Reflective Tag

The sinister way in which Iago manipulated Othello’s insecurities to produce jealousy within him fascinated me from the beginning.  I wanted to find out how Iago’s strategy had worked, and how this strategy incorporated early modern English views of jealousy.  When I wrote the short assignment for this topic, I looked only at how Othello exhibited frenzied passion, which reflected early modern English views of jealousy.  Once I began to look at other sources for my final essay, I began to realize the large role that social class played in the development of Othello’s jealousy.  Jealousy in early modern England was not equivalent to envy, which is how many people view jealousy today.  Jealousy was viewed as a sort of fierce and zealous guardianship of one’s possessions, which included one’s wife.  The higher the wife’s social class, the more “valuable” she was, and thus the greater the chance that her husband would become jealous over her.  This dynamic was reflected as clearly playing a significant role in the development of Othello’s jealousy.  As a result, I came to view Othello as a man who was at first confident in this worthiness to enter into Desdemona’s culture and social class, but lost his confidence and acted upon his deepest fears due to Iago’s lies, which drove him to kill Desdemona.  Ultimately, the story of Othello’s jealousy and his terrible fate is another example of how Shakespeare subtly challenged common views of his day.  In this case, Othello tried to fit into a social class that an early modern English audience would not have thought that he deserved to enter.  Yet, Shakespeare hints that Othello was a good man who was indeed worthy of Desdemona.  The fact that Shakespeare conveyed this in such a dramatic and gut-wrenching manner is what made this play so significant for me.