Emotion Returns (5.2.23-85)
Bill Long
Othello's Inability To Control His Feelings
When Othello says repeatedly, "It is the cause," at the beginning of 5.2, he is trying to depersonalize or intellectualize the murderous act he is about to perform. In Othello's mind it is a heavenly sorrow which is driving the act. It is a sacrifice rather than a murder, a just act instead of a criminal act. It is something done so that he can prevent Desdemona's further licentiousness and preserve his love for her. Every time he utters the phrase "It is the cause," it is as if he is saying to himself, 'Calm down, Othello. This is the right thing to do. Everything will be made right by this most just act. You will preserve your love for her, and save her from herself. Chaos can only be averted by sacrificing her now.' Thoughts such as these course through his mind.
Kissing before Killing
If the three-fold use of "It is the cause" is Othello's attempt to calm his emotions, his three-fold kisses of the sleeping Desdemona begin to stir them up again. He leans over and says,
"I'll smell thee on the tree. [Kisses her.]/ O balmy breath, that dost almost persuade/ Justice to break her sword! One more, one more. Be thus when thou art dead, and I will kill thee/ And love thee after. One more, and that's the last (5.2.15-19)."
The kiss brings her smell back to Othello, and when a familiar smell spreads over a person it can unleash a powerful symphony of emotions. Here it almost makes him reconsider his decision, and he begins to weep, but he quickly interprets the tears as "cruel tears (5.2.21)," which strike where they love. But the fact that the inanimate Desdemona could have caused such a strong reaction in him ought to have taught him that his attempt to smother his own emotions would not succeed. The truth, as well as the emotions, "'Twill out."
Submissive Words, Harsh Words and Bodily Agitation
Desdemona awakes, and speaks a three-fold submissive "my lord" to Othello as he tells her to confess her sins (5.2.24,25,29). Even though she will protest his designs ("I hope you will not kill me"--5.2.35), she makes no move to oppose his superior power. But there are four indications that the emotion he so much wanted to contain is reemerging. Like Brutus's unreal explanation of the sacrifice of Caesar, where he said he unfortunately had to shed blood even though the spirit was all that he sought to kill (JC 2.1.168), so Othello's desire to suppress his emotions completely in killing Desdemona partakes of an air of unreality. So, his heart begins to burst:
1) As he begins to talk about killing, Desdemona says, "And yet I fear you, for you're fatal then/ When your eyes roll so (5.2.37-38)." How did she know that? Had his "eyes rolled so" when he narrated his tales of "antres vast and deserts idle" while she listened with "earnest heart" as Othello "beguiled her of her tears"? Did he ever tell her of the "malignant and turban'd Turk" whom he smote with his knife of the "ice-brook's temper (5.2.335f.,253)? We don't know, but we know that Desdemona sees his contorted face, and she is afraid.
2) When Desdemona says that she loves him, and Othello briefly responds, she again notes his bodily agitations, "Alas, why gnaw you so your nether lip?/ Some bloody passion shakes your very frame (5.2.43-44)." Of course she is right. He is numbed by passion, overrun by dread and dismay at what he is about to do, but he has to try to keep his mind repeating the phrase, "It is the case; it is the cause." Mental anguish is duly recorded in bodily impressions as faithfully as the barometer measures atmospheric pressure. His eyes roll; he bites his lip; his whole frame shudders. How can he truly believe that he has suppressed his emotion?
3) After Othello cautions Desdemona about perjury, he tells her to confess her sin, "For to deny each article with oath/ Cannot remove nor choke the strong conception/ That I do groan withal (5.2.54-56)." Desdemona's failure to admit her culpability vis-a-vis Cassio is like a formal legal responsive pleading, in which the attorney swears to his or her general or specific denial or the allegations made. Then the image changes from law to childbirth, with Othello being the woman giving birth to the scheme of death, and Desdemona's denials acting as an unsuccessful attempt to kill the "baby" that is coming to birth. She will be unable to kill the baby gestating in Othello, a baby which is none other than the killing of Desdemona. His interior groans are like Brutus's insurrection between the "acting of a dreadful thing/ And the first motion (JC 2.1.63-64,69). Now not only Desdemona but also Othello knows that the attempt to suppress the emotions must be unsuccessful, yet he persists. As he says a few lines later to Desdemona, "It is too late (5.2.83)."
4) Then in the last lines before he kills her, Othello uses the word "strumpet" twice in a highly agitated state: "Out, strumpet (5.2.77)!" and "Down, strumpet (5.2.79)!" Triggering this language are Desdemona's ambiguous words about Cassio, "Alas he is betray'd and I undone (5.2.76)." Reference to Cassio at this most emotionally-fraught time completely unhinges Othello. All pretense of emotional control has now disappeared. Othello's self-deception is now so complete and transparent that it is painful to observe. He will have peace, however, and the only way he can purchase it is to silence Desdemona.
The Power of Submission
So Desdemona goes to her death with the words, "O Lord, Lord, Lord (5.2.84)!" on her lips. It is a repetition in death of her words that began her conversation with Othello sixty lines earlier. She began with "my lord" three times and ends with "lord" three times. Her lord is on her lips and in her heart even in her last moments. But the irony of Desdemona's last words [present only in the 1622 Quarto, by the way] is heightened by Emilia's first words in coming to greet them. "My lord, my lord!/ What ho! my lord, my lord (5.2.84-85)!" It is almost as if Shakespeare is saying that Othello can remove one person but cannot remove all. The words of submission ("lord" or "my lord") will be the words that undermine Othello's power completely.
The lingering question from all of this is why Othello thinks that he could ever suppress and conquer his emotions as he killed his beloved. I will pick up this subject in one of my final mini-essays.
Copyright © 2004-2007 William R. Long |