I thought, after such a long hiatus, that I owed you all quite a substantial post. So, I thought I’d share a draft of a paper I wrote on Othello, which I’m using as the basis for a lecture in my Women in Literature course this fall. Under the cut!
“I am bound to speak”: Friendship and Voice in Othello
Speech was an important and innate function of gender, friendship, and marriage for Elizabethans, so it is no surprise that we find in Shakespeare’s work at least one play nearly entirely concerned with these connections. In particular, the regulation of women’s speech as well as its’ capacity to manipulate the quality of friendship and marriage, seems to have fascinated Shakespeare. Othello is a play about war, marriage, and friendship set amidst the stringent hierarchies of the militant city of Venice. Of the human bonds that do form, it is no accident of Shakespeare’s that friendship becomes the strongest while marriage – the holiest and arguably most important bond in Elizabethan culture – disintegrates quite easily; it is even less of an accident, then, that these relationships should prosper or fail along the lines of language itself. While much criticism has focused on the fast bond between Othello and Cassio (at least initially) or the marital friendship between Othello and Desdemona, I would argue that the strongest bond of the play turns out to be that between Emilia and Desdemona. Although their bond is similarly dependent upon speech, I argue that the strength of it is born of necessity: Desdemona and Emilia must form a deep friendship sealed by tightly knit plain and intimate speech to shield them from, or help them to rise above, the abuses marriage yields for them. In addition, Desdemona in particular must cling to Emilia as the only hope of being heard, or of having her story told after she is gone.
In “Women and Men in Othello: ‘What should such a fool/Do with so good a woman?’” Carol Thomas Neely describes the opposition between male and female friendship in the play, highlighting the fact that while friendship between men, in addition to marital friendship, declines rapidly throughout the play, friendship between women prevails. Writing about a scene between Emilia and Desdemona, Neely explains that “the scene, sandwiched between two exchanges of Iago and Roderigo, sharply contrasts the genuine intimacy of the women with the hypocritical friendship of the men. Emilia’s concern for Desdemona is real and her advice is well meant, whereas Iago’s concern for Roderigo is feigned, his advice deadly…” (4.3.145). It becomes evident that when examining the friendship between women in contrast to friendship between men, language becomes the determining factor in the intimacy and genuineness of the relationships at stake.
The verbal exchanges between Emilia and Desdemona are seamless, uncritical, and without contrivance or hesitation, unlike the speech between male friends that Eamon Grennan argues is “deaf and blind and furiously or high-mindedly rhetorical” (277). The seamlessness between thought and speech as well as within speech is indicative of an urgent intimacy between Emilia and Desdemona. The moment Othello and Lodovico leave the women, Emilia’s speech reflects the matter we know occupies Desdemona’s thoughts: “How goes it now? He looks gentler than he did” (4.3.11). In addition, Desdemona’s fragment of a full line of iambic pentameter – “…And bid me dismiss you” (4.3.14) – is made whole by Emilia’s “Dismiss me?” (4.3.15); the completion of the line is symptomatic not only of the women’s intimacy, but of the urgency that requires almost claustrophobic speech patterns in order to create shelter in the little verbal space left to the women at this point. Emilia is incredulous and, I would argue, frightened at the prospect that Othello has commanded a separation between the two. However, in spite of this, the spatial adjacency of their speech perseveres even when the two disagree. Again, Shakespeare uses fragments of the women’s speech to complete a line; when Desdemona expresses the knowledge of her coming death by requesting she be shrouded “…In one of these same sheets,” (4.3.25) the line is completed by Emilia’s opposing but concerned and supportive “Come, come! You talk” (4.3.25). The women have been able to create a system of speech – almost a type of telepathy in which they know one another’s thoughts and finish each other’s sentences – that meets the urgency, speed, and connection required to form a shelter from the dangerous breakdown of speech, rationality, and communication occurring in the male world. Without this type of speech, there is no barrier between the women’s spatial and verbal space and that chaotic, violent space belonging to the men.
The fact of Desdemona’s and Emilia’s ability to instantly comprehend one another’s speech and thought is seamless in itself: Desdemona incorporates multiple thoughts and subjects into a single speech-act, and Emilia is able to comprehend and accommodate this type of speech with all the honesty, wit, compassion and comprehension as she has always displayed toward her friend. This, I would argue, is because the speech between the two is completely un-rhetorical, honest, and indicative of the fact that practical and emotional matters have become intertwined and vital to Desdemona’s case. Desdemona combines the spiritual affirmation of her love for Othello with the practical demands of preparing her bed. In “The Women’s Voices in Othello: Speech, Song, Silence,” Eamon Grennan explains the multiplicity that creates the seamless, enclosed friendship between the women:
What most moves us, it seems to me, is the rise and fall of voices engaged in intimate conversation; the brief, beautiful pause in the center of the action the song makes; the reassuring world of ordinary objects alluded to; the mounting intensity of Emilia’s radical defense of wives; the dying fall of Desdemona’s concluding prayer. Understood, heard in this way, the scene composes both a ‘theatrical’ and a ‘dramatic’ (see note 7) interlude suggesting peace and freedom, within the clamorous procession of violent acts and urgent voices (277).
Unlike Grennan, however, I do not read Emilia and Desdemona’s speech as escaping “urgent voices,” but rather creating the freedom Grennan suggests specifically through an urgency of speech constitutive of a tightly knit enclosure for the women that allows escape – if only temporarily – the masculine violence surrounding them. Eamon Grennan discusses the connection between the practical and the emotional that creates an urgent enclosure against the storm brewing in Cyrpus, writing that “the words seem to offer a glimpse into the deep interior of Desdemona’s mind, where life and fidelity have become one, bound up in symbolic wedding/winding sheets” (278). In the following exchange, Emilia responds to the practical matter embedded in the emotional matter, and yet we know her volatile nature has been calmed by Desdemona’s emotional assertion.
EMILIA
Ay – would you had never seen him!
DESDEMONA
So would not I. My love doth so approve him
That even his stubbornness, his checks, his frowns –
Prithee unpin me – have grace and favor.
EMILIA
I have laid those sheets you bade me on the bed.
Emilia certainly protests Desdemona’s unconditional acceptance of Othello’s behavior and the unconditional love she bears him. However, her simple response to Desdemona’s earlier request to attend to her bed linens, triggered by a similar practical entreaty for Emilia to attend to the linens she is wearing, attests to the seamless transition between one another’s thoughts and words.
The male friendships, by contrast, have been unable to create an atmosphere in which they can freely speak in the safety of the rhetorical net the women have been able to create. Male speech in the play becomes fragmented because it is hypercritical, “furiously rhetorical,” and obsessive; as a result, the language ceases to form a safe rhetorical enclosure as the women’s speech does, and fails to create an enclosed space within which male friendship can develop and progress. It becomes clear in one of the earlier conversations between Iago and Othello that there is a disconnection between words and thoughts in this friendship, whereas Emilia and Desdemona are able to easily grasp the meaning of one another’s speech and unspoken thoughts. It is only fitting that Iago consciously distance the meaning of his speech and particularly his thoughts from Othello, for this is not a true friendship, and any plans Iago has laid for Othello’s destruction would be undone by the type of speech Emilia and Desdemona enjoy. When Iago brings up the subject of Cassio’s involvement in Othello and Desdemona’s courtship, Othello is unable to perceive Iago’s thought except through labored speech that is an attempt to cut through Iago’s rhetorical devices. Othello is forced to ask “Why of thy thought Iago?” (3.3.98) and “Indeed? Ay, indeed! Discern’st thou aught in that? Is he not honest?” (3.3.102-103) in order to pierce only the surface of Iago’s speech – and is never able to pierce the core of it. Indeed, Othello, aware of the way in which Iago simply echoes Othello’s speech, laments that “By heaven, thou echo’st me/ As if there were some monster in thy thought/ Too hideous to be shown” (3.3.106-109). John N. Wall argues that “The result of Iago’s “abuse” of Othello’s ear is that the Moor puts himself in the ancient’s power and begins to describe the world in the vocabulary of sexual perversion that Iago has used since the beginning of the play.” While I would argue that it is Iago that adopts a rhetoric he knows is part of Othello’s language already (I prithee speak to me as to thy thinkings/ As thou doest ruminate, and give thy worst of thoughts/ The worst of words. [3.3131-33]), Wall contrasts the men’s relationship as a series of empty echoes with the women’s friendship as closely and deeply interactive.
While the tightly knit enclosure created by the women’s close speech allows freedom and forthrightness in manner and content, male friendship does not allow Othello to discuss unable to discuss his own sexuality with Iago or Cassio. Othello can focus only on what he believes to be the unruly sexuality of his wife, Iago’s Emilia, or Cassio’s Bianca as representative of women in general. While Carol Thomas Neely suggests that Othello avoids sexual consummation of his marriage to Desdemona so that he may idealize her, I would further this argument by proposing that Othello also avoids consummation in order to postpone the rites which will make adultery and sexual deviousness possible: perhaps he reasons that if there is no sexual union between the two, then there is no sexual relationship to be betrayed. After voicing a general reluctance to consummate the marriage when he speaks before the Senate, Othello’s relationships with other men become so contrived, calculated, false, and disconnected that he cannot discuss his own sexuality. While he dwells with Iago on the female capability for wanton sexuality, neither addresses his own capacity for this. The closest the audience gets to a discussion of Othello’s own sexuality is his description of the handkerchief to Desdemona:
That handkerchief
Did an Egyptian to my mother give.
She was a charmer, and could almost read
The thoughts of people. She told her, while she kept it,
‘Twould make her amiable and subdue my father
Entirely to her love; but if she lost it
Or made a gift of it, my father’s eye
Should hold her loathed, and his spirits should hunt
After new fancies. She, dying, gave it me,
And bid me, when my fate would have me wived,
To give it her. (3.4.55-65; emphasis mine)
Othello can only hope Desdemona understands the inference of his story – that the handkerchief is both a symbol of female sexuality as well as male, since his mother foresaw Desdemona’s need of it to “subdue” Othello’s “eye” – and never directly speaks of —
By contrast, Emilia and Desdemona are able to frankly discuss their sexuality and its relation to that of their husbands, even if they do not agree in these. Eamon Grennan addresses the importance of the women speaking about adultery with regard to their own sexualities, writing “…that they speak at all about this subject, that it can be a subject of frank and friendly intercourse between them, seems as much the point of the exchange as is the fact-content of what they say” (281). I would further argue that their tightly knit language thus far has made it possible for these women to speak about adultery, as well as to be heard by an uncritical and accepting listener. Although Desdemona is adamant in her conviction that adultery is not an option for her, she never criticizes Emilia for her willingness to “make her husband a cuckold to make him a monarch” (4.3.76). Desdemona simply gently asserts her confidence in Emilia’s morality despite Emilia’s sharp tongue: “In troth, I think thou wouldst not” (4.3.70). Emilia harangues upon the moral faults of husbands, presumably some of which their own husbands are guilty of:
But I do think it is their husbands’ faults
If wives do fall. Say that they slack their duties
And pour out treasures into foreign laps;
Or else break out in peevish jealousies,
Throwing restraint upon us; or say they strike us,
Or scant our former having in despite –
Why, we have falls, and though we have some grace,
Yet have we some revenge (4.3.86-93; emphasis added).
Although this is in complete opposition to Desdemona’s idealized view of Othello who she insists rational, steadfast and without jealousy, Desdemona draws instruction and inspiration from this: “God me such uses send, not to pick bad, but by bad mend!” (4.3.104-105). Desdemona does not assess the moral accuracy of Emilia’s statements about Othello’s, Iago’s, and her own and Emilia’s sexual and moral behavior. Emilia’s thoughts are accepted without reserve or judgment, and even admired for their validity; even if Desdemona does not agree that her husband harbors “peevish jealousies” or that she should “have some revenge,” Desdemona validates Emilia’s speech by conceding at least that these are things that could happen, things which she prays she has the grace to avoid.
Emilia points directly to the fact that her friendship with Desdemona consists in a common speech as a protection from the physically and psychically violent world of the men. In crying “O lady, speak again! Sweet Desdemona! O sweet mistress, speak!” (5.2.121-122) Emilia in vain attempts to recall Desdemona from Othello’s violence through the very speech which initiated and sustained both their friendship and their lives. When Desdemona asserts a “guiltless death” and one committed by both “Nobody” and herself, Emilia at once recognizes Desdemona’s rhetoric and the truth its subtext communicates. Emilia responds to Othello’s professed innocence with a sharp “She said so. I must needs report the truth,” (5.2.139) communicating a disbelief in Othello’s statement that provokes his confession. What Desdemona will not communicate directly (but only within the common speech she and Desdemona share), Emilia is able to use to provoke a direct confession: “She’s like a liar gone to burning hell! ‘Twas I that killed her”(5.2.130-131). Though the common language that constitutes their relationship failed to save Desdemona’s life, their friendship continues beyond death when Emilia uses that common language to make Othello speak the truth as frankly as she and Desdemona spoke it to each other.
Furthermore, Emilia continues to employ the urgent, bold, frank language that constituted her friendship with Desdemona to make the truth speak, as it were. The most poignant use of this type of language occurs in 5.2, with Emilia drawing on the exact words of a speech-act the two shared intimately. Emilia speaks to Desdemona even in death, asking questions and making promises as if Desdemona participates in the dialogue
What did thy song bode, lady?
Hark, canst thou hear me? I will play the swan,
And die in music. [Sings.] “Willow, willow, willow.”
Moor, she was chaste. She loved thee, cruel Moor:
So come my soul to bliss as I speak true.
So speaking as I think, alas, I die. (5.2.247-252)
In effect, Emilia completes the song Desdemona begins but does not complete (“Nay, that’s not next. Hark! Who is’t that knocks?” (4.3.52). More importantly, however, the audience is aware of Desdemona’s description of the song in 4.3. as one which
…expressed her fortune
And she died singing it. That song tonight
Will not go from my mind; I have much to do
But to go hand my head all at one side
And sing it like poor Barbary. (4.3.29-33)
In drawing on a speech-act the language of which, I would argue, forms the center of the women’s relationship, Emilia communicates to the world those thoughts she is certain were on Desdemona’s mind at her death. By contrast, Iago does not speak Othello’s thoughts when he is incapable of doing so. Othello is silent for nearly forty lines with no one to speak for him but Iago who does not speak Othello’s thoughts, but proclaims that he only “…told him what I thought, and told no more/ Than what he found himself was apt and true” (5.2.177-178). In essence, then, while Iago knows Othello’s thoughts, their friendship fails at the level of language precisely because Iago does not speak them; while Iago is certainly able to use monstrous language in kind with Othello’s speech to ensnare him in a trap, he refuses to use the language common between them to make his thoughts known.
In the end, both the friendship between Emilia and Desdemona and that between Othello and Iago fails, regardless of whether the bonds are true of illusorily perceived. The difference, however, lies at the level of language; more importantly, the moral success of these relationships lies in the ability of the characters to employ it toward creating enclosed safe verbal spaces and toward speaking the truth of one another’s thoughts even in death. While Othello and Iago share a common type of speech, it is only Iago’s illusory adaptation of his speech to Othello’s for sinister purposes rather than the common type of speech that occurs between friends who recognize one another’s thoughts. Although Emilia fails in protecting Desdemona – and of course by providing Iago with the handkerchief that settles Othello’s resolve to murder her – she recognizes Desdemona’s thoughts even when she does not speak them. In short, Desdemona and Emilia’s friendship is a true one because Emilia is able to tell Desdemona’s story with Desdemona’s words.
Works Cited
Curtis, Jared. “”As Liberall as the North”: Emilia’s Unruliness — A Study in Context.” Shakespeare Quarterly 17.2 (1966): 168-71.
Grennan, Eamon. “The Women’s Voices in “Othello”: Speech, Song, Silence.” Shakespeare Quarterly 38.3 (1987): 275-92.
Ozark Holmer, Joan. “Desdemona, Woman Warrior: “O, these men, these men!”" Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England 17 (2005): 132-64.
Shakespeare, William. Othello. Ed. Russ McDonald. Pelican Shakespeare Series. New York: Penguin Books, 2001.
Thomas Neely, Carol. “Women and Men in Othello: “what should such a fool / Do with so good a woman?”" Shakespeare Studies 10 (1977): 133-58.
