SOURCE: "Dominated Daughters," in Domination and Defiance: Fathers and Daughters in Shakespeare, The University Press of Kentucky, 1986, pp. 76-95.

[In this essay, Dreher discusses the tragic fates of Ophelia, Hero, and Desdemona maintaining that all three women are victims of patriarchal oppression],

Shakespeare offers three examples of young women dominated by patriarchal expectations. Ophelia, Hero, and Desdemona are victimized by the traditional power structure that identifies women exclusively as childbearers, insisting on a rigid model of chastity to ensure the continuity of pure patrilineal succession. This requirement leaves women highly vulnerable. What matters is not that they are modest, chaste, and obedient, but that men perceive them as such.¹ Imprisoned in their passive situation, women cannot actively affirm or defend their honor. The more they seek to be good women, conforming to traditional expectations, the more they are victimized. Politically and psychologically, these dominated daughters remain children in their innocence, obedience, and submission to authority. Because the passive feminine ideal denies them their autonomy, they fail to resolve the crisis of intimacy, fail to become fully adult. By depicting their suffering, Shakespeare repudiates the traditional stereotype as confining and destructive, arresting young women in their growth into healthy adulthood, and in some instances even depriving them of their lives.

Ophelia: Fearful Domination

Traditionally, critics have seen Ophelia as a "pathetically weak character"² She has been alternately pitied and condemned for her helplessness and domination by her father. A.C. Bradley saw her as childlike, "so near childhood that old affections still have the strongest hold,"³ Critics have emphasized her innocence and dependence. "She has never been woman enough to have a mind apart from [her father]."⁴ She is "young and sweet and also very passive," "pretty but ineffectual," "a timid conventional girl, too fragile a reed for a man to lean upon."⁵ "Like other simple-minded daughters who lack the strength of mind to rely on themselves," she has been characterized as "a puppet in her father's hands" and "a doll without intellect."⁶

Yet while their observations are valid from one point of view, the great majority of Ophelia's critics have been "Hamlet-critics," perceiving her as he perceives her, through their regret that she does not fulfill the needs and expectations of the tormented prince of Denmark. A feminist analysis of Ophelia's behavior demonstrates that she is not the simpleminded creature she seems. Traditional readings of her character have been as superficial as nineteenth-century productions, which portrayed her as a simple, pretty girl of flowers whose mad scenes were artfully sung and danced. As Helena Faucit realized and dared to play her to a stunned audience in 1844-45, Ophelia actually does go mad.⁷ There is pain and struggle beneath that sweet surface. Her misfortune merits not only our pity but our censure of traditional mores that make women repress themselves and behave like automatons.

Contrary to prevailing opinion, Ophelia is more than a simple girl, living in "a world of dumb ideas and feelings."⁸ The pity of it is that Ophelia does think and feel. A careful examination of the text in I.iii reveals that she loves Hamlet and thinks for herself, but is forced to repress all this at her father's command, conforming to the stifling patriarchal concept of female behavior that subordinates women to their "honor," their procreative function in male society.

Torn between what she feels and what she is told to be, Ophelia is tormented by the crisis of identity. As one critic pointed out long ago, "she is not aware of the nature of her own feelings; they are prematurely developed in their full force before she has strength to bear them."⁹ Caught in adolescent uncertainty between childhood and adulthood, she cannot enter the stage of intimacy and adult commitment because she does not yet know who she is. Carol Gilligan has pointed to the difficulties young women have in individuation. Raised with an emphasis on empathy rather than autonomy, girls tend to subordinate their own needs to those of others. Ophelia experiences severe role confusion in which her personal feelings are suppressed in favor of external expectations.¹⁰

At the beginning of the play, Ophelia is a healthy young woman with romantic feelings and a normal level of sexual awareness. This is apparent in her dismay at Laertes's warning about Hamlet; her comprehension of Hamlet's sexual innuendoes; and, finally, the sexual references that rise to the surface in her madness. As her initial liveliness in I.iii indicates, she is affectionate, expressive, ingenuous, as natural as the flowers she later embraces. In this scene, however, she comes face to face with that static and oppressive female virtue: chastity.

Both her brother and her father warn her repeatedly to defend her honor, her virginity, the fragile basis for woman's respectability and personal value in patriarchal society. They have defined her in the traditional role of nurturer and caretaker, while simultaneously devaluing that role, subordinating care to masculine power.¹¹ Their obsession with female chastity and the accompanying double standard reflect the patriarchal concern for legitimate issue, the demand that young women be presented as chaste vessels by their fathers to future husbands, sacrificing personal identity to their function as childbearers. Women in this sense are "womb men," reduced to walking repositories for the male seed. In order to perform their sacred function, they must remain clean, chaste, and hermetically sealed until the marriage act, which ensures the continuity of patrilineal succession for another generation. Then their husbands must see that they remain pure. It is not only Hamlet, Laertes, and Polonius who are acutely concerned with woman's chastity. The issue looms large in Othello, and the preponderance of cuckold jokes among the men, even in Shakespeare's comedies, reveals their concern with legitimate issue, their underlying fears and suspicions of female sexuality.

The patriarchy upholds the traditional ideal of the sweet, innocent, and fundamentally passive young woman who obeys her father and elder brother. Their duty is to defend her honor that she may procreate only within patriarchal bounds. To a great extent, woman's reproductive function has led to her domination. The ideal of feminine virtue is static—the preservation of her chastity—while masculine virtue is dynamic, active, developmental. Men may add honor to their names by noble deeds and accomplishments, while women may only defend the small shred of honor they have, which once gone is irrevocably lost.

In his protective, masculine role, Laertes confronts his sister and warns her about the danger in her love for Hamlet:

Then weigh what loss your honour may sustain,
If with too credent ear you list his songs,
Or lose your heart, or your chaste treasure open
To his unmast'red importunity.
Fear it, Ophelia, fear it, my dear sister.

[I.iii.29-33]

His fearful warning later echoes in Ophelia's ears when she confronts an impassioned Hamlet in her closet. Her father warns her more abruptly: "You do not understand yourself so clearly / As it behoves my daughter and your honour" (I.iii.97-98). She is his child, his property, a vessel of procreation, no more but so. As the play progresses, Shakespeare shows us Ophelia's acceptance of this role and the tragic consequences.

At the beginning of I.iii, she is still the young and spirited girl Hamlet has loved. When Laertes maligns Hamlet's motives, calling his courtship but "a fashion and a toy in blood," Ophelia is stunned and hurt, responding, "No more but so?" (10), for she had believed in Hamlet's love. She listens to her brother's advice but knows him well enough to ask that he practice the restraint he preaches, denouncing the operative double standard and showing herself a perceptive, spirited young woman. To the young fashion plate Polonius later suspects of "drabbing" in Paris, Ophelia adds:

But, good my brother,
Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,
Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven;
Whiles, like a puff d and reckless libertine,
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,
And recks not his own rede.

[46-51]

Ophelia realizes that not all male authority figures practice what they preach. Seeing beneath appearances, she recognizes the ugly reality of hypocrisy. Although young and inexperienced, Ophelia most assuredly is not simple. She does not lack intellect, nor does she automatically take everything at face value.

But when Polonius adds his lengthy warning in the same scene, Ophelia begins to doubt herself. Her brother, then her father, has frightened and insulted her about her love for Hamlet. The two authority figures in her young life, they undermine her trust in love, making her doubt Hamlet's intentions and her own awakening sexual feelings. What had once seemed so wonderful becomes progressively more frightening. Her protestations that Hamlet has "importun'd [her] with love / In honourable fashion" and sworn to her "with almost all the holy vows of heaven" (110, 113) are met by the sordid cynicism of Polonius. As Iago poisons the mind of Othello, so do Laertes and Polonius poison Ophelia's mind, presenting a view of human sexuality that is gross, animalistic, degrading, and terrifying.¹² Hamlet's vows, they tell her, are merely a means to satisfy his lust, "springes to catch woodcocks" (116), and she has stupidly believed him, made herself his helpless prey and risked losing her honor, her very identity in patriarchal society. The image of courtship Polonius paints for her is nothing less than calculated rape.

Her dream of love lies shattered at her feet; she tells Polonius, "I do not know, my lord, what I should think" (104). According to Gilligan, moral development in women "proceeds from an initial concern with survival to a focus on goodness and finally to a reflective understanding of care."¹³ Ophelia is concerned with survival in what seems a brutal, hostile world. Frightened and disillusioned, she seeks safety in the passive role assigned to women for generations. Her father tells her to stay away from the danger that Hamlet represents, and she submits: "I shall obey, my lord" (136). Her submission is not only a surrender to convention, but an act of self-preservation by a young woman for whom sexuality has become a frightening animalistic threat. Ophelia succumbs to severe security anxiety.¹⁴ Her ensuing actions reflect a compulsive defense of her chastity in a world that appears blatantly brutal and aggressive. Ophelia's fearful withdrawal and subsequent deterioration represent an implicit accusation of a society that defines men as active sexual aggressors, condoning their promiscuity while valuing women only for their chastity which must be defended at all costs. Retreating behind the false self the patriarchy has created for her, Ophelia represses her feelings and obliterates her own reality, collapsing into a schizoid divided self and moral confusion. As R. D. Laing wrote of her: "there is no one there. She is not a person. There is no integral selfhood expressed through her actions or utterances. Incomprehensible statements are said by nothing. She has already died."¹⁵

Ophelia has been condemned for letting her father dominate her, for failing to "observe the fundamental responsibilities that hold together an existence."¹⁶ But let us consider the situation from her point of view. As a young woman, she is, first of all, more inclined to defer to the wishes of others than to follow her own feelings.¹⁷ Ophelia errs in trusting her father, but she is not the only person in the play who has taken a parent at face value. Hamlet failed to recognize his mother's moral weakness until her marriage to Claudius. Furthermore, reverence for one's parents was expected of Renaissance youth. As Harley Granville-Barker emphasized, "we may call her docility a fault, when, as she is bid, she shuts herself away from Hamlet; but how not to trust to her brother's care for her and her father's wisdom?"¹⁸ Like Othello, Ophelia errs in trusting the wrong moral guide: in his case a friend who had shared dangers on the battlefield, in hers a father to whom convention bound her duty and obedience. Polonius's warning, seconded by her brother's, gains greater credibility. But most significant, her moral guides have not only told her how to behave; they have redefined her entire universe, inculcating in Ophelia a view of human sexuality as nasty and brutish as that which infects Othello. Ophelia sees herself in a world in which sexuality transforms human beings into beasts, with men the predators and women their prey.

If the play had offered any moral alternative, she might have been able to think more clearly and trust her love. Romantic heroines in Shakespeare's comedies defy corrupt patriarchal authority, think for themselves, and affirm their love because their moral guides or close friends uphold a nobler view of human nature. Rosalind has Celia's friendship; Portia, Nerissa's. Hermia has Helena's friendship and the example of Duke Theseus in love. Even Jessica, flawed as she is, finds a moral alternative to her father's values in Christianity and later in Portia herself. Juliet has the moral influence of the friar, who sees her marriage to Romeo as a means to greater harmony. Even the isolated and tormented Hamlet finds a friend in Horatio. But Ophelia has no one: no friar, no friend, not even a positive role model in Gertrude, the only other woman in the play. Everthing around Ophelia only confirms her father's words. Her next experience with Hamlet is a case in point. When she sees him in II.i, she runs in to her father crying, "O, lord, my lord, I have been so affrighted" (75). After she concludes her description of the disheveled Hamlet, Polonius asks, "Mad for thy love?" and her answer, "My lord, I do not know; / But truly, I do fear it" (85-86), reflects her fear and confusion. No longer a romantic dream, love has become a violent and fearful thing. We know that Hamlet has confronted his father's ghost in the previous scene and that either this or his antic disposition explains his behavior. But Ophelia does not know this. The very personification of love melancholy, Hamlet rushes into her chamber in frantic disarray, grabs her by the wrist, holds her close, and stares into her eyes. He finally releases her with a sigh and backs out of the room, his eyes still riveted upon her. During all this time, not a word is exchanged. In this unfortunate encounter, Ophelia fails to give Hamlet the reassurance he seeks and confirms his suspicions about women. But for Ophelia, Hamlet's actions cannot fail to confirm what her father and brother have told her: that men's sexual passions are fearful things, transforming them into beasts. Terrified—Is he here to rape her?—she is unable to speak a word to him and runs to her father for protection.

In III.i not only Polonius but also the king and queen reinforce for Ophelia the importance of obeying her father to rescue Hamlet from the madness her love has driven him to. She succumbs to convention, becoming a puppet in their hands. But she plays her role awkwardly, revealing her inner conflict. She is understandably nervous when confronted with the violent effects of love melancholy, and her actions contradict her father's plan. Polonius has arranged this as a chance meeting with Hamlet, handing her a prayer book as a prop to ponder as she waits. But Ophelia has brought with her all Hamlet's "remembrances," and since Polonius fails to mention these, we are to assume that this is her idea. She returns the gifts with what has been called the "completely inappropriate little maxim":¹⁹ "Take these again; for to the noble mind /Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind" (100-101). To Hamlet, the gifts reveal that the encounter is not chance but contrivance, and the maxim makes no sense, for she has rejected him. From Ophelia's point of view, however, the maxim is quite appropriate: he had given her these gifts and promises of honorable love when he had really intended to seduce her. The prince has been unkind indeed; Ophelia feels betrayed and disillusioned. Then, in confirmation of her fears, Hamlet torments her verbally, declaring, then denying, his love. Her answer to his "I did love you once" reveals her disillusionment: "Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so" (116-17). In these lines she denies the reality of her previous perceptions; Hamlet never loved her. He had only sought to use her. This, too, he seems to confirm as he responds, "You should not have believed me; for virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it: I loved you not." She answers, "I was the more deceived" (118-21). Heartbroken, Ophelia hears the man she loves denounce her, insult her, and fall into wild ravings, the sexual nausea in his words reinforcing and confirming her own.

Her speech at the end of this encounter expresses her guilt, dejection, and despair. As Hamlet exits, raving at her, she laments:

O, what a noble mind is here o'er-thrown!

And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,
That suck'd the honey of his music vows,
Now see that noble and most sovereign reason,
Like sweet bells jungled, out of time and harsh;
That unmatch'd form and feature of his blown youth
Blasted with ecstacy: O, woe is me,
T'have seen what I have seen, see what I see!

[III.i.158, 163-69]

In her misery, she loves him still. This passage resonates with recognition. Rejected by her love, taken in by his "music vows," and guilty by complicity in the love that drove him to madness, she regrets what she has been and done. The devastated and emotionally exhausted Ophelia now perceives love as a poisonous dream, which attracts like honey but transforms men to beasts. Hurt, disillusioned, and troubled by her own sexual feelings, she is ashamed that her beauty has awakened such appetites in Hamlet. Claudius may not believe love has caused Hamlet's madness, but Ophelia most certainly does.

Hamlet's gross language during the play scene reinforces her impression of his lust. Insulted and humiliated by his sexual innuendoes, she keeps up a brave front, responding to him with terse formality:

No, my lord . . .
Ay, my lord . . .
I think nothing, my lord . . .
What is, my lord? . . .
You are merry, my lord . . .
Ay, my lord.

[III.ii.120-31]²⁰

Stunned into a fear of her lover and a childlike dependency on her father, Ophelia suddenly has them both removed, and even her brother is out of the country. She collapses into madness because she knows not where to turn for guidance. As one critic explained, "she was like a tender vine, growing first to the trellis of filial piety and then to that of romantic love. When these two are removed and she is left unsupported, she cannot stand alone, and falls."²¹ But there is more to it. Interspersed between her songs of unfaithful lovers and dirges for dead fathers, we find this telling admission: "They say the owl was a baker's daughter. Lord, we know/What we are, but know not what we may be" (IV.v.41-43). This fragile flower has not only been deprived of her props, she also feels guilt and complicity in her father's death. What emerges here is the devastating awareness of her own repressed sexuality, the shock of "what may be" in herself combined with the horrible transformations wrought by romantic love. Hamlet has desired her and she has desired him as well, loved the man who late killed her father, and, most horribly, it was her love that drove him mad. Distributing her flowers, she gives both Gertrude and herself rue, emblematic of repentance and regret.²² In her madness, her repressed sexuality finally breaks through the conventional false self of enforced modesty, chastity, and decorum.²³ In addition to the imagery in her risqué songs, Elizabethans would have recognized the flowers she clutched to herself when she drowned as definite phallic symbols, indicative of her repressed longings.²⁴

The symbolism in her drowning is itself an emblem of the inner conflict which drove her to madness. She drowns in her "fantastic garlands," woven of buttercups, daisies, nettles, and long purples, flowers that represent her innocence, pain, and sexuality, woven together here in madness as she had been unable to do in her life. Unable to combine her conflicting fears and desires into an integrated sense of self, she drowns. Encircled by this tangle of discordant meanings, surrounded by water—symbol of the unconscious²⁵—gradually pulled down by her clothes, that external self which finally became too heavy to bear her up any longer, she slips beneath the surface, into madness, into death.

Hero: Slandered Innocence

Like Ophelia, Hero in Much Ado has been both praised and criticized for her innocence. Her passive vulnerability has inspired pity in some and boredom in others. According to William Hazlitt, Hero "leaves an indelible impression on the mind by her beauty, her tenderness, and the hard trial of her love." Others have called her "as pure and tender as a flower" or "rather a boring girl."²⁶ In two modern studies she has been characterized as "shadowy and silent," an ineffective heroine who lacks credibility.²⁷ All have found her mild and quiet, and "vulnerably passive."28

Hero is numinous, archetypal in her innocence, the silent woman of legend and the chaste and obedient Renaissance ideal. So silent is she that the majority of critics accord her only a passing reference, giving their attention instead to the more dynamic Beatrice, Benedick, and Claudio. In critical studies as in the play itself, Hero's role is silent and symbolic. "Throughout the courtship, misunderstandings and all, Hero herself has hardly anything to say: she is essentially a figure in the pattern whose chief dramatic function is to stand there and look beautiful."²⁹ In her silence and modesty, she exemplifies the perfect Renaissance woman. As an individual, she is conspicuous by her absence. This can be better understood by noting exactly how her character functions in the text. In I.i she is present during the opening scenes but has only 1 line to Beatrice's 45. For more than 150 lines Hero simply stands there in silence. Even when her father introduces her to Don Pedro at line 103, she speaks not a word but probably curtsies dutifully. In II.i, during which she is told by her father of Don Pedro's presumed intentions, is courted by him, and agrees to help trick Beatrice into realizing that she loves Benedick, she has only 8 lines to Beatrice's 97.

Claudio falls in love with her image. In I.i he refers to her as "a modest young lady," "the sweetest lady that ever I looked on" (164,189), and determines to marry her. She is his silent goddess, his anima symbol, and the image of his dreams.³⁰ Unlike Beatrice, she has revealed no individuality to obscure the pure abstraction he desires in her.

The model young woman, Hero listens in silent and modest obedience to her father's instructions about her marriage in a manner Juan Luis Vives would have applauded.³¹ Her silent figure stands looking on while her father and uncle discuss her future and Beatrice dazzles with her witty exposition on marriage. All the while, Hero speaks not a single word:

Antonio. [To Hero] Well, niece, I trust you will be ruled by your father.

Beatrice. Yes, faith; it is my counsin's duty to make curtsy and say "Father, as it please you." But yet for all that, cousin, let him be a handsome fellow, or else make another curtsy and say "Father, as it please me."

Leonato. Well, niece, I hope to see you one day fitted with a husband.

Beatrice. Not till God make men of some other metal than earth. Would it not grieve a woman to be overmastered with a piece of valiant dust? To make an account of her life to a clod of wayward marl? No, uncle, I'll none; Adam's sons are my brethren; and truly, I hold it a sin to match in my kindred.

Leonato. Daughter, remember what I told you: if the prince do solicit you in that kind, you know your answer.

Beatrice. The fault will be in the music, cousin, if you be not wooed in good time.

[II.i.55-73]

If Beatrice is the dynamic rebel who rejects the traditional woman's role, Hero is the archetypal good woman who follows it to the letter. She is "the embodiment of the courtly concept of ideal daughter and bride. Emblem of the sheltered life—crowned by beauty, modesty, and chastity—she is bred from birth for a noble alliance which will add luster to her lineage."³² Psychologically, her character follows Erikson's description of traditional female development. She "holds her identity in abeyance as she prepares to attract the man by whose name she will be known, by whose status she will be defined, the man who will rescue her from emptiness and loneliness by filling 'the inner space.'"³³ But her obedience and archetypal purity avail her little. No matter how good or innocent she is, she cannot influence her fate. Her identity depends upon men's perceptions of her, and the illusion of doubt can quickly sully even the most virtuous reputation, leaving her no defense.

In III.i, a scene without male authority figures, Hero has a suprising 76 lines. Plotting with the other women to trick Beatrice into realizing that she loves Benedick, Hero is spirited, gregarious, and much more verbal. Apparently, she is not naturally shy or phlegmatic; her silence at other times merely reflects her breeding as a lady. Before men she is silent and deferential, while with her cousin and other women she may relax and be more herself. In III.iv, we see her again interacting with women. Dressing for the wedding, she exchanges witty banter in some 14 lines, although troubled by nervousness and forboding.

In IV.i, when exposed to public scandal in the church, she courageously affirms her innocence:

Hero. O, God defend me! How am I beset!
What kind of catechising call you this?
Claudio. To make you answer truly to your name.
Hero. Is it not Hero? Who can blot that name
With any just reproach?
Claudio. Marry, that can Hero;
Hero itself can blot out Hero's virtue.
What man was he talk'd with you yesternight
Out at your window betwixt twelve and one?
Now, if you are a maid, answer to this.
Hero. I talk'd with no man at that hour, my lord.
Don Pedro. Why, then you are no maiden.

[IV.i.78-88]

Not only has she been betrayed; she is powerless to exonerate herself. Regardless of what she says or does, she cannot actively prove her innocence. The staged deception of the night before has soiled the image of her chastity. Because of the dualism implicit in men's perception of women, when the shadow of doubt clouds her radiant image, she ceases to be a virgin in their eyes and automatically becomes a whore. Hero's protestations of innocence, like Desdemona's, are seen only as further proof of her guilt. Don Pedro then describes the shameful encounter at her window—as we know, an illusion. But one illusion can destroy her, so fragile is a woman's honor, so tenuous her position in man's world. Unless she is beyond suspicion, she becomes a tainted outcast.

Claudio's repudiation of her in the church may seem unduly rash, but he barely knows her. Far more shocking is her father's rejection. How quickly Leonato believes the slander about his child. Apparently, all those years in which Hero was the model daughter—chaste, silent, obedient, and submissive—have not enabled him to trust in her character.³⁴ Leonato sinks into anger and despair, and only Beatrice rallies to Hero's defense.

In her study The Slandered Woman in Shakespeare, Joyce Sexton pointed out how Hero's predicament illustrates the insidious nature of slander, an attack for which woman has no defense.³⁵ She cannot actively regain her honor and good name with noble deeds like a courtier who has fallen out of favor. Because of their procreative function as chaste mothers in patriarchal society, women cannot earn or acquire more honor; all they can do is behave according to patriarchal expectations. Hero is trapped by the traditional concept of virtuous womanhood, which is untenable and unhealthy. As Gilligan observed, "the notion that virtue for women lies in self-sacrifice has complicated the course of woman's development by pitting the moral issue of goodness against the adult questions of responsibility.³⁶ This play demonstrates how easily woman's passive virtue comes to naught and how helpless she is to defend it.

Hero's restoration, like her repudiation, is not contingent upon her actions. As a traditional woman, her identity depends upon men's perceptions of her. Fortunately, a man, Borachio, confesses, redeeming her tarnished reputation. In V.i, when Claudio discovers that Hero has been unjustly slandered, his words reveal just what she means to him: "Sweet Hero! now thy image doth appear / In the rare sembalance that I lov'd it first" (259-60). It is only her image that he loves. In V.iv the repentant Claudio receives at her father's hand another Hero. Now ceremoniously transferred from father to husband, Hero lifts her veil and reveals herself, revived, restored to life and honor. But so fragile is her identity in patriarchal society that when she fails to match men's dreams of perfection, she becomes a victim of their deepest fears and doubts. Implicit here is Shakespeare's criticism of the traditional feminine stereotype as a static and passive ideal, which represses women and makes them far too vulnerable to the oft-observed antinomy between appearance and reality.

Desdemona: Love's Sweet Victim

Alternately canonized and criticized for loving Othello, Desdemona has been praised for her devotion and censured for her sexuality, described as deceptive, proud, and manipulative or as helplessly passive. She is herself a tragic paradox. A spirited, courageous young woman, Desdemona is moved by the depth of her love to conform to a static and fatal ideal of feminine behavior. Among those critics for whom she shines as a saintly ideal, Irving Ribner said that "in the perfection of her love Desdemona reflects the love of Christ for man," and G. Wilson Knight found her a "divinity comparable with Dante's Beatrice."³⁷ Yet W.H. Auden observed "One cannot but share Iago's doubts as to the durability of the marriage," predicting that "given a few more years of Othello and of Emilia's influence and she might well, one feels, have taken a lover." Jan Kott, too, found her strong sexuality disturbing: "Of all Shakespeare's female characters she is the most sensuous. . . . Desdemona is faithful but must have something of a slut in her."³⁸

Beyond a doubt, Desdemona is affectionate and sensual, but this does not make her a slut any more than the absence of sexuality would sanctify her. Too often her critics themselves have fallen victim to the virgin-whore complex, the false dilemma that dominates the perception of women in traditional society. A few critics have recognized the simple fact that Desdemona is both a virtuous and a passionate woman.³⁹

The elopement has been cited as proof of her courage or evidence of her deceptive nature: "a measure of her determination to have a life that seems to offer the promise of excitement denied her as a sheltered Venetian senator's daughter"; "her deception of her own father makes an unpleasant impression." We may laugh at Thomas Rymer's oversimplified reading of the play as "a caution to all Maidens of Quality how, without their Parents consent, they run away with Blackamoors" and "a warning to all good Wives, that they look well to their Linnen."⁴⁰ Desdemona's critics range from the sublime to the ridiculous. Predominantly male, they have seen her as either willful and manipulative or helplessly passive: "a determined young woman . . . eager to get her own way;" her advocacy for Cassio demonstrating her desire to dominate Othello, revealing a strong case of penis envy."⁴¹ Arthur Kirsch saw her advocacy as concern for her husband, realizing that his continued alienation from Cassio was "unnatural and injurious to them both," while Auden called this merely another demonstration of her pride: "In continuing to badger Othello, she betrays a desire to prove to herself and to Cassio that she can make her husband do as she pleases." Bradley, by contrast, found her "helplessly passive," an innocent, loving martyr:

Desdemona is helplessly passive. She can do nothing whatever. She cannot retaliate even in speech; no, not even in silent feeling. And the chief reason of her helplessness only makes the sight of her suffering more exquisitely painful. She is helpless because her nature is infinitely sweet and her love absolute. . . . Desdemona's suffering is like that of the most loving of dumb creatures tortured without cause by the being he adores.

In a similar vein, Bernard McElroy wrote, "The inner beauty and selflessness of her character are exactly what render her most vulnerable to the fate that overtakes her." As Carol Thomas Neely observed, for traditional critics, "the source of her sainthood seems a passivity verging on catatonia."42

The history of Desdemona on the stage parallels these changing critical estimations. Until Fanny Kemble, Helena Faucit, and Ellen Terry endowed her with a new dynamism, Desdemona was portrayed as a pathetic girl, not a tragic heroine. In the nineteenth century her part was diminished by extensive cuts, and William Charles Macready tried to dissuade Fanny Kemble from playing it, arguing that this was no part for a great actress. Kemble persevered, creating a Desdemona who was softly feminine but also forthright and courageous. Her Desdemona, like Helena Faucit's, fought for her life in the final scene. According to Ellen Terry, most people believed that Desdemona was "a ninny, a pathetic figure," that "an actress of the dolly type, a pretty young thing with a vapid, innocent expression, is well suited to the part," but she felt that Desdemona was "a woman of strong character," requiring the talents of a great tragic actress.⁴³

As these actresses recognized, Desdemona is a young woman who transcends any stereotype. In her courage and compassion, she is androgynous; in her boundless love and goodness she sees beyond the artificial divisions of the patriarchal hierarchy. Like Hamlet, she values people, not for their social rank, but for themselves. She has been praised for "a man's courage . . . an extreme example of that union of feminine and masculine qualities that Shakespeare plainly held essential for either the perfect man or the perfect woman."⁴⁴ Her "downright violence and storm of fortunes" demonstrate her courage and defiance of convention as well as the strength of her love (I.iii.250). She loved Othello "for the dangers [he] had pass'd," recognizing in his bold spirit a counterpart to her own, longing for adventure denied by her confining role as a Venetian senator's daughter. Othello "lov'd her that she did pity them," her feminine compassion equal to her masculine courage (I.iii. 167-68).

She is by nature unconventional, a sensuous and virtuous woman in a culture that prized a cold, chaste ideal. Dynamic and courageous when the traditional feminine norm was passivity, she transcends patriarchal order and degree, reaching out in loving kindness to all. Desdemona behaved with daughterly decorum in her father's house but revealed her assertiveness and magnanimity in her love for Othello. Her enthusiastic and affectionate nature are evident in Othello's description of their courtship, especially in the Folio version. This apparently docile maiden would rush from her household chores to "devour" his stories "with a greedy ear," (I.iii. 150,149). She was fascinated by this man of men and the adventurous life he led. So far was she from Brabantio's conventional "maiden never bold" (94) that she gave Othello for his pains "a world of kisses," (159) in the Folio reading far more assertive than the Quarto's "sighs."⁴⁵

It is magnanimous woman who stands resolutely before her father and the duke in council, declaring her love for which she had defied all convention. But this young woman now places her love into the traditional perspective, speaking of her "divided duty" between father and husband in which filial obedience is transferred from one authority figure to the next. As one critic has observed, "Desdemona's description of the transfer of her feelings from her father to her husband, with its invocation of her own mother as her example, touches in almost archetypal terms upon the psychological process by which a girl becomes a woman and a wife."⁴⁶ Othello inherits the father's title, "my lord":

My noble father,
. . . you are the lord of duty;

I am hitherto your daughter: but 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 my lord.

[I.iii. 180-89]

In her elopement, Desdemona "successfully defies the Father," Brabantio himself and "the symbol of Authority and Force" he represents. Harold Goddard contrasts her to the submissive Ophelia and Hamlet, who fail to break free from paternal authority.⁴⁷ True, her love liberates her long enough to elope with Othello, but in her concept of marriage she again succumbs to the yoke of convention, adopting the traditional role inherited from her mother, a relationship in which the wife becomes her husband's submissive, obedient subject.⁴⁸ She fails to make the psychological transition to adulthood, conforming to Vives's injunction that "the woman is as daughter unto her husband."⁴⁹ As Gilligan would explain it, Desdemona's moral development is arrested at the level of altruistic self-denial. Her every action reflects a desire to demonstrate goodness over selfishness.⁵⁰ Denying her own authority, she submits to the traditional pattern, ironically out of her deep love for Othello and her desire to be the perfect wife. As she declares, "My heart's subdu'd / Even to the very quality of my lord" (I.iii.251-52).

Critics have found an echo of the traditional father-daughter relationship, pointing to Othello's age, which makes him a father surrogate, and noting that he was her father's friend before the elopement.⁵¹ Some psychological critics have seen her choice of him as motivated by an Oedipus complex, in which she sought either to marry someone like her father or to punish her father for being faithless to her in childhood. They explain her subsequent passive behavior as "moral masochism," motivated by guilt for her incestuous urgings.⁵² But one need not resort to incest and Oedipus complexes to explain Desdemona's behavior. We have seen in her love for Othello a highly idealistic strain as well as a passionate attachment, an almost religious fervor and dedication. All her young life she had longed for a heroic mission, a cause. Because she is a woman, unable to pursue, her heroic ideals, she finds her cause in loving Othello, subordinating herself in her role as his wife, even as he subordinates his ego to the demands of war. It is not only Othello who "agnize[s] / A natural and prompt alacrity ... in hardness" (I.iii.232-34). Desdemona, as well, longs for heroic commitment and sacrifice. Given the limits of her culture, she can find this only indirectly, some would say masochistically, by devoting herself to Othello.⁵³

Thus we have the paradox that explains Desdemona's contradictory image. She is courageous, heroic, passive, and vulnerable. She is both extremes because of her love, which makes of her an oxymoronic "excellent wretch" (III.iii.90). On the altar of holy love she sacrifices her dynamic self to the image of her dreams, becoming not a "moth of peace" (I.ii.257) but an equally diminished shadow of herself. As she rejects the "wealthy curled darlings" (I.ii.68) of Venice, leaving her father and embracing the man of her dreams, it would seem that she has resolved for herself the crisis of identity. But in her marriage she does not commit herself with the dynamic energy that flourished in her courtship and elopement. She chooses a new identity, a controlled, ever modest and obedient self, not Desdemona but the model wife, because this is what she feels Othello deserves. She becomes a victim of the convention she embraces, a neurotic self-effacement amounting to slow suicide.⁵⁴ She, too, loves "not wisely, but too well" (V.ii.344), affirming a static ideal, a polished surface of behavior that will not withstand the tempests her marriage faces on Cyprus.

. . . [The] relation of a traditional Renaissance wife to her husband was like that of an obedient child. Although some critics censure Desdemona for failing in her wifely role, I would argue that her tragic fate stems from slavish conformity, an excess of altruism to which she sacrifices her own being.⁵⁵ After marriage, Desdemona conforms to the traditional norm for feminine behavior, as expressed by William Gouge.⁵⁶ This norm involves: "1 Acknowledgement of an husband's superioritie" and "2 A due esteeme of her owne husband to be the best for her, and worthy of honour on her part." Desdemona announces that her "heart's subdu'd / Even to the very quality of my lord" (I.iii.251-52), and in III.iv she berates herself for chiding him, even in her thoughts. Other wifely attributes are "3 An inward wive-like feare," "4 An outward reverend cariage towards her husband which consisteth in a wive-like sobrietie, mildnesse, curtesie, and modestie in appareil," and "5 Reverend speech to, and of her husband." Desdemona is gracious, poised, and respectful in her actions and speech. She refuses to speak ill of Othello after his shameful behavior in III.iv and when he strikes her in IV.i. In the former scene, she attributes his behavior to state business; in IV.ii she confesses to Emilia and Iago that she knows not what she has done to displease him but loves him still and ever will. Even when Othello comes to murder her, she behaves toward him with traditional wifely reverence.

Gouge lists "Obedience" as requirement 6. "Whate'er you be, I am obedient," Desdemona says in III.iii.89, choosing to follow his command rather than think for herself. This is also evident in her obedient departures at his command in III.iii and IV.i, and her coming at his bidding in IV.ii. Even in his jealous rages, she addresses him with love and respect. Gouge's requirement 7 is "Forbearing to doe without or against her husbands consent, such things as he hath power to order, as, to dispose and order the common goods of the familie, and the allowance for it, as children, servants, cattell, guests, journies, &c." Although some would criticize her for asking to accompany Othello to Cyprus, this request does not reflect willfulness on her part so much as an eagerness to begin married life. Most important, in asking this she does not go against Othello's wishes. Gouge also recommends "8 A ready yeelding to what her husband would have done. This manifested by her willingnesse to dwell where he will, to come when he calls, and to doe what he requireth." So attentive is Desdemona to Othello's desires and welfare that she does not even notice when she drops her hankerchief in III.iii, for she is concerned about his headache. She comes dutifully when he calls, bears his torments before Lodovico in IV.i, and seeks in every way to please him, even dismissing Emilia and retiring when her forebodings are apparent in the willow song.

Requirement 9 is "A patient bearing of any reproofe, and a ready redressing of that for which she is justly reproved." Desdemona patiently bears Othello's reproofs, although she cannot understand them and admits herself "a child to chiding" (IV.ii.114). She criticizes herself as an "unhandsome warrior" (III.iv.151) and tells Emilia that her "love doth so approve him, / That even his stubbornness, his checks, his frowns . . . have grace and favour in them" (IV.iii. 19-21). Gouge also recommends "10 Contentment with her husbands present estate." Desdemona loves Othello for the dangers he has passed and accompanies him to the wars. Moreover, she even accepts his present mental state:

And ever will—though he do shake me off
To beggarly divorcement—love him dearly,
Comfort forswear me! Unkindness may do much;
And his unkindness may defeat my life,
But never taint my love.

[IV.ii. 157-61]

Gouge's final requirements are "11 Such a subjection as may stand with her subjection to Christ" and "12 Such a subjection as the Church yeeldeth to Christ, which is sincere, pure, cheerefull, constant, for conscience sake."⁵⁷ Desdemona's undying love for her husband is apparent even in her death, when she speaks not to accuse but to protect him. Her last words are: "Commend me to my kind lord: O, farewell" (Vii. 125). In her devotion, she becomes once again "the sweet and submissive being of her girlhood," adopting the pattern of neurotic compliance traditionally praised in women.⁵⁸

Othello is the bleakest of tragedies, for although these two people love each other dearly, their love is not enough. They fail because they do not know who they are. Othello knows only what it means to be a soldier, a heroic leader who makes decisions on the battlefield, in an instant discerning friend from foe and taking violent action. Like Coriolanus, he is one of Shakespeare's warrior heroes who calls the heroic ideal into question. The same behavior that makes him a hero on the battlefield only destroys him in peacetime. Desdemona knows how to be a dutiful daughter, the traditional role she rejects in courageously following Othello and her heroic dreams. Her short-lived self-affirmation in love, however, turns to bondage in marriage. In I.iii she acknowledges the ritual transfer that makes her not her father's but her husband's chattel, surrendering her dynamic self for the passive feminine ideal. Both Othello and Desdemona err in conforming to traditional male and female stereotypes, adopting personal behavior which prevents real intimacy and trust. Desdemona's chastity becomes more important to both of them than Desdemona herself. Othello kills her and she sacrifices herself to affirm the traditional ideal. As we have seen in considering Hero, nothing the traditional woman can do will alter men's misperceptions of her. In the world of traditional male-female roles, males act and females react. Desdemona cannot change Othello's perceptions. Her loving unselfishness becomes compulsive compliance which actually prevents her from defending herself.⁵⁹

Iago's assessment of Desdemona is correct. She attempts to please everyone, fulfilling the role of the good woman. She: "is of so free, so kind, so apt, so blessed a disposition, she holds it a vice in her goodness not to do more than she is requested" (II.iii.325-28). Desdemona's error is that of the traditional woman who lives for others, choosing goodness over selfishness.⁶⁰ In attempting to nurture everyone around her, she fails herself. She pleads eloquently to the duke about her love for Othello. In her boundless empathy, she pleads for Cassio, but characteristically woman, she cannot plead for herself. Unable to speak in her own behalf, Desdemona "becomes practically monosyllabic."⁶¹

Even her lie about the handkerchief can be explained as altruism. She subordinates truth to the main priority in her life, pleasing her husband. Gilligan notes how often excessively altruistic women will compromise truth to avoid hurting others. Desdemona knows the handkerchief is missing but intends to find it again without troubling Othello.⁶² Emilia does not mean to hurt anyone either. She takes the handkerchief to please her own husband and had meant to return it once the work was taken out. But these small dissimulations combine in a fatal pattern.

Enslaved by the traditional ideal that not only dominates her behavior but distorts her perceptions, Desdemona sinks into passivity until in IV.ii.98 she tells Emilia she is "half asleep" in shock. Attempting to conform to "what should be," she fails to see "what is," refusing to recognize Othello's jealousy and the danger it represents. The traditional norms have given her no means of defending herself. She is told only to bear chiding with all patience and obedience, and so she does. The idealism and all-consuming nature of her love lead her into a closed-image syndrome not uncommon among battered wives: she refuses to believe all this is happening. Othello cannot really be jealous; she never gave him cause. Every shock to her system is met with a new denial, a new affirmation of her innocence and obedience in the role of perfect wife.⁶³ Her inability to accept Othello's jealousy is compounded by her previously sheltered life, which did not prepare her for anything like this. In loving Othello, she has risked everything, given up home, father, and country. Her identity as Othello's wife has become her only identity; her belief system at this point will not tolerate his rejection, which would make her a nonentity and turn her world to chaos.

A significant line early in the play is Othello's response to the street brawl: "Are we turn'd Turks, and to ourselves do that / Which heaven hath forbid the Ottomites?" (II.iii. 170-71). Are we, he asks, our own worst enemies? His accusation holds true for all the principal characters in the play. Iago betrays his humanity in his murderous revenge. Cassio betrays himself by drinking to excess. Othello loses his faith in Desdemona's love, betrayed by his own insecurities. In his anagnorisis he acknowledges this, executing justice upon himself as he had done to the "turban'd Turk," arch enemy of the Venetian state (V.ii.353). Desdemona, too, has been an enemy to herself in slavishly following the traditional ideal of female behavior, which undermines her self-esteem.⁶⁴ Her unselfish devotion to Othello makes her a martyr to love. Desdemona's last words have been read many ways: a final act of loving kindness, a benevolent lie to protect Othello. As Emilia asks her who has done this deed and Desdemona answers, "Nobody; I myself (V.ii. 124-25), there is surely some truth in her admission. She dies upholding the impossible standard of the good woman, impossible because even though she was innocent and chaste, the man she loved failed to perceive her so.

Like Ophelia and Hero, Desdemona is in her own way a dominated daughter, a dominated woman in a patriarchal society that will not allow women to grow up, to assert themselves in their adult lives, or even to act in their own defense.⁶⁵ In her attempt to be a good wife, she loses her vitality and self-confidence, drawing her identity from her husband's perceptions. Despite her forebodings, she lies in bed waiting for him in V.ii. And as he murders her, she becomes the ultimate embodiment of the feminine ideal: silent, cold, and chaste, as beautiful as a marble statue: "Cold, cold, my girl! / Even like thy chastity" (V.ii.275-76). The element of necrophilia in Othello's adoration of her sleeping form is no accident ("Be thus when thou art dead, and I will kill thee / And love thee after" [18-19]). Carried to its logical extreme, the traditional ideal represents a woman's denial of her thoughts and desires, her very essence, an ultimate obliteration of the self. In her death, Desdemona finally becomes the "perfect" Renaissance woman.

Notes

¹ In "Images of Women in Shakespeare's Plays," Southern Humanities Review 11 (1977): 145-50, Barbara A. Mowat describes the double image of Shakespeare's women, contrasting the way they are seen by their men with the way the audience perceives them.

² Carol Jones Carlisle, Shakespeare from the Greenroom (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1969), pp. 143-44.

³ Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1969), pp. 135-36.

⁴ Agnes Mure MacKenzie, The Women in Shakespeare's Plays (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1924), p. 218.

⁵ Norman N. Holland, The Shakespearean Imagination (New York: Macmillan, 1964), p. 167; Bernard McElroy, Shakespeare's Mature Tragedies (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1973), p. 75; E.K. Chambers, Shakespeare: A Survey (New York: Hill and Wang, 1958), p. 187. Like Kenneth Muir, in Shakespeare's Tragic Sequence (London: Hutchinson Univ. Library, 1972), p. 83, I reject the view that Ophelia is "sophisticated and Hamlet's cast-off mistress." This view has been expounded by Jan Kott in Shakespeare Our Contemporary, trans. Boleslaw Taborski (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor, 1966), p. 86.

⁶ G. B. Harrison, Shakespeare's Tragedies (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1951), p. 101; Rosalie L. Colie, Shakespeare's Living Art (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1974), p. 219; John Masefield, quoted in Shakespeare's Critics, ed. A.M. Eastman and G. B. Harrison (Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1964), p. 180.

⁷ Carlisle, Shakespeare from the Greenroom, pp. 136-37.

⁸ George Gordon, Shakespearian Comedy (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1944), p. 56.

⁹ Anna Jameson, Shakespeare's Heroines (New York: Burt, 1948), p. 139.

¹⁰ Gilligan, In a Different Voice (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1982), p. 8. Erikson, in Identity, Youth and Crisis (New York: W.W. Norton, 1968), p. 87, explains that in adolescent role confusion "the young person counterpoints rather than synthesizes his sexual, ethnic, occupational, and typological alternatives and is often driven to decide definitely and totally for one side or the other."

¹¹ See Gilligan, Different Voice, p. 17.

¹² Lynda Boose noted that Laertes poisons Ophelia's mind with a "quite obscene picture of sex presented through images of military bombardment and young flowers being stroked to death," in "The Fashionable Poloniuses," Hamlet Studies 1 (1980): 77.

¹³ Gilligan, Different Voice, p. 105.

¹⁴ Her symptoms parallel those described by Horney in New Ways, p. 84. Irving Ribner in Patterns in Shakespearean Tragedy (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1960), p. 88, believes that Ophelia's "obedience to her father causes her to see love as madness and lust, to reject her fellow man in Hamlet," while I would reverse the cause and effect: her terror at the picture of sexuality Polonius presents causes her to retreat into conventionality.

¹⁵ Laing, The Divided Self (London: Tavistock, 1960), p. 195.

¹⁶ Thomas McFarland, Tragic Meanings in Shakespeare (New York: Random House, 1966), p. 47.

¹⁷ Gilligan, Different Voice, p. 16.

¹⁸ Granville-Barker, Prefaces to Shakespeare (London: Batsford, 1947), 1:212.

¹⁹ Boose, "Fashionable Poloniuses," pp. 75-76.

²⁰ As Granville-Barker has noted in Prefaces 1:215, she seeks to deal politely with his public humiliation of her.

²¹ Herman Harrell Horne, Shakespeare's Philosophy of Love (Raleigh, N.C.: Edwards and Broughton, 1945), p. 104.

²² Craig and Bevington, Complete Works of Shakespeare, p. 933n. See also Bridget Geliert Lyons, "The Iconography of Ophelia," ELH 44 (1977): 69.

²³ According to Dr. Ira S. Wile, in "Some Shakespearean Characters in the Light of Present Day Psychologies," Psychological Quarterly 16 (1942): 62-90, quoted in Holland, Psychoanalysis and Shakespeare, p. 198, "her obscene language is not unknown in wards of mental hospitals—she is a victim of mania."

²⁴ Charlotte Otten, in "Ophelia's 'Long Purples,'" Shakespeare Quarterly 30 (1979): 397-402, presents evidence from Renaissance herbals identifying the "long purples" as Orchis Serapias or Satyrion Royall, both associated with the male sex organ by their names, legends, and physical descriptions.

²⁵ M. Esther Harding, The 'I' and the 'Not-Ã (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1965), p. 171.

²⁶ William Hazlitt (1817), Georg Brandes (1895), and Â.A. Young (1965), quoted in Shakespeare: "Much Ado About Nothing" and "As You Like It": A Casebook, ed. John Russell Brown (London: Macmillan, 1979), pp. 30-31, 42, and 228.

²⁷ Donald Stauffer, "Words and Actions," in Brown, Casebook, p. 87; and Paul and Miriam Mueschke, "Illusion and Metamorphosis," in Brown, Casebook, p. 130.

²⁸ Mueschke and Mueschke, "Illusion," p. 135; see also Arthur Kirsch, Shakespeare and the Experience of Love (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1981), p. 54.

²⁹ Alexander Leggati, Shakespeare 's Comedy of Love (London: Methuen, 1974), p. 155.

³⁰ Jung, "Marriage as a Psychological Relationship," 198.

³¹ Vives, Instruction, p. 54.

³² Mueschke and Mueschke, "Illusion," p. 135.

³³ Erikson, as described by Gilligan in Different Voice, p. 98; see Erikson, Identity, p. 266.

³⁴ Elmer Edgar Stoll in Othello (1915; New York: Gordian Press, 1967), p. 9, paralleled Othello's sudden loss of faith in Desdemona with the behavior of Leonato, who acts "as if he cherished a grudge against" his daughter. Barbara Mowat, in "Images," provides a more specific definition of this "grudge": "the fathers of Hero and Desdemona must listen as their daughters—seemingly so chaste, so perfect—are described in animalistic sexual terms: . . . Both fathers, confronted with the vision of the sweet girl-child turned lecherous animal, lash out at their own daughters and at the treachery, the terrible lust of all women" (p. 152).

³⁵ Sexton, The Slandered Woman in Shakespeare (Victoria, B.C.: English Literary Studies, 1978), pp. 39-44. In 1613 Shakespeare himself had some direct experience with the question of slander when his daughter Susannah brought action for defamation against John Lane, who had accused her of lewd conduct and adultery, as W. Nicholas Knight pointed out in "Patrimony and Shakespeare's Daughters," Hartford Studies in Literature 9 (1977): 181-82.

³⁶ Gilligan, Different Voice, p. 132.

³⁷ Ribner, Patterns, p. 94; Knight, The Wheel of Fire (New York: Meridian Books, 1930), p. 249.

³⁸ Auden, The Dyer's Hand (New York: Random House, 1962), p. 269; Kott, Shakespeare Our Contemporary, p. 118.

³⁹ S.N. Garner, "Shakespeare's Desdemona," Shakespeare Studies 9 (1976): 235; R.N. Hallstead, "Idolatrous Love," Shakespeare Quarterly 19 (1968): 107; Marvin Rosenberg, The Masks of Othello (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1961), p. 209; Kirsch, Experience of Love, p. 15; W.D. Adamson, "Unpinned or Undone?: Desdemona's Critics and the Problem of Sexual Innocence," Shakespeare Studies 13 (1980): 179-80.

⁴⁰ Garner, "Shakespeare's Desdemona," 243; Auden, Dyer's Hand, p. 268; Rymer, quoted in Eastman and Harrison, Shakespeare's Critics, p. 13.

⁴¹ Harrison, Shakespeare's Tragedies, p. 143; Robert Dickes, "Desdemona: An Innocent Victim," American Imago 27 (1970): 286.

⁴² Kirsch, Experience of Love, p. 17; Auden, Dyer's Hand, p. 269; Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy, p. 150; McElroy, Mature Tragedies, p. 135; Neely, "Women and Men in Othello: 'what should such a fool / Do with so good a woman?' " Shakespeare Studies 10 (1977): 133.

⁴³ Rosenberg, Masks, pp. 135-37, 139.

⁴⁴ Harold C. Goddard, The Meaning of Shakespeare (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1951), pp. 469-70.

⁴⁵ See Garner, "Shakespeare's Desdemona," pp. 239, 236.

⁴⁶ Kirsch, Experience of Love, p. 14. See Jung, "Theory of Psychoanalysis," pp. 168-74.

⁴⁷ Goddard, Meaning of Shakespeare, p. 457.

⁴⁸ As Nancy Friday observed in My Mother/My Self (New York: Dell, 1977), pp. 22-23, many women unconsciously imitate their mothers in their marriages, no matter how independent and assertive they have been.

⁴⁹ Vives, Instruction, sig. 68v.

⁵⁰ Gilligan, pp. 105, 87. See also Gayle Greene, " 'This That You Call Love': Sexual and Social Tragedy in Othello," Journal of Women's Studies in Literature 1 (1979): 25; and MacKenzie, Women, p. 253, both of whom note her filial deference to him as expressed in her addressing him as "my lord." See also Harding, Way of All Women, p. 153, for a psychological discussion of father transference.

⁵¹ MacFarland, Tragic Meanings, pp. 64-65; Kirsch, Experience of Love, p. 14; Stephen Reid, "Desdemona's Guilt," American Imago 27 (1970): 259.

⁵² See Dickes, "Desdemona," pp. 281-96; Reid, "Desdemona's Guilt," pp. 259, 281.

⁵³ Carlisle, in Shakespeare from the Greenroom, p. 248, notes "a certain Joan-of-Arc quality in her nature." Horney, in New Ways, p. 113, and Deutsch, in Psychology of Women, p. 273, explained how traditional cultural norms predispose virtuous women to masochism.

⁵⁴ Horney, Neurosis, p. 221.

⁵⁵ Both Pitt, in Shakespeare's Women, pp. 50-51, and Harold Skulsky, in Spirits Finely Touched (Athens: Univ. of Georgia Press, 1976), pp. 240-41, find Desdemona excessively willful, while I see her behavior as a slavish attempt to conform to the contemporary image of the good wife.

⁵⁶ Both Leonora Leet Brodwin, Elizabethan Love Tragedy (New York: New York Univ. Press, 1971), p. 213, and Martha Andreson-Thom, "Thinking about Women and Their Prosperous Art." Shakespeare Studies 11 (1978): 264, see Desdemona's conformity to tradition beginning when she feels she has lost Othello's love. I see it originating in her very definition of marriage.

⁵⁷ Gouge, Of Domesticali Duties, sig. Alv.

⁵⁸ Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy, p. 171. See Horney, Inner Conflicts, pp. 58-59, and The Neurotic Personality of Our Time (New York: W.W. Norton, 1937), p. 140.

⁵⁹ See Horney, Inner Conflicts, pp. 121-22, for a discussion of compulsive compliance.

⁶⁰ Gilligan, Different Voice, p. 132.

⁶¹ Inga-Stina Ewbank, "Shakespeare's Portrayal of Women," in Shakespeare: Pattern of Excelling Nature, ed. David Bevington and Jay L. Halio (Newark: Univ. of Delaware Press, 1978), p. 224.

⁶² Gilligan, Different Voice, p. 65. See also Lynda Elizabeth Boose, "Othello's Handkerchief," English Literary Renaissance 5 (1975): 360-74, for a discussion of its symbolic significance. Desdemona's motives in concealing the handkerchief's loss have been variously interpreted as fear by Garner, "Shakespeare's Desdemona," p. 246, and MacKenzie, Women, p. 258. Robert B. Heilman, in Magic in the Web (1956; Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1977), p. 200, argues that Desdemona "knows" the handkerchief is missing but does not really believe this, hoping for some miracle to recover it in an irrational combination of belief and hope.

⁶³ See Horney, New Ways, pp. 271-72; and Garner, pp. 246-47.

⁶⁴ M.D. Faber, "Two Studies in Self-Aggression in Shakespearean Tragedy," Literature and Psychology 14 (1964): 85-87; see also Gilligan, Different Voice, p. 87.

⁶⁵ As Edward Snow, "Sexual Anxiety," pp. 407-8, maintains, "the tragedy of the play .. . is the inability of Desdemona to escape or triumph over restraints and Oedipal prohibitions that domesticate women to the conventional male order of things." See also Deutsch, Psychology of Women, p. 240; Horney, New Ways, p. 113.