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ABSTRACT
Seventeenth-century writers were fascinated by the emotional turmoil that jealousy provoked, and their jealous characters feel darker and more psychologically realistic than earlier representations. What needs more scrutiny is the relationship between violent jealousy, gender, and class in the early modern period. We have, for example, largely overlooked the fact that Shakespeare's most jealous husbands are married to the only children of important men. This essay argues that Desdemona's social location-that is to say, her position as the female heir of a senator-provides a powerful catalyst for the kind of intense jealousy her husband develops. As the play dramatizes the tragic consequences of sexual jealousy, it also registers anxieties about the spectacular potential of the noble body-anxieties that would become increasingly urgent in the first half of the seventeenth century.
Amid the hubbub of the first act of Othello, it is easy to miss an intriguing narrative detail: Iago and Roderigo's boisterous claims awaken Brabanzio from a prophetic dream. Upon being told that Desdemona has made a "gross revolt" and married the Moor, the Venetian senator says, "This accident is not unlike my dream; / Belief of it oppresses me already" (1.1.43-44). Shakespeare thus presents Desdemona's father as a character with some access to foresight, something that may matter when, in his final words to Othello, he adopts a prophetic tone: "Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see / She has deceived her father, and may thee" (1.3.291-92). However, Brabanzio's dream also suggests that on some level he has feared or anticipated the loss of his daughter: that he is-by early modern definition-jealous. As I will explain in more detail, jealousy was the fear of losing possession, either of household property or of people. In its most commonly represented form, jealousy was the fear of cuckoldry, or losing exclusive possession of one's wife to another man.
For the play's early audiences, Brabanzio's jealous possessiveness toward Desdemona would help to underscore Othello's own vulnerability to this dangerous emotion. Iago, surely, sees the risk. For modern readers and audience members, however, the scene is best remembered for Iago's racist images of Othello (as the "old black ram"), images that do set the scene for the tragedy that ensues. Yet critical attention...