scene 3, she makes a rallying cry to, 

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.

These are words of frustration and almost resentment at not being truly listened to or understood by men. In this speech, Emilia articulates herself in some of the wittiest and most poetic in the text as a whole.

Here, we see that Emilia's function as the straight-talking working woman seeking to cut through patriarchal misreadings that essentially creates her as a very memorable, reverent figure. It also gives her death a real poignancy too, and highlights the play's tragedy as her meant-to-be loyal, compassionate, loving husband, betrays her by killing her and showing that her loyalty to her husband was tragically corrupt.

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