The Martial and Marital Entwined: Femininity and the Military World in Shakespeare’s Othello

By Riley Sutherland, University of South Carolina

            Shakespeare’s Othello is familiar to literary scholars and high school students alike: the eponymous Venetian general, falsely led to believe his wife is an adulteress, kills her and, upon realizing his error, himself. Some scholars analyze Othello’s fall by adopting a military lens. For example, C. F. Burgess argues that “Othello’s military background is a major factor in the disaster which overwhelms him”: accustomed to defusing two-sided confrontations by relying on fixed chains of command, Othello is confounded by more complex social conflicts. As a general, he naturally turns to his next-in-command, Iago, which proves a fatal error. Other writers, like Lisa Jardine, analyze the place with gender studies. They argue that Desdemona and Emilia die as victims of patriarchal dynamics and unfulfillable sexual standards. This paper aims to synthesize approaches by evaluating the intersections of femininity and militarism in Othello. It argues that Desdemona and Emilia experienced a double subordination; Othello and Iago commanded them as both husbands and as superior officers. The women perish because they are unable to fulfill these dual—and sometimes conflicting—martial and marital obligations. Bianca, however, represents an alternative form of womanhood. She survives the play by operating at the periphery of the military world.[1] 

            When we first encounter Desdemona, she is escaping from the cloistered life that her father, Brabantio, expects for her. After learning Othello has married his daughter, Brabantio expresses disbelief: he runs to her room and realizes she is indeed gone, then laments the loss of a “maid so tender, fair and happy . . . . never bold, of spirit so still and quiet.”[2] He perceives Desdemona as a timid, cloistered young noble woman. Othello paints a different picture. She became enamored of him only after hearing of “the battles, sieges, fortunes, that I have passed.”[3] Ostensibly, Desdemona is drawn to Othello’s strength and courage; Othello himself accepts this notion and he tells Brabantio, “she loved me for the dangers I had pass’d.”[4] Shakespeare’s language, however, reveals more than admiration. Instead, Desdemona, “with a greedy ear Devour[s] up” Othello’s stories: she has a tremendous appetite for adventure, perhaps having read of women like Joan of Arc, but she cannot personally experience adventure so long as her father forces her to be “still and quiet.”[5] Not without Othello. She thus falls in love not just with Othello but also with the idea of sharing his experiences as a military wife. Her husband is shocked when he receives summons to Cyprus and she declares, “let me go with him”; with these lines, Desdemona seizes a life of greater mobility than Venice offered.[6]

            Shakespeare could reasonably expect his audiences to know more about women’s true relationships to the military than the naïve Desdemona. Thousands of women joined soldiers—in fact, often outnumbering them—in sixteenth-century European armies. Many were indigent; they washed and sewed for men in exchange for pay or rations to support themselves and their kids.

            These wives often had to plunder clothes and food from civilian populations. Some military manuals suggested officers should hire sex workers for their enlisted men, though Venetian officers threatened to slit the nose of any such woman who came near troops. The women who lived with the army operated in a liminal space between civilian womanhood and military needs, sculpting a uniquely pragmatic femininity.[7]

            As a noblewoman, Desdemona might have expected to raise children and manage servants. But Emilia introduces her to the distinct obligations of military wifehood. As the army wife of an ensign, she may have needed to bend standard gender norms to serve her husband properly, from plundering to making “her husband a cuckold to make him a monarch,” or using sex to strategically advance his prospects.[8] Desdemona reacts with horror at the apparent depravity of Emilia’s world. Emilia responds by reassuring her that all is relative: “why the wrong is but a wrong i’the world: and having the world for your labour, tis a wrong in your own world, and you might quickly make it a right.”[9] In the world of the military, women served their husbands in both marital and martial capacities; defining proper from improper womanhood was a constant process of negotiating between the two roles.

            In both marital and martial roles, however, Emilia knows she is subordinated. Like any wife, she must follow Iago’s commands. But because she is a woman of the army, she must also abide by officers’ orders or risk court-martial and expulsion. Although military life offered Emilia greater mobility than the noble Desdemona, this double subordination places tremendous pressure on her to follow orders, even if they violate her own ethics. Accordingly, when the “wayward” Iago orders her to steal Desdemona’s handkerchief, she hesitates, asking “what will you do with‘t[?]”[10] Realizing it will be employed against Desdemona, she begs Iago not to use it “for some purpose of import” that will make her “poor lady . . .run mad.”[11] Even with compunction, she must follow orders and turn over the handkerchief. In Emilia’s hands, the white napkin, speckled with red embroidery, resembles a blood-stained flag of surrender flown after a protracted internal battle.[12]

            Desdemona ignores Emilia’s experience and refuses to recognize her husband as her commander; instead, she sees him as a partner and mirrors his military leadership. Othello playfully teases his wife about her military role, greeting her as, “my fair warrior!”[13] But she soon internalizes the role, and her increasing confidence reflects in her speech patterns. Upon first landing in Cyprus, she directs requests to Othello by asking questions (when pressing a meeting with Cassio, “shall’t be shortly?”) or implying a degree of deference (“I prithee, call him back”).[14] After some time with the army, Desdemona begins relying instead upon positive orders, like her general-husband: “let Cassio be received.”[15] Othello’s men recognize her power, sensing that “her appetite shall play the god.”[16] Nevertheless, they affirm her command. For example, Cassio turns not to Othello but to Desdemona seeking a restored rank; in exchange, he declares, he will never be “any thing but your true servant.”[17] By interfering in issues of military appointment and receiving officers’ loyalty in exchange, Desdemona believes she is acting as Othello’s partner. He, however, is easily convinced she is trying to outrank him.

            The ensign Iago scorns his low rank and fears Emilia is unfaithful; he projects these insecurities onto Othello, who in turn questions Desdemona’s fidelity and his ability as a general. It is significant that the men first question their wives’ faithfulness, then military command: their vulnerability relates to the idea of double subordination.  Iago and Othello control their wives not only as husbands but also as military commanders. Thus, if Desdemona and Emilia slept with other men, they would be committing acts not only of infidelity but also insubordination.

            Iago and Othello see their wives’ alleged lack of allegiance not only as threatening but also as highly possible. Because armies so often traveled with sex workers, civilians sometimes generalized negative reputations to all women of the army. Influenced by public perception—indeed, especially sensitive to it as a foreigner constantly trying to prove his commitment to Italy—and desperate to hold on to his command, Othello is thus especially gullible when Iago suggests that Desdemona has slept with Cassio.[18]

            In the military world, Othello responds to his wife’s purported infidelity not as her husband but as her commanding officer. His punishment peaks in act IV, scene II, when Othello turns to corporal punishment: he strikes Desdemona. As a witness, Lodovico is shocked: he sees a husband strike his loving wife and instructs Othello to “make her amends.”[19] Othello, however, is so blinded by fury and insecurity that he cannot see his wife as anything more than an unruly, subordinate member of the army and thus questions why Lodovico disapproves of his response. He nonetheless calls Desdemona back, declaring “she can turn, and turn, and yet go on, and turn again . . . she’s obedient, as you say, obedient, very obedient.”[20] The bizarre proceedings resemble an officer drilling his young recruits; because Desdemona refused to accept the unique constraints of Emilia’s military wifehood, Othello reduces her to just another foot soldier under his command.

            Yet still, Desdemona refuses to accept double subordination. Instead, she disavows Othello’s dominance not just as a commander but also as a husband. When Emilia asks her about Othello, or “my Lord” (since Othello allots rations for Emilia, she too identifies him as her “Lord”), Desdemona bristles, snipping “who is thy lord? . . . I have none.”[21] In a last, desperate stand, Desdemona tries to postpone her death by once again mirroring Othello’s actions as a commander. When Othello lurks over her, planning to kill for her alleged relations with Cassio, she commands, “send for the man and ask him!”[22] Her order is a perfect parallel to Othello’s at the beginning of the play; when Brabantio accuses Othello of casting a spell on Desdemona to win her affection, the general orders, “send for the lady . . . and let her speak of me before her father.”[23] Both husband and wife issue demands, creating informal trials. They want to arbitrate matters with evidence before impartial judges, much like Othello would be accustomed to in a world governed by courts-martial. But in the end, Desdemona is not a commander: she is a wife. Othello thus ignores her commands, warning her, “thou art to die.”[24] Once again, she orders, “send for him hither; let him confess a truth.” “Down, strumpet!,” Othello cries.[25] Unable to command her as a general and a husband, he reduces her image to that of a prostitute in an attempt to justify her punishment. He then smothers her.[26]

Otelo y Desdémona - Antonio Munoz Degrain - WikiGallery

            While Desdemona dies because she refuses to be subordinated, Emilia perishes for the opposite reason: she accepts the need to follow orders but cannot when her multiple masters’ commands conflict. As a wife, Emilia must listen to Iago; as a servant, to Desdemona; and as a member of the military, to Othello. Iago’s plot, however, causes all three of her masters’ orders to interfere with each other. We first see her conflicting loyalties regarding Desdemona’s handkerchief. Iago begs Emilia to steal the precious handkerchief. After successfully giving the napkin to her husband, Emilia later has to lie to comfort her mistress: “where should I lose that handkerchief, Emilia?,” Desdemona asks. “I know not, madam,” is her meek reply.[27]

            She once again violates Desdemona’s confidence when Othello asks her to serve as an informant, reporting on his wife’s relationship with Cassio. Emilia tries to defend her mistress but nonetheless feels uncomfortable about breaking Desdemona’s trust by providing the general with intelligence about her. Emilia can justify any depredation she sees as necessary to serve her master; however, she bursts under an inability to serve multiple masters when they start ordering her on different paths.

            She finally chooses a single loyalty, to her fellow army woman Desdemona, and rails Othello for killing his pure wife before revealing Iago’s role in the plot. Iago, like Othello, kills his wife and justifies her death by declaring her a “strumpet.” In her final moments, Emilia lies in bed beside her mistress, singing a song beloved by Desdemona. Although Desdemona rebelled against subordination while Emilia abided by it, they die demonstrating a sisterhood forged by an insufferable double subordination.[28]

            While Iago and Othello use charges of promiscuity to destroy their wives, living as a sex worker somewhat paradoxically saves Bianca from their fate. We first meet Bianca when she approaches Cassio.  “What make you from home?” the soldier asks. “I was coming to your house.”[29] With these lines, Cassio establishes Bianca as a woman who operates outside of the military world. Moreover, as a sex worker, Bianca has complete command over her own space and movements. – escapes rule of military and martial barriers.[30]

            She similarly controls her relationships to the men of Cyprus. When Cassio offers her the handkerchief, she demands to know, “whence came this?” and assumes he took it from a different woman. Unlike Desdemona and Emilia, she refuses to accept the “minx’s token,” declaring, “I’ll take no work on’t.”[31] Ultimately, the napkin is a symbol of loyalty. Desdemona accepts the it as a necessary sign of her faithfulness to her husband; Emilia surrenders it for the same reason. But Bianca will not be commanded by a man and, as English professor Elizabeth Mazolla notes, her refusing the handkerchief marks “the first time the item has been given back” to its original owner rather than accepted and “sent forward” to a new recipient.[32]

            Because Venetian officers punished men who hired prostitutes, Bianaca would have no choice but to keep Cassio at a distance. She, however, also has the luxury of refusing it because she experiences neither marital nor martial subordination. We are led to believe that she hopes to marry Cassio; indeed, she is fond of him, referring to “my dear Cassio,” and the soldier himself believes she wants a long-term relationship.[33] If true (and not merely one of Iago’s lies), perhaps Bianca believes uniting with Cassio would offer her longer-term financial stability than life as a courtesan. Nonetheless, he is her customer, so she defines the terms of their relationship. Moreover, Bianca operates at the periphery of the military world. She did not earn rations nor travel with the army, so they lived entirely free from the martial laws that governed Desdemona and Emilia.

            Mobile and free from military command, Bianca felt more capable of directly confronting those who slander her name. After Cassio declares Bianca a mere “fitchew” and tries to give her the handkerchief, she cries, “let the devil and his dam haunt you!”[34] Later, Emilia tries to separate herself from the sex workers Iago associates her with by denouncing Bianca as a “strumpet.” Bianca unflinchingly responds, “I am no strumpet; but of life as honest as you that thus abuse me.”[35] As a doubly subordinated wife, Emilia brushes aside Iago’s charges of infidelity, refusing to address them. Desdemona, trying to protect her reputation, tries to mobilize support from Emilia and Iago. Only Bianca immediately responds to charges of promiscuity by confronting the aggressor herself—and by turning the charges around on Emilia by arguing for their common personhood.

            Because she is free to travel in and out of the military world, define her own relationships, and openly retaliate against her attackers, Bianca’s status makes her the only woman to survive the play. And although Iago tries to use Bianca, a sex worker, as a scapegoat, he is not entirely successful. Indeed, while Desdemona unsuccessfully begged for a trial by asking Othello to question Cassio, Bianca does receive a trial. She is taken away to “tell another’s tale.” When she leaves, we can be confident she will have at least some opportunity to make her voice heard. And she disappears for the rest of the play. Her absence is significant: Desdemona and Emilia’s bodies, as well as and the finality of their deaths, are staunch reminders of their inability to escape the confines of the military world. Bianca, however, once more fades back into the very periphery that shielded her from tragedy.[36]  

Endnotes

[1]  C. F. Burgess, “Othello’s Occupation,” Shakespeare Quarterly 26, no. 2 (1975): 208–13 (quotation on 209); Lisa Jardine, “‘Why Should He Call Her Whore?’: Defamation and Desdemona’s Case,” in Reading Shakespeare Historically, ed. Jardine (London: Routledge, 1996), 18–33. Additional military interpretations of Shakespeare that guided my reading of Othello include Kristina Straub, “The Soldier in the Theater: Military Masculinity and the Emergence of a Scottish Macbeth,” Eighteenth Century 58, no. 4 (2017): 429–47; Ken Jacobsen, “Iago’s Art of War: The ‘Machiavellian Moment’ in Othello,” Modern Philology 106, no. 3 (Feb. 2009): 497–529; Dong Ha Seo, “Military Culture of Shakespeare’s England,” PhD diss. (University of Birmingham, 2011), 216–30. For additional gendered approaches that shaped my understanding of Othello, see: Elizabeth Mazzola, “Going Rogue: Bianca at Large” Critical Survey 27, no. 1 (2015): 36–59; Edward Pechter, “Why Should We Call Her Whore? Bianca in Othello,” in Shakespeare and the Twentieth Century: The Selected Proceedings of the International Shakespeare Association World Congress, Los Angeles, 1996, ed. Jonathan Bate, Jill L. Levenson, and Dieter Mehl (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1998), 364–76; Tiffany Lowden Messerschmidt, “From Maiden to Whore and Back Again: A Survey of Prostitution in the Works of William Shakespeare,” MA thesis (University of South Florida, 2009), 41–46; Eamon Grennan, “The Women’s Voices in Othello: Speech, Song, Silence,” Shakespeare Quarterly 38, no. 3 (1987): 275–92.

[2] William Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Edward Pechter, 2nd Norton Critical ed. (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2017), 17.

[3] Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 22.

[4] Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 23.

[5] Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 23, 21.

[6] Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 27. Desdemona’s confinement relates to her existence within the private household in Venice. Jack D’Amico further examines private interior spaces in Shakespeare, ultimately deciding they functioned as places to display wealth and, consequently, imperial battlegrounds. Desdemona’s strength, he argues, is her ability to turn the bedroom into a public space, including when she champions Cassio’s case. But the same lack of distinction between public and private hurts her in the brothel scene. D’Amico, Shakespeare and Italy (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2001), 73–78; for more on the importance of physical mobility, see Mazolla, “Going Rogue.”

[7] Mary Elizabeth Ailes, “Camp Followers, Sutlers, and Soldiers’ Wives: Women in Early Modern Armies (c. 1450–c.1650),” in A Companion to Women’s Military History, ed. Barton Hacker and Margaret Vining (Boston: Brill, 2012), 61–84; Barton Hacker, “Women and Military Institutions in Early Modern Europe: A Reconnaissance,” Signs 6, no. 4 (1981): 643–71.

[8] Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 108.

[9] Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 109.

[10] Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 68–69 (quotation at 68).

[11] Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 69.

[12] Ailes, “Camp Followers, Sutlers, and Soldiers’ Wives.”

[13] Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 38.

[14] Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 59–60.

[15] Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 78.

[16] Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 54.

[17] Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 58.

[18] Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 61–66, 42.

[19] Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 90.

[20] Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 91.

[21] Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 96.

[22] Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 111.

[23] Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 22.

[24] Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 112.

[25] Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 112.

[26] Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 96, 112, 22.

[27] Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 75; for a different interpretation of Emilia’s subordination to men relative to Desdemona’s, see Lisa Jardine, “‘Why Should He Call Her Whore?,’” 24–29.

[28] Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 92, 118.

[29] Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 80.

[30] Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 87. Scholars debate whether Bianca should be interpreted as a sex worker. Because Cassio refers to Bianca as a “customer,” and the list of actors denotes her as a “courtesan,” I will assume that she is, indeed, a sex worker. For a dissenting opinion, see Edward Pechter, “Why Should We Call Her Whore?,” 365–70.

[31] Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 81.

[32] Elizabeth Mazzola elaborates upon the subject of Bianca’s physical mobility and how it represents her relative independence. “Going Rogue,” 36–59; Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 87.

[33] Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 107, 86–87.

[34] Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 87.

[35] Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 109.

[36] Shakespeare, Othello, ed. Pechter, 109.