Putting the Demon in Desdemona

The plot of Shakespeare's Othello revolves around the intricate stratagems concocted by the villain Iago to destroy Othello the Moor. Yet despite the central connection of women to Iago's schemes, they are neither the targets nor the impetus for his revenge. Instead, they are relegated to tertiary roles. Nevertheless, the women still suffer the most from Iago's intrigues. Beyond Desdemona's obvious objectification, the women in the play are defined in sexual terms - to whom they have yielded sexual access. Consequently, because women's roles are socially constructed as either the good woman and wife or the evil seductress, the male figures in their lives often suspect women of duplicity. They are not seen as multifaceted human beings. If women prove not to be the Madonna archetype, loyal wives and mothers, they most assuredly are whores capable of deceit and manipulation. Since Eve, the transformation of women from docile and innocent creatures to diabolical plotters either in actuality or in the male mind has been blamed for the downfall of powerful men.

The play begins as Othello usurps ownership of the fair and delicate Desdemona from her father, but when Iago warns Brabantio of her marriage, he does not appeal to filial compassion but to material possessiveness. He cries, "Thieves! Thieves! Thieves! / Look to your house, your daughter, and your bags," clearly equating Desdemona with Brabantio's property (Oth. I.iii.76-9). Her father refuses to accept her elopement with the powerful and accomplished Othello as a result of her own choice, attributing her actions to "spells and medicines bought of mountebanks" that Othello must have used (I. iii. 61), ignoring her role in the romance and courtship. He labels her as "abused and corrupted, stolen from me"; Desdemona has become damaged goods after choosing an unacceptable male, no longer Brabantio's "jewel" (I iii. 60, 193). After this corruption, her purity is shattered, and she is seen as quite capable of duplicity.

Now that Desdemona has been liberated from her father, however, she becomes more than just a material possession - she has evolved into a sexual one. Othello explicitly states this transformation as he anticipates consummating their marriage. "The purchase made, the fruits are to ensue; / That profit's yet to come 'tween me and you" (II iii 9-10). He has purchased her - stolen her from her father - and now is taking advantage of the sexual access that accompanies his acquisition. Furthermore, as he commands her to bed, he infantilizes her by commanding her to forget the affairs of war - the domain of men - she is not in his bed to think (II. Iii. 240).

Iago first used Othello's sexual access of Desdemona to rouse the ire of her father; since Desdemona was supposed to be Brabantio's cloistered little girl, Iago's assertion that "Even now, now, very now, an old black ram / Is tupping your white ewe" challenges Brabantio's definition of her sexual access and elicits Brabantio's wrath (I. i. 85-86). After Othello scoops her up, she now is defined by her relationship to him rather than to her father. Yet Desdemona remains as impuissant as she was in her father's possession. Desiring to help advance Cassio's suit to regain his lost position, she must resort to the only power she possesses, trying to barter sexual access for Othello's mercy until "His bed shall seem a school" (III. iii. 24).

Their bed becomes far more than just a school. Even in death, Desdemona finds identity and meaning through her vicarious affiliation with Othello. After he has stopped her breath, she still lies to protect him, placing his interests before her own by claiming responsibility (IV. ii. 122). Previously, she had asked Emilia to place the wedding sheets that were used on the night that Othello completed the purchase of her sexuality, anticipating that those sheets would serve a double purpose as her burial shroud. Even in death, she remains trapped in the symbol of her own surrendered sexuality.

Desdemona is not the only character defined by a male's sexual access to her - both Emilia, Iago's wife, and Bianca, Cassio's courtesan, are assigned their positions based upon this criterion. Emilia is more savvy than Desdemona, realizing the power that sex has even outside of a marriage. In response to Desdemona's question about whether she would ever be unfaithful, Emilia replies with the question "who would not make her husband a cuckold to make him a monarch" (IV iii 77-8)? Beyond this, however, Emilia recognizes her own powerlessness and objectification - women are subordinated to powerful males and used emotionally and sexually until they are no longer of use:

They are all but stomachs and we all but food;
They eat us hungerly, and when they are full
They belch us. (III iv 104-6)

Ever practical, Emilia seems to propose a quid pro quo relationship to maintain a husband's exclusive sexual access in juxtaposition to Desdemona's unswerving loyalty. Emilia contends, "Then let them use us well; else let them know, / The ills we do, their ills instruct us so," thus implying that a woman's fidelity must be purchased with kindness and understanding (III iv 105-106) or suffer retaliation in kind.

This transactional system of sexual access is taken to its logical extreme in the character of Bianca, the prostitute. She too is defined by her sexual access, earning a constant barrage of disparaging adjectives at the expense of her profession: huswife, strumpet, perfumed one, etc. Yet of the three women in the play, she certainly has the most independence and happiness. She is not murdered by her lover and can actually make demands of Cassio's fidelity, "Give [the handkerchief] your hobby horse. Wheresoever you had it . . . If you'll come to supper tonight, you may; if you will not, come when you are next prepared for" (IV. i. 155-6, 160-3).

Unlike Emilia and Bianca, Desdemona is almost a caricature of faithfulness, but Iago's ploy to dupe Othello requires the cultivation of a violent misogyny in Othello by drawing on the Moor's innate fears of being made a cuckold. Once Iago has planted the seeds, Othello begins to question his wife's chastity. He suspects that she is no longer the idealized goddess that he had made her to be; now she can only become a base whore. In Iago's soliloquy at the end of the first act, he describes Cassio having "a person and a smooth dispose / To be suspected – framed to make women false," thus implying that a woman can be made false not by their own actions but by the mere appearance of impropriety (388-389). Again, the women are powerless since men must first entice them.

When Othello begins to suspect that Desdemona has been sleeping with Cassio, he is confronted with the absurdity of his previous idealization of Desdemona and cannot begin to comprehend the possibility that she is not actually his ideal of feminine perfection (III iii 187-192). His life begins to adopt a duality, as he continues to treat her as a faithful wife while also considering her a base adulterer. Desdemona becomes both the Madonna and the whore: "By the world, / I think my wife be honest, and think she is not" (III iii 380-1). Once he begins to bring his murderous plan to fruition, her multifaceted nature is still a mystery; he says, "Your mystery, your mystery . . . the devils themselves should fear to seize thee. Therefore be double damned" (IV. ii. 30,36).

Once the seed of doubt has been planted, Othello's confusion mounts. He sees the same dichotomy in other women, imagining Emilia to be the harem mistress that arranges Desdemona's liaisons with Cassio. While he has had no evidence to suspect Emilia of any impure actions whatsoever, he does not spare her his vitriol:

She says enough; yet she's a simple bawd
That cannot say as much. This is a subtle whore,
A closet lock and key of villainous secrets.
And yet she'll kneel and pray; I have seen her do't. (IV ii 20-4)

Othello has been molded by Iago's schemes, and has been warped so that he not only suspects his perfect wife of duplicity but he also suspects the entire female gender by extension. In the words of Iago, "[Wives] dare not show their husbands [their pranks]; their best conscience / Is not to leave't undone, but keep't unknown" (III. iii. 202-3).

The final and most telling transformation in the once loving and gentle Moor is his apparent demonization of Desdemona. Still blind to Iago's machinations, he shifts the blame for his actions away from himself, attempting to explain what he is about to do in the fifth act by attributing his current state by a feminine personification of the moon that "makes men mad" (IV. ii. 109-10). Iago also voices an almost vampiric view that is consistent with Othello's statement - a woman's "fresh appetite" that emerges after "the blood is made dull" leaves her man cuckold, alone, and devoid of sanity (II.i. 225,227). This is a fitting analog to Emilia's digestive metaphor - while men consume women whole, women create a ragged, miserable shell of a man.

The product of this misogyny is the destruction of the two women that have been the most loyal and have conformed to the limited roles allotted them by their patriarchal order. Emilia, who advanced Iago's plots by stealing Desdemona's handkerchief, dies by the hand of her husband, and Desdemona who never considered infidelity for a moment, is tortured by the hate that has suddenly appeared in her husband and must die at the hands of the man she still dutifully loves.

The demonization of women and the cultivation of an assumed duplicity allows Iago to twist Othello into a misogynist monster, but Iago's task is aided by the patriarchal society described in Othello. When the sole worth of a woman is gauged by her sexuality and her vicarious relation to men, it becomes far easier to justify her murder when she is unfaithful since she has failed in the only role that society has allowed her to play. Desdemona has been demonized, but the true demons are those let loose by Iago to breed and multiply in the play's fertile medium of patriarchy.