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JAMES L. CALDERWOOD Appalling Property in Othello If the first act of Othello were to be given a title, Freud might well have nominated Civilization and Its Discontents, because it so clearly illustrates his argument about the sublimation of the barbaric in favour of the civilized. In this case the barbaric takes the likeness of the Moor - not Shakespeare's Moor but Iago's Moor, the 'old black ram' that 'Even now, now, very now: he delicately informs Brabantio, 'is tupping your white ewe' (l.ii.88).· Iago's Mooris a domestic version of the Turks who are also now, even now, threatening to seize and rape Venice's property in Cyprus. As such, he is a pirate who has boarded Brabantio's 'landcarrack ' (l.ii.50), made off with the magnifico's 'jewel' (l.iii.198), and 'stowed' her away for his own savage uses (l.ii.63). In the Senate Scene, however, Desdemona's testimony erases Iago's rapacious images and Brabantio's racist accusations: My hearrs subdu'd Even to the very quality of my lord. I saw Othello's visage in his mind, And to his honors and his valiant parts Did [my soul and fortunes consecrate. (I.iii.253- 7) In so saying, she rescues Othello from charges of witchcraft and land-piracy and elevates herself from the status of transient goods to that of free and loving wife. Less noticeably, she transcends the status of masculine property in another sense. For we have been told by Brabantio that before Othello arrived in Venice Desdemona was 'so opposite to marriage that she shunn'd / The wealthy curled darlings of our nation' (l.ii.68- 9). What she shunned, the audience would have known, was the institution of the fixed marriage, in which children, especially daughters, were 'bartered like cattle' by ambitious parents who demanded and received bovine obedience from their children.' It's unlikely that Brabantio intended bartering Desdemona quite like this, else she would already be lowing at the heels of some wealthy Venetian darling; but he does say that if he had another child 'thy escape would teach me tyranny, / To hang clogs on them' (l.iii.200- 1). UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY, VOLUME 57, NUMBER 3, SPRING 1988 354 JAMES L. CALDERWOOD We seem then to have a double sublimation that civilizes and yet leaves a residue of discontent. The fixed marriage may sublimate the savagery of rape, yet by virtue of it women merely escape from one kind of masculine dominion to another, metamorphosing from sexual property to economic property. What remains unrepressed in the process is the barbarity of involuntary possession. Yet the marriage of Othello and Desdemona transcends this ignobility by virtue of love freely given, a marriage of true minds, not a lustful coupling or an economic contract. Nobility triumphs, it seems, despite lago and Brabantio. In fact Brabantio, advocate of parental ownership of daughters, dies as a direct result of the marriage (V.ii.211-12). As for lago, his scurrilous views are repressed, driven down into the theatrical version of the unconscious, the soliloquy with which he concludes the first act. Yet lago's voice, though subdued, is not silenced, just as at the end of the play he is wounded but not killed. Even though we reject his interpretation of events, as the Senate does, we still register its lingering presence as a kind of shadow of the discontent that attends civilization in Venice. What the marriage is proved not to be has been asserted with such gtaffitic vividness as to resist erasure. Desdemona has not been stolen, she is not a piece of sexual baggage, she is not mere marital chattel. Why then do these images remain in our minds at the end of the act instead of being expunged by things like romantic love and nobility of soul? Like true love itself, we should disdain vulgarities like this. And yet ... THE PROPERTY OF LOVE: MIRRORS AND SHIFTERS Property itself, however, cannot disdain true love. Nor can it ignore it, for in its presence property is appalled. At any rate so Shakespeare says in The Phoenix and the Turtle, where the property that is...

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