Story of O

 

“O, beware, my lord, of jealousy;
It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock
The meat it feeds on.” (Othello III, iii)

Desdemona loves her husband, treats everyone with kindness, and tells the truth. Her sweet actions bring about her death. This happens after her husband (and murderer) slaps her and refers to her vagina as a toad-infested swamp.

There’s little for feminists to enjoy in Othello. Women are either stupid, victimized, or stupid victims. The play offers a stinging critique of masculinity, however. We witness chest-beating, excessive pride, and possessiveness. A major reason Iago hates Othello is Othello’s passing him over for a military promotion, thus denying him a tantalizing honor. Honor? Iago asks in response. Your wife sleeps around! How does that suit your honor?

Othello falls prey to Iago’s psychological manipulations. He realizes too late that he has been deceived, and more tragedy ensues. He stabs himself over Desdemona’s strangled body.

I’m not a Moor. Laurence Fishburne will never play me in a movie, and I don’t plan on becoming a soldier. But I can be weak, and I am astonishingly susceptible to the influence of others. I’m a validation junkie and a slave to my emotions. I am Othello.

I listen to Iago too much. He convinces me that I’m an impostor. He tells me that I must constantly make up for the appalling gaps in my personality. That’s if others can even see them; I work hard to conceal them, like a beaver building a dam. What I am lucky enough to have gained, I jealously guard; I don’t really deserve any of it. I’m diligent. I hoard.

I have “loved not wisely, but too well” (V, ii). The smallest passions conquer me. I’ve strangled a few unfortunate Desdemonas in my time, and I do not have the “soft parts of conversation that chamberers have” (III, iii). Like the tragic Mauritanian hero who cries and broods across an Elizabethan stage and paces the floor of my soul, I would rather die than be cuckolded (in any fashion).

Iago sounds like “ego,” I have discovered.

Last week, I was drinking coffee and checking email. I’m waiting to hear about a job. Instead of polishing a resume, ostensibly what I was sitting at the computer to do, I replayed the interviewer’s comments in my mind —what he said about the other candidate. She brings forth such an interesting perspective, it sounds like.

Iago is alive at the end of the play. Othello dies. Some people must be too delicate to live.

I want to surrender my inner Othello. But where shall I send him? Sailing up a Venetian canal, perhaps? I’ll give him bread and tea for the trip, and I’ll kiss him on the forehead. I’ll tell him that I hope he learns to lighten up.