Othellos Jealousy into Play by William Shakespeare - Research Paper Example

Othello’s Jealousy Thesis ment: Othello bears testimony to the fact that love and jealousy go hand in hand, and if felt in extreme are fatal to one’s person. William Shakespeare changed the course of English literature forever with his genius. His plays are renowned even today for their comedy and tragedy, and no English literature course is considered complete without the study of at least one of Shakespeare’s works. It was not merely his play of words that made Shakespeare so famous; it was also his apt perception of the man’s psychology. Shakespeare saw men for what they truly are: his writings reflect the ingenuity of his mind and the wretchedness of mankind’s nature. Shakespeare used everyday emotions like love, hate, happiness, melancholy, and jealousy to paint a glorious but true picture of our lives. Jealousy in particular, was an important emotion in the drama of English Renaissance. As Katharine Maus explains, “In English drama, jealousy dominates the lots of many plays.” (Maus). The story of Othello showcases how jealousy, particularly sexual jealousy is one of the most corrupting and destructive of emotions. The kind of jealousy that was illustrated in Othello has in fact, become a point of study for many. “Othello syndrome is the delusional belief in the infidelity of spouse. Writers such as Shakespeare and Tolstoy describe the natural history of sexual jealousy with singular brilliance and poignancy that help’s understand man’s innate nature better.” (Todd and Dewhurst). It is not merely one but several who have studied what is now an official term, the Othello Syndrome in the discourse of Psychology: “We describe a case of pathologic jealousy (Othello syndrome) in a patient with Parkinson disease” (McNamara). We see then, how important a role jealousy plays in all our lives. It is a disease, both literally and figuratively. Othello is one of the more renowned plays of Shakespeare. Not only has it been repeatedly and thoroughly studied in academic discourses, it has also been adapted into several screenplays. Othello is the story of a man who, driven with jealousy destroys his own life and the lives of his loved ones. Iago, a trusted friend of Othello, felt envious of Casio’s promotion. He wished to avenge both, Othello and Casio. He found his opportunity by manipulating man’s more base emotions. Iago used Othello’s love for Desdemona to strike them all down. And the beauty of his plan was that he sowed the seeds of jealousy where there was no fertile soil. It was all tricks and imagery. "O, beware, my lord, of jealousy; It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on; that cuckold lives in bliss who, certain of his fate, loves not his wronger" (Shakespeare). However, it was not an innate evil that drove these men to such desperate measures but emotions like love and jealousy. It was after all jealousy that drove Iago to plan for Othello’s ruin; and it was again the same emotion which made Iago provoke and manipulate his friend Othello’s emotions. The emotion was not only in the heart of our protagonist and villain, other characters such as Rodrigo, Bianca and even Emilia show the jealous side of their nature at different occurrences during the play. It is only Desdemona and Casio, the innocents and unfortunately the victims of the story, who seem beyond its clutches. It was jealousy that made Iago move away from all rational thoughts and in doing so he made his and Othello’s life that of jealousy. “Iago fills Othello’s mind with powerful feelings of jealousy and envy, especially about an alleged relationship between Othello’s wife and his lieutenant, Casio.” (Stein). Both Iago and Othello were so wholly consumed with jealousy that they could no longer see right from wrong. The chief subject of Othello is sexual jealousy. Sigmund Freud believed sex was what drove men to do most things. Evidently, so did Shakespeare. Othello sees not what is there or can be witnessed, but what is imagined. However, it was not merely lust that drove him blind. It was his sheer love for Desdemona that made him succumb to jealousy, and it was jealousy that made him blind to reality. “Most dramatic representations seize upon and emphasize the way this condition, like fatal disease, grows on the hero and destroys him until the recovery of sanity and dignity arrives at the tragic end” (Bell). We see in the play the example (ingenuously put forth by Shakespeare) of how jealousy drove Othello to the brink of insanity. “It was Shakespeare who gave it the green eyes, and embodied the monster’s eternal victim in the character of Othello, the tormented Moor of Venice” (West). He was like a man possessed, lost of all thoughts of rationality. Millicent Bell describes the feelings reading Othello incites in each and every one of us; “We almost share the madness that mounts in his mind until it reaches a point in which he appears to hallucinate, seeing what is not there, writhing before the inner version of his wife’s betrayal” (Bell). However, we must not simplify this as being Othello’s inherent disposition. In the play Othello describes his nature as such: “one not easily jealous, but, being wrought, perplexed in the extreme” (Shakespeare). This sentence describes much of the complexity of the nature of love. The unfortunate and heart wrenching part is this – “his whole nature was indisposed to jealousy, and yet was such that he was unusually open to deception, and, if once wrought to passion, likely to act with little reflection, with no delay, and in the most decisive manner conceivable” (Bell). I understand Othello as perhaps the most romantic of Shakespeare’s heroes. He loved Desdemona wholly and truly. So much so that his entire notion of self that he possessed before expired when he found of Desdemona’s alleged betrayal. His individual universe collapsed. It had been through his love for Desdemona that he used to see and understand reality. When Iago dented that image, that reality, and his entire being shattered, and he gave in completely to the jealousy. Throughout the story we see his struggle with truth and lie, with love and jealousy, and with his own true reality. If she be false, O then Heaven mocks itself. Ill not believe it; No, my heart is turned to stone; I strike it, and it hurts my hand, O thou weed, Who art so lovely fair d smellst so sweet That the sense aches at thee, would thou hadst neer been born (Shakespeare). What could he do then? It appears then that Othello had to kill her because he could see and understand no other way. Desdemona was no longer the love he had understood, and he had to eradicate the mutation that he now saw in the form of Casio. His love had become tainted and perverted, and jealousy drove him to the worst of decisions. Love combined with jealousy is perhaps more lethal than any weapon mankind has come up with. Yet they cannot exist in separation. One must then, learn from Othello and try to moderate these emotions. However, not all agree with this view. Many claim Othello’s jealousy is in fact, the perfect illustration of evil emotions. We must reflect upon such emotions ( and not love) so that we ourselves never succumb to them. Surely that is what Shakespeare meant when he wrote Othello! It is argued that William Shakespeare meant for us to beware of the power jealousy can have, and to never underestimate it. We must se Othello’s downfall as a lesson and a warning. But are we “meant to reflect on the fact that Othello becomes jealous very quickly on very little provocation”? (Cioffi) In fact, are we meant to reflect upon Othello’s jealousy at all? Should we stop and ponder over Othello’s jealousy? It was indeed very easy for him to succumb to it: that his very disposition seemed inclined towards that emotion. However, I do not believe that is what Shakespeare meant when he wrote the play. One must remember it is a genius who wrote this play. He didn’t do anything as simple as a warning. The brilliance Shakespeare illustrated in his story of Othello was in the dynamics of love and jealousy, how one could not survive without the other: and how we cannot survive without either. Indeed, it is believed the story is about jealousy. I do not disagree. Othello is about jealousy, but we seem to be ignoring everything and anything above that concept. Jealousy, while portrayed brilliantly, was a tool to showcase the madness that love can drive one towards. Jealousy was the monster that distorted all truth for Othello, but it was love that is the real monster in this story. Shakespeare teaches us perhaps, that loving halfway is not enough. You love with all your being (like Othello) and suffer the consequences that may arise from it. Or you love not at all, and love in peace. However, what kind of life would that be? Works Cited Bell, Millicent. "Othellos Jealousy." The Yale Review (Wiley Online Library) 85.2 (1997): 120-136. Cioffi, Frank. "Intention and Interpretation in Criticism." Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (JSTOR) 64 (1963): 85-106. Maus, Katharine.E. "Horns of Dilemma: Jealosy, Gender, and Spectatorship in English Renaissance Drama." ELH 54.3 (1987): 561-583. McNamara, Patrick & Durso, Raymon. "Reversible Pathologic Jealousy (Othello Syndrome) Associated With Amantadine ." Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry and Neurology (SAGE journals) 4.3 (1991): 157-159. Shakespeare, William. Othello. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004. Stein, Mark. "The Othello Conundrum: The Inner Contagion of Leadership ." Organization Studies (SAGE Journals) 26.9 (2005): 1405-1419. Todd, John and Kenneth Dewhurst. "The Othello Syndrome: A Study in the Psychopathology of Sexual Jealousy (Lippincott, Williams and Wilkins)." Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease (NCBI) 122.4 (1955): 367-374. West, Louis Jolyon. "The Othello Syndrome." Contemorary Psychoanalysis (Taylor Francis Online) 4.2 (1968): 103-110. Read More