Articles & Essays   Book Reviews 

Consciousness, Literature and the Arts

 

Volume 17 Number 2, August 2016

___________________________________________________________________

 

“To Preserve This Vessel”: Jealousy, Evolutionary Biology, and Othello

by

Michael A. Winkelman

Owens Tech, Ohio

 

Abstract

Though everyone agrees that jealousy is the theme of Shakespeare’s Othello, critics have tended to neglect or misunderstand its significance. The Moor’s infuriated reaction, however, makes sense in light of evolutionary biology, the fundamental explanation for life on Earth—including that branch of hominid primate mammals known as Homo sapiens. My paper explains relevant aspects of Darwin’s theory of sexual selection, plus the Biochemistry and genetics involved, and then analyzes Othello’s natural apprehension over the threat of cuckoldry, especially in Act 4, scene 2. In the conclusion, I contend that such a New Humanist approach can help elucidate what makes the tragedy a masterpiece.

 

Keywords:

jealousy, evolutionary biology, Shakespeare, Othello, tragedy, Darwin

 

Is this dread jealousy? Last year in English, when they read Othello, Mona thought that poor Moor meshugga, but now she wonders if she is not Moorishly afflicted.

               — Gish Jen, Mona in the Promised Land (1996), p. 188

 

Introduction

Everybody agrees that jealousy is the main theme of Shakespeare’s Othello (1623/1997). Yet traditional criticism has tended either to neglect or misunderstand its significance. Othello’s misjudgment, his fatal error concerning Desdemona’s fidelity, has certainly been assessed by scholars, but jealousy per se has mostly been taken for granted. Many would accept Emilia’s tautology: “Jealous souls . . . are not ever jealous for the cause, / But jealous for they’re jealous. It is a monster / Begot upon itself, born on itself” (3.4.159-62).[1] On the other hand, those who have turned their attention to this caustic passion have tended to offer psychological interpretations. These have usually been based on largely discredited Freudian psychoanalysis, or more recently, on postmodern tenets still prevalent among littérateurs in their ivory towers, especially feminist critiques of manhood. Of the former, we have articles typified by Stephen Reid’s (1968) in the Psychological literature, which claims Othello’s “jealousy can best be explained . . . as a more elementary defence against the castration anxiety aroused by his marriage to Desdemona” (p. 275). Bountiful examples of the latter can be found, many tying the Moor’s insecurity and savagery to issues of race and gender (e.g. Maus, 1987; Breitenberg, 1993; Orlin, 2008; Pye, 2009; n.b. to these critics, “gender” is not an essential feature of biology but rather the anxiety-ridden cultural construction of patriarchal norms). Overall, the quality of this body of work is mixed (for a review of the scholarship, see Vaughn, 1984). Some of it, to be sure, advances insightful observations based on solid research and thinking. After all, the Moor is a foreign male, hung up enough about sexuality to prefer to love a “monumental alabaster” statue to the real flesh-and-blood Desdemona (5.2.5). A lot, though, is derivative and strewn with academic jargon. Furthermore, it is also beholden to invalidated hypotheses about human nature and society, howsoever orthodox they remain in most English departments. (For incisive demonstrations of the fundamental errors of poststructuralist theories, see Carroll, 2011; Gottschall, 2008a; Pinker, 2002; Boyd, 2006).  

 

The moment is ripe for a consilient correction to this lacuna, and evolutionary biology provides the missing link, the key to a much better understanding. When the cold, hard logic of sexual selection is taken into account—a principle first formulated by the Victorian naturalist Charles Darwin (1859/2008), who loved reading Shakespeare—Othello’s motivations and infuriation make complete sense. Men should indeed react vehemently against suspected adultery in order to safeguard their prized, precious selfish genes. Moreover, far from being “reductive” or overreaching “scientism,” such a New Humanist approach can help us to see that Shakespeare’s three-dimensional tragedy is a work of the highest artistic merit.

 

 In fact, since the recent effloresence of empirical approaches to the arts, the applicability of evolution to Othello has been noticed. Renaissance scholar Marcus Nordlund, in his monograph Shakespeare and the Nature of Love: Literature, Culture, Evolution (2007, pp. 163-95), and biologist David Barash and his daughter Nanelle, in their popular non-fiction study Madame Bovary’s Ovaries: A Darwinian Look at Literature (2005, pp. 14-37), have chapters on “the grieved Moor,” while English Professors Robert C. Evans (2002) and Joe Keener (2013) have applied Darwinian logic to the play in articles. They all do a fine job of explaining the how’s and why’s of jealousy in terms of DNA and intraspecies competition. Yet none of them demonstrate in depth what it is about this particular play, out of all the tales on this subject, that is so striking, and my aim in the latter part of this essay will be to elaborate on that important question.

 

“It Is the Cause!”

Centuries before Shakespeare, Darwin, or any other enlightened moderns, the medieval cleric Andreas Capellanus decreed in his magisterial, influential Art of Courtly Love (trans., 1982) that “the person who is not jealous cannot love” (pp. 282-83). To comprehend this twelfth-century dictum, it helps to realize that jealousy in the amorous sphere is an evolutionary adaptation transmitted by selfish genes and prompted by the involuntary release of neurotransmitters. Basically, humans have an inherited proclivity to react very strongly to real or apparent indications of infidelity in a lover. “Unbookish jealousy” lurks inside all normal people because an unfaithful partner directly threatens one’s reproductive success—the ultimate end of sexual selection (4.1.102). “My life upon her faith,” Othello remarks in Act 1, and in a genetic sense he is correct to reason so (1.3.295). Evolutionary psychologist David Buss justifies Capellanus’s shrewd observation in his thorough study The Dangerous Passion: Why Jealousy Is as Necessary as Love and Sex (2000). He explains its biological utility and its behavioral and mental aspects, as well as the clear gender differences it manifests. As intelligent, dimorphic social mammals, male and female humans pursue distinctive mating strategies (Pinker, 1997; de Waal, 1997). These strategies can intersect—indeed, they do each time offspring are produced—but they can also conflict. To enumerate some of the more relevant differences: men are typically larger, stronger, and more aggressive, relics of countless prehistoric generations of fighting to obtain women. They are also more prone to seek short-term liaisons and multiple partners when feasible, but simultaneously they risk cuckolding from like-minded competitors. Women, meanwhile, are the ones who get pregnant. This fact of life mandates a much bigger “minimal parental investment” while also, however, assuring them that any of their offspring are their own (Dawkins, 1989, pp. 140-65).[2] “Mama’s baby, papa’s maybe,” according to the folksy old saying. Women, therefore, generally face lower and different risks from a straying partner, and they tend to respond to cheating differently than men do.[3] Yet for anybody, a dedicated romantic relationship during one’s reproductive years represents a major deployment of finite resources. Such a bond is never completely secure, as Emilia’s rhetorical questions grant: “And have not we affections? / Desires for sport? and frailty, as men have?” (4.3.99-100). Hence, elucidates Buss, “jealousy evolved” as a shield against threats of betrayal or rivalry, “motivating vigilance as the first line of defense and violence as the last” (p. 223). This zealous possessiveness is then paradoxically both “savage madness” as Iago calls it, and in evolutionary terms a finely tuned, carefully calibrated response, honed over millennia, in the high-stakes battle of the sexes (4.1.55).

 

Throughout history, men have frequently used raw muscle power to control their mates. Until very recently, this generally met with tacit or explicit cultural approval. (The issue was ambivalent in Shakespeare’s era, where shrews should be tamed but Othello’s public “strike” of Desdemona “would not be believed in Venice,” 4.1.241, 272). They have done so simply because force majeure, or the threat thereof, has usually proven effective.[4] Likewise, when and where they have had the means to do so, men have practiced claustration or “restraint” (4.3.89), similar to how stags or bull seals practice “mate-guarding” of their harems by driving off inferiors. This seclusion of one’s wives and daughters is still done in parts of the Islamic Middle East. As Othello tells Desdemona:

 

            This hand of yours requires

A sequester from liberty, fasting and prayer,

Much castigation, exercise devout,

For here’s a young and sweating devil, here,

That commonly rebels.  (3.4.39-43; italics added)

 

Besides such strong-arm tactics, there has long been a psy-ops side to things. As jealousy evolved, humans developed a minute sensitivity to hints or traces of a drifting heart, able to scan even “a super-subtle Venetian” in an escalating mental arms race between detection and deception (1.3.357). We should note, for instance, how even before Iago’s insinuations have been fully conveyed, Othello seems inclined to “peevish jealousies” (4.3.88). As he addresses the departed Desdemona: “Excellent wretch! perdition catch my soul / But I do love thee! and when I love thee not / Chaos is come again” (3.3.90-92). In Madame Bovary’s Ovaries, the Barashes observe that “Shakespeare knew, as well as Darwin . . . that men are not only sexually jealous and often violently so, but astoundingly willing to believe the worst, especially if it involves a threat to what they fancy as their sexual monopoly over a woman” (p. 27). Othello epitomizes this state of mind: “O curse of marriage / That we can call these delicate creatures ours / And not their appetites!” (3.3.272-74). Again, this aspect of masculinity results from the encoding of those selfish genes that reproduced fruitfully. Iago poetically expresses this facet of the human psyche: “Trifles light as air / Are to the jealous confirmations strong / As proofs of holy writ” (3.3.325-27). In fine, it is only natural to be too suspicious rather than not suspicious enough when one’s paternity is at stake.[5]

 

Violence functions both to directly prevent straying and to deter would-be infidelity. It might seem, though, that spousal homicide is maladaptive—“That death’s unnatural that kills for loving,” declares Desdemona (5.2.42). Yet considered from a deeper sociobiological perspective, it is a thoroughly sensical response. In most places, including early modern Europe and stretching way back, such an action was either permitted or only lightly punished. For example, the tragic adulterous lovers Paolo Malatesta and Francesca da Polenta end up literally in Hell in Dante’s Inferno (trans., 2002), dispatched there by her husband Gianciotto, but he is elsewhere (V.127-38). Even in America, the hot-blooded killing of adulterers was legal in certain Western states until the 1970s (Buss, 125; see also Dolan, 2008). So men who behaved thusly often avoided capital punishment or long imprisonments, which would have severely hindered efforts to father offspring. In fact, enacting total vengeance upon a cheating wife and annihilating a rival could help restore the perpetrator’s all-important honour and standing, a point confirmed by anthropologists (Chagnon, 1968; Daly & Wilson, 1988; Gottschall, 2008b). Othello’s great marine simile is instructive:

 

                        Like to the Pontic sea

Whose icy current and compulsive course

Ne’er keep retiring ebb but keeps due on

To the Propontic and the Hellespont:

Even so my bloody thoughts with violent pace

Shall ne’er look back, ne’er ebb to humble love

Till that a capable and wide revenge

Swallow them up.  (3.3.456-63)

 

A statement such as this broadcasts a clear signal: a real man shouldn’t be messed with. Evolutionary psychology provides a convincing explanation for why such a mindset developed. Again, especially in premodern societies where arranged marriages, part of the male trade in women, meant romantic love would only occasionally work to restrict a wife’s yearning to wander, a credible threat of extreme harm provided a solid impetus to remain true. Like other disincentives, though, it is essential that the danger be real and that the consequences be grasped. A spouse who heard Othello bellow “I will chop her into messes! Cuckold me!” would be very chary of doing so (4.1.196). International geopolitics and dysfunctional child-rearing, though, both illustrate how analogous games of brinksmanship can blow up in your face or otherwise be bungled. “Sweet Revenge grows harsh” in this very case; mad jealous vengeance is not the same as a perfect mathematical game theory model where all the players are informed and logical about their moves (5.2.114). Such threats aren’t always heeded; sometimes the actors are bluffing. Yet for credible threats to work properly, adulterers must be seen to suffer grievous bodily harm for their transgressions with some regularity, or else it is just impotent saber-rattling or “crying wolf.” And if these possible cheaters or defectors are aware that their husbands could potentially explode or become implacably bent on retaliation, they must factor in that element of risk before cuckolding him.[6]

 

Jealousy, then, is one key mechanism concocted blindly by Mother Nature, via her handmaiden evolution, to help our DNA replicate successfully. The human male, like many other mammals, produces natural hormones that, among other functions, spark reactions to commonly occurring stimuli, which during the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptation (EEA), proved advantageous for reproduction. The biochemistry gets extremely complex, but even a simplified account provides a compelling deep background to Othello. Boiling down extensive, ongoing research by neurobiologists taking place both in the lab and in the field, we will concentrate on two key hormones: testosterone and vasopressin (information in this section comes from Ellison & Gray, 2009; Nelson, 2006; Schrier, 1985; Siegel, 2005; Zingg, Bourque, & Bichet, 1998; Fisher, 2004). Testosterone is the definitive elixir for virility, catalyzing all sorts of stereotypical male traits: physical masculinization, a healthy libido, and a propensity to hostility, dominance, and fighting.[7] “The warlike Moor, Othello, . . . [who] commands / Like a full soldier,” and for that matter the striving, ruthless Iago, likewise an established military veteran, behave like exemplary macho real men (2.1.27-36).[8] The nonapeptide vasopressin is another essential ingredient in this cocktail. It is homeostatic, serving to regulate water retention and blood pressure, but scientists have discovered that it is also a vital molecule for relationships: “In males . . . vasopressin leads to an increase in aggression against intruders, which if successful would guard the mate from mating with other males” (Ellison & Gray, p. 324). It contributes to enhanced paternal and pair-bonding behaviours too, but at the same time, it rouses men to agonistic attacks against adversaries.

 

This is not to say that men, jealous or otherwise, are wholly creatures of their basic caveman instincts. It is, though, to acknowledge the place of the passions in our hylomorphic beings. As cognitive psychologist Keith Oatley (1992) articulates, “emotions are part of a solution to problems of organizing knowledge and action in a world that is imperfectly known and in which we have limited resources” (p. 3). In other words, deep-rooted, hard-wired potent feelings have tended probabilistically to guide people sensibly when facing uncertain choices, for example the fight or flight response to apparent dangers. They are time-tested evolved adaptations.[9] As has been suggested, however, the human animal is somewhat complicated, and so there is more to the story. Ironically, Iago himself supplies a perfect gloss on the actual situation, in which wise adults with mature prefrontal cortices can weigh possible courses of action rationally, and consider short-term vs. long-term decisions: “Our bodies are gardens, to the which our wills are gardeners. … If the balance of our lives had not one scale of reason to poise another of sensuality, the blood and baseness of our natures would conduct us to the most preposterous conclusions. But we have reason to cool our raging motions, our carnal stings, our unbitted lusts” (1.3.321-32). He anticipates the latest work in neuroplasticity, which reveals that experience and context modify and mollify vasopressin’s effects (Nelson, pp. 163-75). Othello’s response to the brawl involving the intoxicated Cassio the first night in Cypress conveys something of this mix:

 

                        Now, by heaven,

My blood begins my safer guides to rule

And passion, having my best judgement collied,                   [darkened]

Assays to lead the way. Zounds, if I once stir,

Or do but lift this arm, the best of you

Shall sink in my rebuke.  (2.3.200-5)

 

Ergo, in a premodern milieu where a man’s reputation can be enhanced through appropriately aggressive, honourable deeds or by securing a trophy wife (“he hath achieved a maid, / That paragons description and wild fame,” 2.1.61-62), or shamefully lost by disgraceful, uncontrolled misconduct or the revelation of an inappropriate, unsuccessful dalliance à la the over-courtly, “thrice-gentle” Cassio’s (3.4.123), being quick with the sword is a viable, sanctioned response. It can be an invaluable part of securing one’s all-important standing, a matter ironically vindicated by Iago: “Good name in man and woman, dear my lord, / Is the immediate jewel of their souls” (3.3.158-59). Having a self-consciously limited amount of restraint when faced with provocation could be thoroughly admirable.

 

But in our contemporary era, where dueling, hélas, has been outlawed, and the state reserves to its official justice system a near-monopoly on bringing malefactors to trial and disciplining them (at least in the First World), men have learned, to some extent, to tamp down their bellicose inclinations. Even as soon as the witty Restoration comedy The Country Wife by William Wycherley (1675/1973), jealousy has been gentrified and can be played for laughs. Significantly, in what seems like a revisionary allusion to Shakespeare’s tragedy, the dishonoured Mr. Pinchwife does not stab the boy-crazy Mrs. Margery of the title, who has fallen for the rakish Horner.[10]

 

PINCHWIFE:  I will never hear woman again, but make ’em all silent thus—

            Offers to draw [his sword] upon his wife

HORNER:  No, that must not be.

PINCHWIFE:  You then shall go first, ‘tis all one to me.

            Offers to draw on Horner; stopped by Harcourt

HARCOURT:  Hold!  (5.4.284-87)

 

This diminishing trope will, by its appearance in modern British “kitchen sink” dramas, develop into scenes where the concerned parties sit down over tea for a civil discussion of domestic rearrangements rather than seeking bloody revenge. Nonetheless, both intolerable feelings of jealousy and the brutality they set off are fundamentals of a universal human nature that has been genetically selected through the long processes of evolution. Jealousy may not always be reliable nor politically correct, but we must recognize that Othello is behaving very much in line with what we should expect or predict of a man in his position.

 

 

Act 4, Scene 2: “Alas, What Does This Gentleman Conceive?”

The intense exchange between the irate, bitter Moor and his bewildered, protesting wife in Act 4, scene 2 continues the downward spiral of their marital relationship in the second half of the play, leading up, of course, to the dreadful murder-suicide. Othello accuses Desdemona of being an “impudent strumpet” while also bemoaning his own sorrowful state (4.2.82). After he storms off, Iago reappears with Emilia, who presciently suspects that “some most villainous knave, / Some base notorious knave,” has catalyzed this breach.

 

EMILIA:  I will be hanged if some eternal villain

Some busy and insinuating rogue,

Some cogging, cozening slave, to get some office,

Have not devised this slander, I’ll be hanged else!

IAGO:  Fie, there is no such man, it is impossible.  (4.2.132-36)

 

Clearly a lot is happening. For our purposes, though, what merits close attention is Othello’s vivid reproductive language here. Echoing an image from the climactic conversation held previously in which Iago “poisons” his soul (3.3.329), Othello will again compare himself to a toad. Earlier, he had remarked:

 

I had rather be a toad

And live upon the vapour of a dungeon

Than keep a corner in the thing I love

For others’ uses.  (3.3.274-77)

 

Interestingly enough, his initial reaction at that juncture had been to discard Desdemona like a haggard hawk and loathe her after, a position that changes to calls for “black vengeance . . . tyrannous hate!” and “blood” by the end of the scene (3.3.450-54). Some things, like the “delicate creatures” known as wives, are emphatically not for sharing (3.3.273).

 

Othello’s vehement, poetical lamentation reveals his preoccupation with his own potential displacement and with Desdemona’s suspected treachery (Genster, 1990; Snow, 1980; Cohen, 1987). Such matters should be of the utmost concern to him; worrying about them does not make the poor Moor meshugga. As Shakespearean actor and evolutionary biologist Daniel Nettle (2010) explains: “The key social resources in any primate society are status and mates” (p. 320; see also de Waal, 2007). Othello, then, thinks he is facing the catastrophic loss of what is most valuable. He begins his defining speech by imagining horrible afflictions for himself: illness, poverty, captivity, and being scorned by all (4.2.48-57). He has the resilience to endure the trials and tribulations of a Job, or even to become a public laughingstock. Yet his predicament extends so far beyond as to make Patience himself lose his cool:

 

But there where I have garnered up my heart,

Where either I must live or bear no life,

The fountain from the which my current runs

Or else dries up—to be discarded thence!

Or keep it as a cistern for foul toads                                      [pond]

To knot and gender in! Turn thy complexion there,

Patience, thou young and rose-lipped cherubin,

Ay, here look, grim as hell!  (4.2.58-65)

 

The fountain and the cistern are figures for Desdemona herself, or something like her breeding capacity or even womb. Both images accord exactly with ingrained evolutionary reasoning. Obviously the playwright did not have access to Darwin’s insights into sexual selection, but as a keen observer of human nature, he understood the utter importance of a man’s patriarchy. Hence, he sounds here as if he were channeling the voice of a particularly expressive evolutionary biologist describing an insecure husband’s sensible anxieties. Othello’s feared alienation threatens to cut off the possibility of offspring: if she left, Desdemona would be like a dried-up fountain to him. The alternative to being “discarded,” to losing his wife outright, is equally horrifying: she could be a pond where foul creatures breed. Her hypothetical promiscuity would entail paternal uncertainty or cuckoldry, the subject of so many uneasy jokes on the Renaissance stage. (Cuckoos practice “brood parasitism,” laying their eggs in other birds’ nests, after which their aggressive hatchlings crowd out the natives.) From a biological point of view, unwittingly raising others’ babies is a losing stratagem.

The situation compares tellingly with that of Aaron the Moor in Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, who gleefully celebrates siring a bastard with Tamara, Queen of Goths. Cradling the newborn, he addresses her legitimate sons Chiron and Demetrius:

 

Look how the black slave smiles upon the father,

As who should say, “Old lad, I am thine own.”

He is your brother, lords, sensibly fed

Of that self blood that first gave life to you,

And from your womb where you imprisoned were

He is enfranchised and come to light.

Nay, he is your brother by the surer side,

Although my seal be stamped in his face. 

(Shakespeare, 1974, 4.2.120-27; see also 5.1.27-32)

 

The baby is guaranteed to be their sibling, but it is “stamped” with Aaron’s blackness, making it his own beyond any reasonable doubt.

 

In contrast, for Othello, contemplating Desdemona as “a cistern for foul toads / To knot and gender in,” a vitiated “procreant” or “breeder,” becomes a horror beyond words, beyond consideration. It would appall and corrupt even Patience to know about. The Moor’s “foul thoughts” (2.1.256) also resonate with Iago’s remarkable conceits from their earlier conversation:

 

Utter my thoughts? Why, say they are vile and false?

As where’s that palace whereinto foul things

Sometimes intrude not? Who has a breast so pure

But some uncleanly apprehensions

Keep leets and law-days and in session sit

With meditations lawful?  (3.3.139-44, my italics)

 

Literally, we recall, Iago is pondering the fact that one’s ideas may be incorrect.[11] In this case, however, he implies, by means of his verbal reluctance, that he thinks Desdemona may be unfaithful, and the rhetorical questions concerning a sullied bosom and a stormed castle clearly conjure up the impression of a despoiled Desdemona adulterated by other men. Such insinuations infect the mind of one who knows well how uneasily lies the head that fears the horns.

 

Desdemona’s reply to her husband’s tirade brings forth two more sharp images:

 

DESDEMONA: I hope my noble lord esteems me honest.

OTHELLO: O, ay, as summer flies are in the shambles,

That quicken even with blowing. O thou weed

Who art so lovely fair and smell’st so sweet

That the sense aches at thee, would thou hadst ne’er been born!

 (4.2.66-70)

 

Again, he considers her thoroughly tainted: a fly or weed. A meat-market in the summertime must have smelled rather graveolent, and no doubt the flies buzzing around everywhere would have seemed promiscuous. Still, though, her pulchritude deeply troubles him: she appears so fine to all his senses that her supposed hypocrisy makes him wish her non-existent. Her sorrowful follow-up question and unfortunate word-choice “committed” again sets Othello off.

 

DESDEMONA:  Alas, what ignorant sin have I committed?

            OTHELLO:  Was this fair paper, this most goodly book

            Made to write “whore” upon? What committed!

                        Committed? O thou public commoner!

                        I should make very forges of my cheeks

                        That would to cinders burn up modesty

                        Did I but speak thy deeds. What committed!

                        Heaven stops the nose at it, and the moon winks,

                        The bawdy wind that kisses all it meets

                        Is hushed within the hollow mine of earth

                        And will not hear’t. What committed!

                        Impudent strumpet!  (4.2.71-82)

 

The good book inscribed “whore” builds upon the sweet weed image, and again reflects a wider male concern with female sexuality, namely that ovulation is hidden, paternity uncertain, and women inclined to seek unauthorized partners, especially if they seem like good gamete providers. Really, deception is everywhere.

 

BRABANTIO:  Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see:

She has deceived her father, and may thee. 

(1.3.293-94; see also 3.3.209-11)

 

DESDEMONA:  I am not merry, but I do beguile

The thing I am by seeming otherwise.  (2.1.122-23)

 

IAGO:  I know our country disposition well—

In Venice they do let God see the pranks

They dare not show their husbands; their best conscience

Is not to leave’t undone, but keep’t unknown.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

She that so young could give out such a seeming

To seel her father’s eyes up, close as oak -

He thought ’twas witchcraft.  (3.3.205-14)

 

As Iago reminds Othello, “Her honour is an essence that’s not seen, / They have it very oft that have it not” (4.1.16-17). The Moor, bewildered by the ways of Venetian womenfolk, could well relate to Shakespeare’s Sonnet 94. After cataloguing those who maintain heaven’s graces, the speaker of that poem sharply contrasts the opposite in the volta, those who turn bad seemingly of their own volition, optima corrupta pessima: “Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds” (Shakespeare, 1974, Sonnet 94, l. 14). For Othello, obsessed by what he thinks she has “committed,” even the watchful natural world cannot directly face such an act. He continues before exiting after line 96 with sarcastic, angry iterated questions: “Are you not a strumpet? . . . What, not a whore? . . . I took you for that cunning whore of Venice / That married with Othello” (4.2.82-92). Desdemona may well be frightened and confused by his outbursts, but she certainly comprehends what’s at stake. She openly defends herself:

 

No, as I am a Christian.

If to preserve this vessel for my lord

From any hated foul unlawful touch

Be not to be a strumpet, I am none.  (4.2.84-87)

 

She is a Christian indeed, as her identification with the not-impudent “weaker vessel” of the New Testament shows: “For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye should abstain from fornication: That every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour; Not in the lust of concupiscence, even as the Gentiles which know not God” (1 Thessalonians 4.3-5, KJV; see also 1 Peter 3.7). Her language is apt in Darwinian terms too. Holy matrimony provides sanction for a much older goal: the attempt to secure one’s lineage. Above and beyond questions of compatibility and helpmate status, the prime duty of wives was to remain sexually faithful, to ensure that their husband’s live fountain ran on unpolluted to the next generation.[12]

 

When this basic biology is taken into account, two points emerge. First, Othello’s intense sexual jealousy is exceedingly “rational” in the sense of being a logical response where the fate of his selfish genes is concerned, even if he is tragically mistaken. Second, it should surprise us that this clear sign of human nature has been almost entirely overlooked by Shakespeare scholars as busy excavating his motives as Iago’s.

 

Questions of Plausibility: “Is’t Possible?”

Findings in the life sciences not only illuminate jealousy itself in the play; they can also help us to resolve the crux concerning the believability of the Moor’s deception and hamartia. That is, is the action realistic? Does the play, as Hamlet would hope, “hold as ’twere the mirror up to nature”? (Shakespeare, 1974, 3.2.22). Challenges to its verisimilitude have been around about as long as ill-advised calls for abolishing the British monarchy, but I would suggest that Othello’s outlook is fairly reasonable under the circumstances. However, having made that claim, it should be acknowledged that the powerful persistence of such skepticism does signal something of the legitimacy of such concerns. The first doubting Thomas was of course Thomas Rymer, who in his Short View of Tragedy, written late in the seventeenth century, satirically attacked myriad aspects of a histrionic melodrama: “never was any Play fraught, like this of Othello, with improbabilities.” It is “a Bloody Farce” featuring an “absurd . . . handkerchief” that is but “a trifle” (quoted in Dean, 1961, pp. 107-25; see also Berger, 1996). Rymer usually gets name-checked by modern critics as a mean-spirited, punctilious neo-Augustan with no appreciation for Shakespeare’s brilliance, but in fact he offers several reasonable objections. (One wonders how many living scholars have actually read Rymer through—many seem to be repeating received wisdom.) This professor does not think, though, that Rymer and his followers do justice to the issue. Still, though, some dramatic elements do require a suspension of disbelief: First, we have Iago’s diabolical knavery lurking under the mask of a great and oft-repeated reputation for trustworthiness: “honest, honest Iago” is revealed at the bitter end as a most “notorious villain” and “demi-devil” (5.2.150, 237, 298). Secondly we have “the somewhat miraculous quality of Desdemona’s innocence,” as Mark Rose (1985) phrased it, in such a shady setting.[13] And third, there is Othello’s failure after Act 3 to “doubt wisely” as John Donne (1633/1967) would have recommended (“Satire III,” line 77); instead he devolves into a “credulous fool” (4.1.45). The Bard was not writing the modern detective novel, which at its finest—in spite of being a highly stylized and romanticized genre—pays minute attention to details of psychological motivation, logistics, plotting, and forensics.[14] So yes, at some levels, Othello’s error and subsequent downfall do not stand up to the strictest scrutiny.

 

And yet there is a deeper Aristotelean truth to Othello too, especially if we witness a strong live performance or can imagine seeing it uninitiated before we knew the arc of the tragedy. Landmark commentators have beneficially revealed this aspect of the play. Samuel Taylor Coleridge makes the vital point that:

 

In considering the essence of . . . Othello, we must perseveringly place ourselves in his situation, and under his circumstances. . . . Othello had no life but in Desdemona:—the belief that she, his angel, had fallen from the heaven of her native innocence, wrought a civil war in his heart. She is his counterpart; and, like him, is almost sanctified in our eyes by her absolute unsuspiciousness, and holy entireness of love. As the curtain drops, which do we pity the most?

(quoted in Dean, pp. 127-28)

 

Holding off on some remarks on aesthetics, tragedy, and pity till the next, concluding section, we should remind ourselves that Othello is not watching a play that he has seen before.[15] He can only observe the circumstantial evidence manipulated by Iago, the “imputation and strong circumstances” before his eyes, such as that infamous handkerchief, once his, that Bianca returns to Cassio (3.3.409). It is not quite “oracular proof”—indeed, Desdemona’s innocence cannot be proven if she isn’t under his around-the-clock surveillance, a critical point Othello forgets—but it is nonetheless strong and compelling (3.3.363; cf. Emilia’s counter-testimony at 4.2.1-19). As Iago informs Roderigo and the audience: “a slipper and subtle knave, a finder out of occasions, that has an eye, can stamp and counterfeit advantages, though true advantage never present itself” (2.1.239-42). A century ago, A. C. Bradley answered grudging readers concerning these issues in his monumental Shakespearean Tragedy, and characterized the noble Moor deeply and insightfully:

 

He has little experience of the corrupt products of civilised life, and is ignorant of European women. . . . He is by nature full of the most vehement passion. . . . His opinion of Iago was the opinion of practically everyone who knew him: and that opinion was that Iago was before all things ‘honest,’ his very faults being those of excess in honesty. . . . He is totally ignorant of the thoughts and the customary morality of Venetian women [and] he had himself seen in Desdemona’s deception of her father how perfect an actress she could be. (quoted in Dean, pp. 141-43)

 

Such traditionalist views are further affirmed by evolutionary psychologists on two fronts. For one, they find that dangerous mistrust occurs more often when couples are unaligned. Scientists observing the human animal have found that when there is not equivalent “fitness matching,” the partner who is seemingly out of his or her league is liable to feel insecure. Iago knows this bit of folk wisdom, which he shares with Roderigo when they arrive in Cyprus: “there should be . . . loveliness in favour, sympathy in years, manners and beauty, all which the Moor is defective in” (2.1.225-28; see also Brabantio at 1.3.95-104). The next day Iago and Othello discuss how unusual such a marriage be, how strange that Desdemona should reject “the wealthy, curled darlings of our nation” in favor of an old, foreign campaigner such as the Moor (1.2.68).

 

OTHELLO:  And yet how nature, erring from itself—

IAGO:  Ay, there’s the point: as, to be bold with you,

Not to affect many proposed matches

Of her own clime, complexion and degree,

Whereto we see, in all things, nature tends—  (3.3.231-35)

 

Secondly, it is better to be distrustful rather than unconcerned in these all-important marital matters. As clarified by Buss:

 

Over evolutionary time it was more costly to fail to detect an infidelity that did occur than to err in the other direction of being overly suspicious. . . . The adaptive solution would be to set a low threshold for inferring a partner’s infidelity, like a hair trigger on an alarm. In this way, one avoids costs of failing to detect actual infidelities, even if it means sometimes falsely accusing a partner of betrayal. (pp. 100, 77)

 

With all these points in mind, Othello’s misguided actions should make a ton of sense.

 

Aesthetics and Evolution: “There’s Magic in the Web”

Over the centuries, several wise souls have deemed Othello Shakespeare’s top tragedy. Such a view has a lot of merit. On a related note, some of the most advanced, perspicacious interpretations by leading New Humanists nowadays are delving into pertinent aesthetic matters. They have been demonstrating the worldwide significance of artistic skill at involving audiences emotionally in characters’ conflicts, revealing the importance of originality in creative expression, and showing how a deep understanding of universal human nature informs works of art with lasting value and weight (representative studies, including those by the editors themselves, are readily found in Boyd, Carroll, & Gottschall, 2010; see also Wells, 2005). A few brief remarks linking this drama to an evolved appreciation for fictional representation might then provide a fit conclusion to this essay.

 

A long, strong tradition of emotional reactions was first recorded at Oxford in 1610, when the tragedy, “acted with propriety and fitness . . . moved [spectators] to tears” (Shakespeare, 1974, p. 1852; on Renaissance tragedy, see Sidney, 1595/2004; Kerrigan, 1996; Watson, 1990). The “unlucky deeds” wrought in Cyprus, ending with “the tragic loading of this bed,” have truly touched audiences (5.2.339, 361): “’Twas pitiful, ’twas wondrous pitiful” (1.3.162; see also Othello’s later remark, “But yet the pity of it, Iago—O, Iago, the pity of it!” [4.1.192-93]). This is no more to say than that the author alchemically transformed his source materials in Cinthio’s novella by means of his remarkable understanding, his profound insights into dramatic art and the human mind into a literary masterpiece: “’Tis true, there’s magic in the web of it” (3.4.71). It is certainly much more powerful than any case study from a psychiatry textbook of “the Othello syndrome” or the report from a police blotter, such as the homicides allegedly committed by O. J. Simpson in 1994. The unusual plot upsets generic conventions, such as the comical cuckolding of the old, impotent bloke in fabliaux by Boccaccio or Chaucer, or the expected murder of the inconvenient husband or cheatin’ wife found everywhere from pulp fiction to folk ballads and blues music. Furthermore, the Bard challenges us with the unexpectedness of interracial romance and his Venetian heroine’s chastity, likewise piquing viewer interest. All these elements are enhanced because the play concerns richly developed characters as well. The lexicon too, is special—both the orotund poetry of the Moor and the sinister, corrosive rhetoric of Iago, plus the way key terms like honest and love, whore and strumpet, poison and hate, place and office, nature, blood and bed, jealous and their variants achieve harmonic oscillation as the story moves towards its terrible climax (Othello: A Concordance).

 

The other truly inspired thing about it is the playwright’s unsettling linkage between hero and villain, general and ensign. As Michael Neill (1984) puts it, “Othello is a tragedy of displacement, a drama of jealousy and resentment which traces the destructive symbiosis of two men, each of whom is tormented by a sense of intolerable usurpation” (p. 115). From a biocultural perspective Othello’s problem is his mate, while Iago’s is his status. But really, for these social hominids, the issues are inseparable. Iago soliloquizes: “I hate the Moor / And it is thought abroad that ’twixt my sheets / He’s done my office” (1.3.385-87; see also 2.1.293-310); meanwhile, Othello bids “farewell” to both his contentment and his career when he thinks himself cuckolded: “Othello’s occupation’s gone” (3.3.360, my emphases). One could go on and on; let me instead just wrap things up by stating that Shakespeare has presented us with a unique, rich tragedy revolving around ancient, widespread human concerns, and thanks to the theories of evolution and sexual selection from a later ingenious English country gentleman, we can now more fully understand “the cause” that Othello refuses to name to the chaste stars (5.2.1-2) before dooming poor Desdemona and himself: “the green-eyed monster jealousy” (3.3.168).

 

References

Barash, D. & N. Barash. (2005). Madame Bovary’s ovaries: A Darwinian look at literature. New York: Delacorte Press.

Berger, H., Jr. (1996). Impertinent trifling: Desdemona’s handkerchief. Shakespeare Quarterly, 47, 235-50.

Boyd, B. (2006). Getting it all wrong: Bioculture critiques culture critique. American Scholar, 75 (4), 18-30.

Boyd, B., J. Carroll, & J. Gottschall (Eds.) (2010). Evolution, literature, and film: a reader. New York: Columbia University Press.

Braden, G. (2004). Shakespeare, Plutarch, and the alpha males. In C. Martindale and A. B. Taylor (Eds.), Shakespeare and the classics. (pp. 188-206). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Breitenberg, M. (1993). Anxious masculinity: Sexual jealousy in early modern England. Feminist Studies, 19, 377-98.

Buss, D. (2000). The dangerous passion: why jealousy is as necessary as love and sex. New York: The Free Press.

Capellanus, A. (1982). Andreas Capellanus on love. (P.G. Walsh, Trans.). London: Duckworth.

Carroll, J. (2011). Reading human nature: literary Darwinism in theory and practice. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.

Chagnon, N. (1968). Yanomamö: the fierce people. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

Cohen, D. (1987). Patriarchy and jealousy in Othello and The Winter’s Tale. MLQ, 48, 207-23.

Daly, M. & M. Wilson. (1988). Homicide. New York: A. de Gruyter.

Dante. (2002). The Inferno. (A. Esolen, Trans.). New York: The Modern Library.

Darwin, C. (2008). Evolutionary writings. (J. Secord, Ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Dawkins, R. (1989). The selfish gene. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press.

Dean, L. (Ed.). (1961). A casebook on Othello. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell.

Dolan, F. E. (2008.) Marriage and violence: the early modern legacy. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Donne, J. (1967). The complete poetry of John Donne. (J. T. Shawcross, Ed.). Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor Books.

Ellison, P. & P. Gray (Eds.) (2009). Endocrinology of social relationships. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Evans, R. C. (2002). Jealousy in Othello and jealousy in social psychology: The relevance of Darwin? Journal of the Wooden O Symposium, 2, 36-63.

Fisher, H. (2004). Why we love: the nature and chemistry of romantic love. New York: Holt.

Ferris, C. (2006). Neuroplasticity and aggression: an interaction between vasopressin and serotonin. In R. Nelson (Ed.), Biology of aggression. (pp. 163-75). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Genster, J. (1990). Lieutenancy, standing in, and Othello. ELH, 57, 785-809.

Gottschall, J. (2008a). Literature, science, and a new humanities. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

—.  (2008b). The rape of Troy: evolution, violence, and the world of Homer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hurston, Z. N. (1998). Their eyes were watching God. New York: Perennial Classics.

Keener, J. (2013). Othello: the multi-level conflict of the Darwinian psychomachia. Consciousness, Literature and the Arts 14 (3).

Kerrigan, J. (1996). Revenge tragedy: Aeschylus to Armageddon. Oxford: Clarendon.

Maus, K. E. (1987). Horns of dilemma: jealousy, gender, and spectatorship in English Renaissance drama. ELH, 54, 561-83.

Neill, M. (1984). Changing places in Othello. Shakespeare Survey, 37, 115-31.

Nelson, R. (Ed.). (2006). Biology of aggression. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Nettle, D. (2010). The wheel of fire and the mating game: explaining the origins of tragedy and comedy. In B. Boyd, J. Carroll, & J. Gottschall (Eds.), Evolution, literature, and film: a reader (pp. 316-32). New York: Columbia University Press.

Nordlund, M. (2007). Shakespeare and the nature of love: literature, culture, evolution. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.

Oatley, K. (1992). Best laid schemes: the psychology of emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press / Paris: Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme.

Orlin, L. C. (2008). The domestication of Othello. Shakespeare Jahrbuch, 144, 132-47.

Othello: a concordance to the text of the First Folio. (1971). Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Paster, G. K., K. Rowe, & M. Floyd-Wilson. (Eds.) (2004). Reading the early modern passions: essays in the cultural history of emotions. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Pinker, S. (1997). How the mind works. New York: Norton.

—. (2002). The blank slate: the modern denial of human nature. New York: Penguin Books.

Pope, A. (1969). Poetry and prose of Alexander Pope. (A. Williams, Ed.). Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Pye, C. (2009). “To throw out our eyes for brave Othello”: Shakespeare and aesthetic ideology. Shakespeare Quarterly, 60, 425-47.

Reid, S. (1968). Othello’s jealousy. American Imago, 25, 274-93.

Rose, M. (1985). Othello’s occupation: Shakespeare and the romance of chivalry. ELR, 15, 293-311.

Saunders, J. P. (2010). Paternal confidence in Zora Neale Hurston’s “The Gilded Six-Bits.” In B. Boyd, J. Carroll, & J. Gottschall (Eds.), Evolution, literature, and film: a reader. (pp. 392-408). New York: Columbia University Press

Schrier, R. (Ed.) (1985). Vasopressin. New York: Raven Press.

Shakespeare, W. (1997). Othello. (E.A.J. Honigmann, Ed.). Arden 3. London: Methuen.

—. (1974). The Riverside Shakespeare. (G. B. Evans, Ed.). Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Sidney, P. (2004). Sidney’s ‘The Defence of Poesy’ and selected Renaissance literary criticism. (G. Alexander, Ed.). London: Penguin Books.

Siegel, A. (2005). The neurobiology of aggression and rage. Boca Raton: CRC Press.

Snow, E. (1980). Sexual anxiety and the male order of things in Othello. ELR, 10, 384-412.

Vaughn, V. M. (1984). Othello: a contextual history. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

de Waal, F. (2007). Chimpanzee politics: power and sex among apes. 25th Anniversary ed. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Watson, R. (1990). Tragedy. In A. R. Braunmuller & M. Hattaway (Eds.), The Cambridge companion to English Renaissance drama. (pp. 301-50). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Wells, R. H. (2006). Shakespeare’s humanism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Wycherley, W. (1973). The country wife. (J. D. Hunt, Ed.). London: Ernest Benn.

Zingg, H., C. Bourque, & D. Bichet (Eds.) (1998). Vasopression and oxytocin; molecular, cellular, and clinical advances. New York: Plenum Press.

 

 Endnotes