Othello: True Love and Self-love
The William Shakespeare tragic play Othello manifests the virtue of love in all its variegated types through the assorted good and bad characters interacting with each other.
H. S. Wilson in his book of literary criticism, On the Design of Shakespearean Tragedy, discusses the love of the Moor for his beloved even at the time of her murder:
And when he comes to execute justice upon Desdemona, as he thinks, he has subdued his passion so that he is a compound of explosiveness tenderness. Utterly convinced of Desdemona’s guilt and of the necessity of killing her (“Yet she must die, else she’ll betray more men”), he yet loves her:
This sorrow’s heavenly;
It strikes where it doth love.(55)
In the volume Shakespeare and Tragedy John Bayley explains that there is both love and self-love in the play (201). Initially the play presents a very distorted type of love. Act 1 Scene 1 shows Roderigo, generous in his gifts to the ancient, questioning Iago’s love for the former, whose concern has been the wooing of Desdemona. Roderigo construes Iago’s love for him as based on the ancient’s hatred for the Moor. Thus the wealthy suitor says accusingly, “Thou told'st me thou didst hold him in thy hate.” In order to prove his love for Roderigo, Iago asserts in detail the reasons for his hatred of Othello, who has given the lieutenancy to Michael Cassio, a Florentine.
Secondly, Iago shows his love for his wealthy friend by rousing from sleep Brabantio, the father of Desdemona. Once the senator has been awakened, Iago makes a series of loud, crude, bawdy allegations against both the general and Desdemona. David Bevington in William Shakespeare: Four Tr...
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...His Carpet. N.p.: n.p., 1970.
Gardner, Helen. “Othello: A Tragedy of Beauty and Fortune.” Readings on The Tragedies. Ed. Clarice Swisher. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1996. Reprint from “The Noble Moor.” British Academy Lectures, no. 9, 1955.
Mack, Maynard. Everybody’s Shakespeare: Reflections Chiefly on the Tragedies. Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 1993.
Pitt, Angela. “Women in Shakespeare’s Tragedies.” Readings on The Tragedies. Ed. Clarice Swisher. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1996. Reprint from Shakespeare’s Women. N.p.: n.p., 1981.
Shakespeare, William. Othello. In The Electric Shakespeare. Princeton University. 1996. http://www.eiu.edu/~multilit/studyabroad/othello/othello_all.html No line nos.
Wilson, H. S. On the Design of Shakespearean Tragedy. Canada: University of Toronto Press, 1957.
...t and withdrawn, as if all the life and faith he had in the world had been drained out of him. It is in this scene that Dimmesdale finally recognizes Hester and Pearl publicly, he takes them up upon the scaffold with him, and announces to the world what he has done, and through this he feels that he has suffered enough and that his conscience is clear, and with this he dies and goes to Heaven, a soul that has been forgiven, leaving Hester and Pearl alone once again with their grief, and their sin.
The very heart of the novel’s conflict begins with the protagonist, Hester Prynne. Her crime of adultery is presented
Puritans believed in strict religious dedications, by trying to follow the holy commandment. “The discipline of the family, in those days, was of a far more rigid kind than now.”(Hawthorne 9). They wanted to be considered the holiest of all people because they try to reflect a world of perfection in the sight of God. While they where trying to portray a holy life; however, they where also living a sinful life because they have been judgmental, slandering, uncompassionate, resentment, and forbearing, which are all sinful acts of the bible.
In the book, Chillingworth is a physician who had been captured by Native Americans sometime ago and subsequently released by them into Boston, Massachusetts, who was strictly a Puritan settlement at the time. In the years of his imprisonment by the Indians, he was taught many native herbs and plants of the New World, and their uses on the human body. Through this, he entered Boston as a physician, known to have "gathered herbs, and the blossoms of wild-flowers, and dug up roots, and plucked off twigs from the forest-trees, like one acquainted with hidden virtues in what was valueless to common eyes." ( The Scarlet Letter , p. 120). Chillingworth had the knowledge of a particular drug, Atropine, which caused a sickness that closely resembled the condition of Dimmesdale. Chillingworth's motive for retribution to Dimmesdale for his adultery was very clear throughout the book, "There is a sympathy that will make me conscious of him. I shall see him tremble. I shall feel myself shudder, suddenly and unawares. Sooner or later, he must needs be mine." (p. 80). Chillingworth's vengeful nature consumed his life and his only goal in life became the torment of Hester's adulterous husband, Dimmesdale. He was already showing signs of sickness, assumed by the reader to be attributed to his guilty conscience, and these were only amplified by the poisoning Chillingworth had inflicted upon him.
It is evident to the reader that Hester Prynne is no ordinary women because of her clear defiance of what the Puritan society expects. “A community that embodies the qualities of aging public males must necessarily repress those of the young and female,” which has become an unspoken yet understood way of life in Salem, Massachusetts (Baym, “Defiance” 90). All women are required to be submissive and completely abiding of their husbands’ word. They are not to have any self-expression as it is thought to jeopardize the community as a whole. The manifestation of individuality and personal beliefs is seen as both a threat and a sign of insolence, which are responded to with very sev...
...re Dimmesdale dies, Chillingworth repeats that Dimmesdale has escaped him. These utterances, while not seeming like anything of significance to the townspeople, represent Chillingworth’s telling of his plain, however cryptically, showing that the scaffold has played a role from his journey from dark to light.
Letter while discovering that a hidden lie left to fester causes more grief and pain than he
Hester’s role in the story is described as sleeping with a priest and got accused of committing adultery and got punished by having to wear a scarlet letter “A” on the breast of her gown (Hawthorne 71). Hester Prynne’s punishment is to go to prison and then with her child, Pearl, go and stand out on the platform in front of everybody wearing her scarlet letter on the breast of her gown (Howells). Hester...
It was late at night when Dimmesdale was on the scaffold on the night of the death of Governor Winthrop. Dimmesdale is on the scaffold due to his own guilt and self punishment. As Hester is passing by with Pearl, Dimmesdale asks them to join him on the scaffold. Soon after, there is a large meteor showing a scarlet letter A across the sky. Dimmesdale interprets the A as a symbol of his guilt, just like the A on Hester’s bosom. The reader also learns that Chillingworth is present below the scaffold. This scene clearly impacts Dimmesdale the most, but it also has impacts on the other three characters as well. Dimmesdale is so incredibly guilty about the sin he committed, that he has decided to torture himself in hopes that people see him standing on the scaffold. He feels stronger when he’s with Hester and Pearl, but the becomes weak again when Pearl asks him to stand with them the next day. “Nay, not so, my little Pearl! Answered the minister; for with the new energy of the moment, all the dread of public exposure, that had so long been the anguish of his life...”(121). This quotation shows the minister dying emotionally. This scaffold scene truly shows Dimmesdale suffering more than ever from the guilt he has bottled up inside. Hester is very quiet during this scene, much like the last scaffold scene. She is still strong and beautiful. The scaffold impacts Hester in a sense that she needs to be strong
After Hester Prynne’s child was born, she was forced to take her walk of shame out of the prison doors to stand on a Scaffold to be publicly humiliated. The townspeople in the marketplace were astonished that a woman can let her lust overwhelm her into the point of adultery. Harsh statements came out of their mouths. “`At the very least, they should have put the brand of a hot iron on Hester Prynne’s forehead. `Said one of the angry puritans” (1360). The townspeople have good intentions by trying to teach others that Adultery was a sin yet are doing the work of the Dark Man. By mentally crucifying this woman and making her wear the letter they are forming their own lust and vengefulness.
Hester realizes what is going on between Dimmesdale and Chillingworth and gains permission from her husband to reveal his true identity to the minister. Dimmesdale is devastated by the news and agrees to flee Boston with Hester and Pearl. He will do anything to escape the hold that Chillingworth has on him. In the end, however, Dimmesdale realizes that he can only be rid of his tormentor by publicly acknowledging his guilt. At the end of the novel, on Election Day, Dimmesdale climbs the scaffold with Hester and Pearl again. This third scaffold scene is in the light of day and before a crowd. With his family at his side, Dimmesdale finally confesses his sin and shows the scarlet "A" on his chest. He then dies peacefully.
Dimmesdale's health becomes more sickly and weak as the guilt of his sin eats away at him, while Chillingworth acts as a sort of diabolical counselor, digging deep into Dimmesdale's soul to torture him ruthlessly. In the second scaffold scene, Dimmesdale makes a feeble attempt to confess his sin. He stands upon the scaffold bearing the “A” craved into his bare chest and he Hester and Pearl pass on their way home from the governor calls them up to stand with him on the scaffold in the dead of night. Critics say “this episode of Gothic horror forms the pivot of the novel, a mockery of confession in which the characters are utterly isolated from their society” (Bloom 1). The only one to witness this act of penance from Dimmesdale is Chillingworth; of whose suspicions of Dimmesdale’s guilt are confirmed, and can use this information to continue his plan of
Neely, Carol. "Women and Men in Othello" Critical Essays on Shakespeare's Othello. Ed. Anthony G. Barthelemy Pub. Macmillan New York, NY 1994. (page 68-90)
During the encounter between Dimmesdale and Chillingworth minutes before they mount the scaffold, Hawthorne states, “‘Ha, tempter! Methinks thou art too late!’ answered the minister, encountering his eye, fearfully, but firmly. ‘Thy power is not what it was! With God's help, I shall escape thee now!’” Through referring to Chillingworth as a “tempter”, Dimmesdale gives a reference to Satan and feels as though he has been set free from the devil’s chains. Pride, one of the seven deadly sins, keeps him off the scaffold, while his humility lets him mount the scaffold. While the overall tone of his death is not very uplifting, humility, which the scaffold symbolizes, is what allows him to die in peace. Through accepting his weakness, Dimmesdale allows himself to accept Hester's love as a pure love, as opposed to carnal lust. In his endeavor to confess, “It seemed, at this point, as if the minister must leave the remainder of his secret undisclosed. But he fought back the bodily weakness--and, still more, the faintness of heart--that was striving for the mastery with him. He threw off all assistance, and stepped passionately forward a pace before the woman and the children.” The passage suggests a last-minute struggle with his pride. Newfound humility is what lets him win that battle and die with peace and a
In stark contrast to the dark and tragic "Othello," is one of Shakespeare’s lightest and funniest comedies, "Twelfth Night." The theme of love is presented in a highly comical manner. Shakespeare, however, once again proves himself a master by interweaving serious elements into humorous situations. "Twelfth Night" consists of many love triangles, however many of the characters who are tangled up in the web of love are blind to see that their emotions and feelings toward other characters are untrue. They are being deceived by themselves and/or the others around them.