Shakespeare’s tragic play Othello demonstrates the potency of language as both a powerful foundation for love and an insidious agent of destruction. Shakespeare seems fixated on the idea that words are ripe for consumption, to both nourishing and detrimental ends. Indeed, Desdemona fell in love with Othello after “devour[ing] up [his] discourse” and growing enamored by his stories (1.3.150). Yet Othello’s mention of her “greedy ear” betrays his fear of Desdemona’s appetite (1.3.149), a fear that grows so destabilizing it leaves Othello’s own ear open to Iago’s poisonous discourse. As such, the characters in the play become vulnerable to the rhetoric that surrounds and engenders them and it becomes apparent that the configuration and consumption of identity as story is a concept too tenuous to withstand destructive intervention.

Othello is acquainted with Desdemona by initially recounting his life’s tales to her father, Brabanzio. He states, “her father loved me, oft invited me, still questioned me the story of my life from year to year: the battles, sieges, fortune, that I have passed. I ran it through, even from my boyish days to th’ very moment that he bade me to tell it” (1.3.128-133). Brabanzio’s love for Othello exists in accordance with, or perhaps even due to, his oratory abilities as he offers tales of his military prowess in foreign lands. Othello is able to cultivate Desdemona’s love through the same process, stating, “my story being done, she gave me for my pains a world of kisses” (1.3.58-59). This establishes Othello’s storytelling as a direct transaction; he submitted his words, replete with years of battles’ worth of pain, to Desdemona and in exchange she gave him tokens of her affection in the form of “kisses.” His place within Venetian society and his relationships to the people within it become dependent on his ability to articulate his sense of self.Stephen Greenblatt characterizes this narrative performance as “forever constituting itself out of the materials of the present instant, a narrative in which the storyteller is constantly swallowed up by the story” (238). Each time Othello is “questioned...the story of [his] life,” he submits himself to a process of identity performance that is both never-ending and, as Greenblatt argues, “insupportable” (238). By tying himself so closely to a process as unstable as storytelling, Othello is ultimately consumed, or “swallowed up,” by his own words.

Othello remarks that after he shared his story with Desdemona, “she thanked me and bade me, if I had a friend that loved her, I should but teach him how to tell my story, and that would woo her” (1.3.163-66). Othello’s “wooing” of Desdemona is so dependent on his self-narrative that his words come to exist in a space outside of him. Othello recounts that Desdemona bid him to teach another man to tell her the same story, as this would prompt her to fall in love once more. This request produces a strange divide between Othello as a man and Othello as an orator; his words hold such a power that it is almost as if he does not have full ownership of them and their import could be transferred to anyone who wished to learn how to speak them. Yet there is a danger inherent in this process: once “the story of Othello’s life,” along with his understanding of his own identity, becomes an object open for public consumption and repossession, space is opened up for that identity to be reconfigured. As Greenblatt writes, “Othello thinks that he has triumphed through his narrative self-fashioning, but Iago knows that an identity that has been fashioned as a story can be unfashioned, refashioned, inscribed anew in a different narrative: it is the fate of stories to be consumed, or as we say more politely, interpreted” (238).There is an irony inherent to the fact that, in through the process of his identity-shaping, Othello loses ownership of his identity. His implicit agreement to transfer the sum of his parts to a mere story opens up space for Iago’s later intervention in his concept of identity.

Othello’s narrative self-performance is also a performance of Otherness; he is ultimately a Moor in Venetian society, an outsider by virtue of his race and his religion. Shakespeare’s writing was influenced by his understanding of religious conflict that erupted in the Mediterranean during the sixteenth century. He introduces Cyprus as “an island embattled on the Ottoman sea,” at a time when, “to Shakespeare and his contemporaries, Turk, Arab and Moor all represented the Islamic ‘other’” (Bate). The Turks were considered a threat to English Christianity, a tension that Iago calls to attention when he states, “eyes have seen the proof at Rhodes, at Cyprus, and on others’ grounds, Christened and heathen” (1.1.26-29). This line, among the very first in the play, immediately foregrounds the action in religious conflict. Othello is tied to the “heathen” Turks by virtue of his name, which was likely pronounced originally as “Otello” and which echoes the founder of the Turkish empire, Othman (Bate). Bate additionally identifies the term “Moor,” which is repeatedly used in place of Othello’s name throughout the play, as signifying Muslim, or, more generally “not one of us.” Ironically, although all aspects of Othello’s name identify him as Turkish and Muslim, he is a devout Christian intent on fighting Turkish forces.

Othello’s identity as a devout Christian soldier is self-proclaimed, as he declares, “these arms of mine...have used their dearest action in the tented field,” referencing his occupation as a solider fighting for the Duke of Venice (1.3.83-85). Othello has also gained considerable reputation for his military prowess, as evidenced in the words of those around him. Cassio states, “the Senate has sent about three several quests to search you out” (1.2.46-47) and the Duke announces, “Valiant Othello, we must straight employ you against the general enemy Ottoman” (48-49). Despite his origins in Otherness, Othello is understood and valued as a Venetian soldier. The Duke almost dismisses his Otherness entirely in stating that Othello “is far more fair than black” (1.3.287). Indeed, he is so trusted by the Duke and Senate that they later invest in him full martial and political control of Cyprus. Shakespeare figures him as barbaric Other in his name, while rendering his dialect as consistent with that of an educated Christian Venetian. This presents a language paradox: the language used to identify Othello marks him as Other, yet his speech in Venice, as well as the speech of the Venetian government leaders, solidifies his allegiance to their Christian cause. Bate writes, “Ottoman-ness is suggested by Othello's name, but he is turned against the origin implied by that name.” By fighting for the Venetian army, Othello comes to have “valiant” placed before his name in the mouth of the Duke, such that he becomes a “valiant Other,” and tenuously accepted in Venetian society due to his military contributions.

The term “Moor” also connotes a racial Otherness, as Bate writes, “it referred to a native or inhabitant of Mauretania, a region of North Africa.” Iago explicitly ties Othello to this region when he states, “he goes into Mauretania and taketh away with him the fair Desdemona” (4.2.217-18). Iago believes there to be an inherent theft in Othello’s marriage to “the fair Desdemona;” since he is North African, he must have “taken her away.” Indeed, Brabanzio repeatedly refers to Othello as a “thief” in the third scene of the first act, presuming that Othello’s wooing of Desdemona must have been out of his daughter’s control. Othello’s construction as a literary character is “coloured with exotic details” of Africa that Shakespeare gathered from Pliny’s Natural History, translated by Philemon Holland in 1601 (Neill 20). These “exotic details” likely contribute to what Brabanzio finds so captivating about Othello’s tales, but the mention of the “old black ran tupping [his] white ewe,” repulses him (1.1.86-87). Brabanzio’s “love” for Othello seems only to extend to his acceptance of Othello as a crucial military figure in Venice. Othello cannot be swallowed as a viable marriage prospect for Desdemona, as Brabanzio believes still that Othello’s “barbaric African essence triumphs over his civilized European surface” (Cohen 1287). Brabanzio believes that it is utterly improbable that his daughter could ever “run from her guardage to the sooty bosom of such a thing,” believing that Othello could only evoke “fear, not delight” in Desdemona (1.2.70-71). Desdemona’s decision to marry Othello without her father’s consent, indeed her willingness to “trumpet to the world” the “violence and storm of fortunes” that comprise their love (1.3.246-247), constitutes to Brabanzio an insurmountable grievance.

The process by which Othello and Desdemona come to be married involves a rebellion against the social and religious tenets that Othello holds dear, instilling in him an early undercurrent of anxiety. In the face of her decision between complying with her father’s wishes and that of her lover, Desdemona states, “I do perceive here a divided duty...You are the lord of duty; I am, hitherto, your daughter. But here’s my husband. And so much duty as my mother showed to you, preferring you before her father, so much I challenge that I may profess due to the Moor my lord” (1.3.180-188). This proclamation prompts Brabanzio to immediately disown her (1.3.189) and, though Desdemona’s transfer of allegiance from her father’s wishes to Othello’s is intended to demonstrate her fulfillment of a Christian wifely duty, the rebellion of Christian patriarchal values inherent to the act plants a seed of anxiety in Othello’s mind. Although Desdemona recognizes that she owes obedience to either the lord her father or the lord her husband, she has invested in herself the right to “divide” this duty, configuring her “obedience” as potentially transferrable. Indeed, Brabanzio warns Othello, “She has deceived her father, and may thee” (1.3.290), potentially destabilizing Othello’s trust in the constancy of his wife’s “duty.” Indeed, there seems to be an anxiety underlying Othello’s description of the “greedy ear” of his wife, which awarded him her hand in marriage. Further, Desdemona’s embrace of Othello’s Otherness – she even refers to Othello as “the Moor my lord” when declaring her allegiance to him – implies something monstrous within her. Newman writes,

Desdemona hears Othello and loves him, awed by his traveler’s tales of the dangers he had passed, dangers that emphasize his link with monsters and marvels. Her responses to his tales are perceived as voracious— she “devours” his discourses with a “greedy ear,” conflating the oral and aural, and his language betrays a masculine fear of a cultural femininity that is envisioned as a greedy mouth, never satisfied, always seeking increase...Othello fears Desdemona’s desire because it invokes his monstrous difference from the sex/race code he has adopted or, alternatively, allies her imagined monstrous sexual appetite with his own. (51).

Although both Desdemona’s acceptance of Othello, against her father’s recommendations and in spite of his “Otherness,” is what permits their union, Othello assigns an anxiety to his wife’s agency in this process. Desdemona fell in love with him for his stories, which tell of “cannibals that each other eat – the Anthropophagi” (1.3.143-144), and perhaps indicates her fascination with the “monstrous.” Anthropophagi are defined as “Man-eaters,” and, just as Desdemona “devoured” Othello through his narratives of self, Othello fears that perhaps her appetite for men will not be satiated by him alone. In betraying her father, Desdemona has laid the foundation for betraying other men and, in loving the “monstrous,” she has implicated herself in a narrative of monstrosity.

Desdemona and Othello have different views of proper function of marriage; Othello, a converted Moor, subscribes heartily to Christian values and, in justifying his marriage to Desdemona to the Duke and the Senate, seeks to emphasize that he did not marry her out of sexual desire. He proclaims, “Vouch with me, heaven, I therefore beg it not to please the palate of my appetite, nor to comply with heat the young affects in my defunct and proper satisfaction but to be free and bounteous to her mind” (1.3.258-263). In doing this, Othello is essentially vowing to heaven that he is not ruled by “young affects” and that his sexual appetite may even be “defunct” with his age. Rather, he values Desdemona for her mind. He then asks that she be permitted to come with him to Cyprus, promising that “light-winged toys of feathered Cupid” will sway not him to “wanton dullness,” as he is affirmed of the priority of his “speculative and officed instrument” (1.3.265-267). These words configure marital pleasure as a “wanton” diversion, above which he privileges his duties to the state.

Desdemona believes her marriage constitutes another type of service. Neill writes, “If Othello's self-image is defined by his office as servant of the state, Desdemona's is invested in her place as 'true and loyal wife' (4.2.34). Each is committed to a kind of service that is imagined (in imitation of a familiar Christian paradox) as perfect freedom” (Neill 172). Both Othello and Desdemona invest a religious conviction in their respective self-images; Othello believes that he owes his life to the Christian state and Desdemona believes she owes hers to Othello. She states, “my heart’s subdued even to the utmost pleasure of my lord” (1.3.250-51). This language demonstrates an “unconditional obedience” that Neill argues is similar to a Christian subject’s love for God. Yet Desdemona openly embraces pleasure as part of her marriage, whereas Othello rejects “feathered Cupid” as “wanton.” Christian doctrine denotes the pursuit of pleasure as damnable, even within the confines of marriage (Greenblatt 250). Indeed, the Seventh Commandment even marks it a sin for a man “to live unchaste with his own wife, if he do so unmeasurably or inordinately serve his or her fleshly appetite or lust” (Greenblatt 248). According to this principle, one may commit adultery even in coveting his or her own spouse. Othello vehemently veers from this possibility; however, Desdemona does not shy aware from the pleasure, characterized by “downright violence and storm of fortune,” that she expects her marriage to bring her (1.3.246). Desdemona’s love for her husband is unabashed in its force, prompting Othello to grow anxious of the violence of her passions. Greenblatt writes,

This moment of erotic intensity, this frank acceptance of pleasure and submission to her spouse’s pleasure is, I would argue, as much as Iago’s slander the cause of Desdemona’s death, for it awakens the deep current of sexual anxiety in Othello, anxiety that with Iago’s help expresses itself in quite orthodox fashion as the perception of adultery...he must destroy Desdemona both for her excessive experience of pleasure and for awakening such sensations in himself (250).

Othello’s identity construction as a converted Moor who has become a military leader in Venetian society is fragile; his past as a “barbarous” North African Muslim continues to haunt him. His devout subscription to Christianity permits him to reject the “young affects” that may have governed his earlier existence “with heat.” His union to Desdemona and her obedient love for him represents a level of acceptance in Venetian society that he has never known before; yet the perceived “monstrous” nature of her appetite belies the Christian foundations upon which their marriage is built. This fragile balance, between “accepted” and “Other,” threatens to return Othello to the “chaos” of his former state should it be upended (3.3.91).

Greenblatt distinguishes between the male and female experience of submission to narrative, explaining that a man takes an active role in telling his own tale, whereas the female submits passively, “entailing the entrance into marriage in which, to recall Tyndale’s definition, the ‘weak vessel’ is put ‘under the obedience of her husband, to rule her lusts and wanton appetites.’” (239). By agreeing to marry Othello, Desdemona is essentially “entering into” his narrative. This places her within a power dynamic whereby Othello, by virtue of his manhood, may act to retake ownership of his narrative at any given point, whereas Desdemona is subject to that which others say about her. Already an anxious participant in his narrative of “monstrosity,” Othello is vulnerable to Iago’s efforts to reconfigure this narrative. Meanwhile, Desdemona’s willingness to accept the notion that a person can become the story that they tell about themselves creates space for her own identity to be refashioned as a story that Iago may manipulate and Othello may in turn consume.

Iago is perfectly poised to exploit Othello’s anxieties, feeding him poisonous rhetoric in such a way as to destabilize his self-image, which is tied so closely to that of his wife. In plotting his intervention, he declares,

For tis most easy

Th’inclining Desdemona to subdue

In any honest suit: she’s framed as fruitful

As the free elements. And then for her

To win the Moor – were to renounce his baptism,

All seals and symbols of redeemed sin –

His soul is so enfettered to her love

That she may make, unmake, do what she list

Even as her appetite shall play the god

With his weak function

(2.3.310-319).

Iago seeks to turn Desdemona’s generous disposition against her; he recognizes that “any honest suit” she pursues could just as easily be “framed” as lustful as it could be deemed fruitful. Iago’s art lies in his ability to “make” and “unmake” Othello’s understanding of Desdemona by “framing” her well-intentioned actions. He understands that Othello’s “soul” is so tied to Desdemona, that, through her, Iago has the opportunity to poison Othello’s own identity conception. Iago likens his love for her to a type of imprisonment that he can exploit. Even though Iago recognizes that Othello has been “baptized,” or converted to Christianity, he could just as soon be returned to the sin from whence he came. Desdemona’s “appetite shall play the god,” such that Othello’s “weak” mind is liable to be consumed by anxiety over her perceived lust for another man and this shall either reinforce or destroy his relationship with God.

Greenblatt states,“Iago...is demonically sensitive to the way individuals interpret discourse, to

the signals they ignore and those to which they respond” (Greenblatt 235). He understands Othello’s deepest insecurities and knows how to tap into them. As such, he chooses his words carefully, in order to concoct the perfect “pestilence” to “pour into [Othello’s] ear” and convince him that she has slept with another man (2.3.327). Iago turns Desdemona’s compliant nature against her, stating “she’s obedient, as you say, obedient, very obedient” (4.2.242-243), invoking Othello’s earlier insecurity that Desdemona’s ready transfer of service from Brabanzio to him signifies her willingness to do so again. Neill argues that this “spells out the patriarchal logic of his conclusion – a logic that Othello will prove unable to resist: for a woman to betray one man, it insists, is to reveal her lascivious propensity to ‘betray more men’ (5.2.6)” (171). While all of Desdemona’s actions demonstrate the power of her love for – and obedience to – Othello, he does not understand that this love is exclusive to him, believing instead that her early betrayal of her father’s wishes signifies her readiness to betray him just as easily, and more men afterwards, prompting his determination to stop the perpetuation of this cuckolding trend.

Iago must merely insinuate that Desdemona has slept with one of his most honorable and trusted lieutenants, Michael Cassio, for this possibility to take hold of Othello’s mind, sending him into a complete and irreversible spiral towards destruction. He states, “Even so my bloody thoughts, with violent pace, shall ne’er look back, ne’er ebb to humble love till that a capable and wide revenge swallow them up” (3.3.451-453). Here Othello claims that he will not be able to return to “humble love” until he has exacted his revenge, his thoughts becoming so consumed with “blood” and “violent pace” that they will not cease until he can “swallow them up” with a “capable” act of retribution. This language returns to the idea of consumption; just as Desdemona’s relationship to Othello began with an act of “devouring up his discourse,” their love is here “swallowed up” by jealousy. Iago comments, “I see you are eaten up with passion...You would be satisfied?” (3.3.388-389), creating a link between Desdemona’s perceived appetite for other men and Othello’s hunger for proof of her infidelity. Neill emphasizes, “Othello’s choice of verb implicitly confesses to the same perverse appetite” or “horrifying desire to bewhore his own wife” (134). Othello’s jealous thoughts seek confirmation of their course; Othello so readily tumbled into chaos, as he bids “forever farewell the tranquil mind; farewell content; farewell the plumed troops and the big wars that makes ambition virtue” (3.3.344-347) at the first mention that Desdemona might have been unfaithful. He quickly and easily departs with that which rendered him an honest Venetian soldier, indeed the narrative he constructed for himself, as his identity reverts back to that of the African cannibal, the barbarous Moor. He cries, “Oh, monstrous! Monstrous!...I’ll tear her to pieces” (3.3.423, 428), signifying his embrace of his “monstrous” roots and willingness to tear his wife apart at the mere thought that she could have been unfaithful. Indeed, it seems that the identity veil between Othello the honorable Venetian and Moor the savage Other was thin indeed, as a mere taste of Iago’s poisonous discourse completely dismantles his sanity and self-perception.

Desdemona is presumed to have an appetite for adulterous sex by virtue of her being a woman, which Neill recognizes as the “default position of women – that of whore” (221). Emilia alludes to this imbalanced gender dynamic when she states, “[men] are all but stomachs, and we all but food; they eat us hungrily, and when they are full they belch us” (3.4.96-98). This emphasizes a man’s eagerness to consume a woman and then dispose of her. Othello, convinced that Desdemona has invalidated their marriage through infidelity, becomes determined to destroy her for disrupting his own sense of self-worth. He cries, “I will chop her into messes! Cuckhold me!” (4.1.188). Othello believes that Desdemona has disrupted his identity narrative by reconfiguring him as a cuckhold, an act which both rebels against the gender code by which Desdemona should be complicit in his narrative and against the marriage code of fidelity. In retribution, he reconfigures her as whore and plots to murder her to atone for her perceived crimes.

The act of “chopping into messes” refers to cutting up one’s food into digestible pieces; Othello here confesses his desire to rid himself of Desdemona by consuming her. Several Oxford English Dictionary definitions of “consume” allude to this purpose: beginning in 1425, it was used to mean “to kill or destroy (a person)” and beginning in 1526 “to swallow up in destruction.” Beginning in 1425, it even meant “to burn with fire, be reduced to ashes,” consistent with Othello’s desire to murder her in their wedding bed and send her to hell, telling her it is “too late” to pray (5.2.84). Yet even once Othello has strangled her, Desdemona betrays her continued obedience to him by not blaming him for the act. Emilia asks, “who hath done this deed,” prompting Desdemona to respond, “Nobody. I myself. Farewell. Commend me to my kind lord” (5.2.120-122). Cohen writes, “Desdemona’s last words may indicate a submissiveness bordering on suicide, normally a mortal sin for Christians but here more like Christlike self-sacrifice, (1288)” a sentiment that Neill echoes by deeming her “saintly” (221). Indeed, even in her final moments Desdemona displays the purity of her devotion to Othello as almost her God. In stating, “commend me to my lord,” it is unclear whether she is referring to Othello or God, but the lack of capitalization points to the former interpretation. It is significant that Desdemona is murdered in their marriage bed, “the site of crucially significant rituals governing both the beginning and the end of life...the locus for the most important of all domestic duties, nuptial consummation and perpetuation of the lineage—the matrimonial Office'” (Neill 174). Othello, believing their marriage to be corrupted in its Christian legitimacy, seeks to murder her in the place where it would have been legitimized via consummation. Whether or not Othello and Desdemona consummated their marriage before this point is another question altogether, but Othello robs Desdemona of her ability to perform her wifely duties to him, duties which she valued as the foundations of her identity, in the place where those duties would have been performed. In her final moments, the love that she “devoured” through Othello’s stories comes to devour her fully. The consumption of bodies, implicated in the discourse of love that built their relationship and the poisonous discourse that destroyed it, becomes total when Othello, informed that Desdemona was never unfaithful, kills himself.

Othello reveals the dangers intrinsic to the process of constructing and consuming identity as narrative; in implicating themselves in a shared narrative, Othello and Desdemona create space for their narrative to be refashioned. Othello seeks revenge on Desdemona for his belief that, in tasting the flesh of another man, she has reconfigured him to be a cuckhold. In turn, Othello accepts the narrative that paints Desdemona to be a whore, revealing his own sexual prejudices and insecurities, and finally seeks to consume her flesh through the act of murder. These processes – of love and jealousy, marriage and its dissolution, identity fashioning and dismantling – are governed by languages of consumption, indicating that bodies may be implicated in their wake.

Works Cited

Bate, Jonathan. Othello and the Other: Turning Turk: The subtleties of Shakespeare’s treatment of Islam. Times Literary Supplement, October 19, 2001. http://www2.idehist.uu.se/distans/ilmh/Ren/sh-othello-bate.htm.

Cohen, Walter, ed. The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice. The Norton Shakespeare. Third Edition. 2016.

"consume, n.2b, 2c." OED Online, Oxford University Press, September 2019, www.oed.com/viewdictionaryentry/Entry/11125. Accessed 29 November 2019.

"consume, n.3a." OED Online, Oxford University Press, September 2019, www.oed.com/viewdictionaryentry/Entry/11125. Accessed 29 November 2019.

Greenblatt, Stephen, 1943-. Renaissance Self-Fashioning : from More to Shakespeare. Chicago :University of Chicago Press, 2005.

Neill, Michael, ed. Othello, the Moor of Venice. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006.

Newman, Karen. Essaying Shakespeare, University of Minnesota Press, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.c... from Duke on 2019-11-25 14:10:32.