LEC052017. DEEPTHI M . CRITICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE HANDKERCHIEF IN OTHELLO

 

Deepthi M

Dr. Joseph Koyippally

LEC5104

13 January 2021

CRITICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE HANDKERCHIEF IN OTHELLO

 One of the devices that often a Shakespearean play uses is a love token to show confinement in a relationship and the possession of one individual by another. Likewise, in Othello, the handkerchief presented by Othello to Desdemona symbolically represents their marriage bond itself. Initially, it was given to Desdemona by Othello as a token of their love. Subsequently, it is symbolically transformed into Desdemona’s bedsheets which she requests to be used to cover her as a death shroud. Othello connects the image of entrapment to the handkerchief when he says: “There is a magic in the web of it.” ((III.iv.69, emphasis added). For him, the handkerchief represents marital fidelity. He believes that his wife is faithful as long as the token remains in her possession and hence place excessive weight upon the token and fails to notice the true love of his beloved. In Act III, Scene iv, while describing the origin of the handkerchief, Othello discloses this conditional love he feels for Desdemona. He implies that something ominous will happen if the handkerchief is lost (67-68). Shakespeare further reinforces the idea of entrapment through Iago’s language. In Act II, scene, Iago speaks metaphorically of himself as the spider who will spin a web that will entrap Cassio: “With as little a web as this will, I ensnare as great a fly as Cassio”(169-170). Hence instead of mere representing love, the handkerchief becomes a definitive test of love.

Apart from fidelity, Othello associates the handkerchief with magic, myth and his own past. In describing the origin of the handkerchief, Othello tells Desdemona that an Egyptian gave it to his mother, and before his mother’s death, she gave it to him. He says that the Egyptian told his mother that:

while she kept it

T’ would make her amiable and subdue my father

Entirely to her love, but if she lost it

Or made a gift of it, my father’s eye

Should hold her loathed and his spirits should hunt

After new fancies

                            (III.iv.58-63)

Thus, Othello’s mythic perception of marriage is emphasized as he states that the handkerchief has the power to “subdue” his father. Othello has essentially laid the foundation of his own trap by creating an unrealistic belief in the powers of an inanimate object and imposing this belief on Desdemona. This is why, Stephen suggests, “Homer’s Odyssey, in a passage relating Helen of Troy’s surreptitiously giving a drug to her husband and to Telemachus, appears to be a major source for William Shakespeare’s description in Othello (1603– 4) of the handkerchief given to Desdemona, which ultimately leads to her murder”. The magic which Othello associate with the handkerchief has a foreboding quality as he uses images associated with the grotesque to describe the origins of the handkerchief: “worms were hallowed,” “dyed in mummy” and “conserved of maidens’ hearts” (III.iv.73-75).

               The paradox that exists within the handkerchief, perverse purity within the design, is also present in Othello’s estimation of Desdemona. Either she is completely pure and innocent, associated with “white” as he calls her a “sweet Desdemona,” or she is passionate and lustful, associated with “red,” as he later calls her a “strumpet.” Boose associates the strawberry with virginity as she explains that Elizabethan gardeners considered the strawberry as the purest of fruits for “the treble-leafed strawberry plant bore a red fruit from its initially white flower. Furthermore, the plant itself was part of the generic rose family, the flower most frequently associated with love and desire” (362). These associations of the strawberry with the Virgin and virginity reinforce the sublime view Othello holds of Desdemona. Boose contends that Shakespeare depends on the audience to be familiar with an age-old custom of publicly displaying the stained wedding sheets as evidence of the consummated marriage (363). The pattern of strawberries (dyed with virgins’ blood) on a white background strongly suggests the bloodstains left on the sheets on a virgin’s wedding night, so the handkerchief implicitly suggests a guarantee of virginity as well as fidelity. Othello perceives that Desdemona is chaste if she is in possession of the handkerchief. Once she loses it, she loses her chastity.

Throughout Othello, the handkerchief is “handled” by almost every character, which reflects a significant problem existing within the marriage. A number of characters are involved in the couple’s relationship, thereby interrupting effective communication between the couple to a fatal extent. The handkerchief was Othello's first gift to Desdemona, and that she always keeps it with her,   “To kiss and talk to” (3.3.296). The handkerchief is first referred to when Desdemona offers it to Othello and he rejects it in Act III, scene iii. Robert Heilman suggests that, when Othello rejects Desdemona’s offer of the handkerchief, he “rejects the magical powers of love” (213). Emilia picks up the handkerchief to give it to her husband Iago who pleaded for it many times for his motiveless malignity. (Coleridge Lectures 1808-1819 On Literature 2: 315). As the handkerchief is passed from one person to the next, the division between Othello and Desdemona grows wider. Because Othello views the handkerchief as a symbol of Desdemona’s fidelity, in a sense, each time it is “handled,” Desdemona’s purity diminishes in Othello’s estimation. In Othello, Shakespeare calls into question the sanctity of marriage and explores the various manipulations and expectations that characters impose upon each other.

The handkerchief may appear to be an insignificant object, but throughout the play, the way its symbolic importance is revealed shows that it is really very significant. As the handkerchief undergoes various symbolic transformations, its significance becomes more alarming. To a great extent, the tragedy of Othello is put into motion by this seemingly insignificant object. Edward Snow sees the contradiction of the love token as he suggests that the story Othello narrates to Desdemona about the handkerchief “entangles the erotic impulses on filial relationships, and brings to the fore just those anxieties which such a ‘recognizance and pledge of love’ is intended to dispel” (403). Othello’s obsession with the handkerchief brings about his tragic end.

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                                                                  Works Cited

Primary source

Shakespeare, William. Othello.Dover publications (2016).

Secondary sources

Boose, Lynda. “Othello’s Handkerchief: ‘The Recognition and Pledge of Love.’”

English Literary Renaissance 5 (1975): 360-374.

Coleridge, Samuel. “Lectures 1808- 1819 On Literature.”

www.jstor.org/stable/438254?seq=1  Accessed on 13 Jan2021

Kirsch, Arthur. “The Polarization of Erotic Love in Othello.” The Modern Language

Review 73 (1978): 721-740.

pdfs.semanticscholar.org/faab/86130055468747c77d6f50d2b5826c48af97.pdf.

Accessed on 11 Jan 2021

Rojcewicz, Stephen. “There’s Magic in the Web of It”: Othello’s Handkerchief and Helen of Troy’s Drug.” Delos: A Journal of Translation and World Literature,2019

www.academia.edu/41265191/_Theres_Magic_in_the_Web_of_It_Othellos_Handkerchief_and_Helen_of_Troys_Drug  Accessed on 12 Jan 2021

Smith, Ayan.“Othello's Black Handkerchief.”Shakespeare Quarterly,Vol 64,issue no.1,2013,

1-25

www.jstor.org/stable/24778431?seq=1  Accessed on 12 Jan 2021

Snow, Edward. “Sexual Anxiety and the Male Order of Things in Othello.” English

Literary Renaissance 10 (1980): 384-412

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1475-6757.1980.tb00722.x

Accessed on 13 Jan2021