Desdemona in Othello in William

Desdemona in Othello

In William Shakespeare's play Othello, the titular character's wife, Desdemona, has very little agency of her own, and her actions throughout the play are almost entirely controlled by others. According to W.H. Auden, "Everybody must pity Desdemona, but I cannot bring myself to like her," and considering this view of Desdemona reveals precisely why Desdemona is so unlikeable. At first glance Desdemona appears to an object of pity, as she is ostensibly the only true innocent in the play, and she receives the worst end of them all. However, examining Desdemona's behavior closely reveals that she is not even worthy of pity, because she actually helps bring about her own death through her subservience to her husband and her steadfast devotion to the social constraints placed upon her by her gender. This is not to say that Desdemona "was asking for it" in the same disgusting manner that abuse victims are often blamed for the violence against them, but rather to suggest that all of Iago's scheming would have been for naught had Desdemona had the courage and self-awareness to confront Othello for his brutal treatment of her, both physically and psychologically. In this way, Desdemona deserves no more pity than Othello, because both are ultimately undone by their ignorance and reliance on prescribed social roles, as evidenced in Desdemona's first scene in the play, when Othello first assaults her, and the scene of her death.

Desdemona's first lines in the entire play reveal her fundamental weakness, because in the act of introducing herself to the audience she simultaneously demonstrates her complete subservience to men, first to her father, and then Othello. Before discussing this scene in detail, it is necessary to forestall what might seem an obvious criticism of this interpretation; namely, that one is unable to judge Desdemona for her subservience to men due to the gender discrimination pervasive throughout the society represented in the play and even at the time of its writing. However, this is merely an unproductive dodge, because it allows one to remove agency from any and all of the characters by claiming that their actions are merely the product of circumstance, thus rendering any criticism or analysis superfluous. Instead, one may criticize Desdemona's character in precisely the same way as Iago, or Othello, or anyone else, by acknowledging those detrimental circumstances in which they might find themselves, and faulting them for accepting those circumstances as innate, irreversible, and eternal.

Desdemona introduces herself by noting "a divided duty" between the two men essentially claiming ownership of her (Othello 1.3.181). Desdemona tells her father that "to you I am bound for life and education; / my life and education both do learn me / how to respect you," revealing Desdemona's entirely uncritical nature (1.3.182-184). She is essentially saying that because her father is related to her and raised her, she knows that she has to respect him (because he raised her and taught her that she had to respect him). This is very nearly the same kind of respect an inmate gives a prison guard, except the inmate has the good sense to know that this is a respect born only out of coercion. Desdemona continues and tells her father that even though he has successfully trained her to remain subservient, she has also learned a different form of subservience from her mother, telling him "here's my husband, / and so much duty as my mother show'd / to you, preferring you before her father, / so much I challenge that I may profess / due to the Moor" (1.3.185-189). Even when Desdemona addresses the Duke, she unnecessarily chastises herself, asking him to "let me find a charter in your voice, / to assist my simpleness" (1.3.245-246). Thus, the audience has almost no choice but regard Desdemona with some contempt, rather than pity, because she so fully places herself at the mercy of the male characters without any prompting.

It is not as if she speaks up and gets in trouble so she adopts a more subservient tone, but rather she consistently gives up any claims to agency or even the legitimacy of her thoughts, such that whatever happens to her is ultimately the result of her own reluctance to take control over her life.

Later, when Othello hits Desdemona because he believes her support for Cassio is due to an affair, Desdemona simply responds by saying "I have not deserved this" before telling Othello that she "will not stay to offend" him (4.1.241, 247). Although Othello is in grips of his own ignorance and anger, his petulant, sarcastic criticisms of Desdemona actually help to demonstrate her own failure when he tells Lodovico that "she's obedient, as you say, obedient, / very obedient" (4.1.255-256). When Othello later calls Desdemona a strumpet and a whore, she almost begins to see the error of her blind subservience, to the point that she even tells Emilia that she has no lord (4.2.102). Even then, however, she remains woefully ignorant and entirely too self-effacing, stating that "those that do teach young babes / do it with gentle means and easy tasks: / he might have chid me so; for, in good faith, / I am a child to chiding" (4.2.111-114). This may be read as Desdemona attempting to justify her lack of assertion or confidence to the audience, and that she does this by calling herself dumb only makes her appear more despicably committed to a ridiculous notion of honor and duty. That her experience being beat and derided does not rouse something more than sadness and self-effacement in Desdemona demonstrates how fully she has devoted herself to maintaining the patriarchal social structure which allows her to be treated as terribly as Othello likes, and it is this devotion to prescribed social roles which ultimately leads to her death.

The conversation between Desdemona and Othello immediately before he kills her borders on farce, because even after Othello has beat her, derided her, and actually literally said that he is going to kill her, the best Desdemona can do is to respond "if you say so, I hope you will not kill me" (5.2.35). One cannot even begin to pity her, because she cannot even give a halfhearted attempt to save her own life. She is so fully committed to her husband that she makes no attempt to flee or fight, but rather asks to live for increasingly smaller amounts of time until she is finally smothered (5.2.78, 80, 82). Desdemona's idiotic devotion to her husband reaches its nadir in her last words, when she actually has the chance to take some power for herself and accuse her husband, but instead, when asked who killed her, she responds "nobody; I myself," ironically confirming the argument of this essay while simultaneously maintaining her steadfast devotion to a social order which has done nothing but stunt her intellectual and personal growth before leading her to her death (5.2.124). Thus, with these last words, Desdemona removes any last, miniscule chance that the audience might pity her, and instead allows no other reasonable response but disgust and disappointment.