The Liberation of Emilia

SOLOMON IYASERE

“So speaking as I think, I die, I die.”

(Othello 5.2.248)

No episode in Shakespeare’s tragedies is more shocking and more heart-rending than the murder
of Desdemona, an event ‘too dreadful to be endured’. From the Renaissance to the present, the
dastardliness of this excruciating spectacle has evoked strong emotions in viewers, readers and
critics alike. “What instruction can we make out of this Catastrophe?” Thomas Rymer (141)
asked in 1693: “Is not this to envenome and sour our spirits, to make us repine and grumble at
Providence and the government of the World? If this be our end, what boots it to be Vertu-
ous?” (142).
Because of its pivotal importance, the tragic event has received sustained critical attention,
often focusing on the role Emilia plays immediately following Desdemona’s murder. Emilia
condemns Othello (in language laced with racial insults), repudiates her husband Iago for his
villainy and, with equal rigor, defends Desdemona’s ‘fair fame’ and virtue. Several critics have
praised Emilia for her defiant nobility. A.C. Bradley makes the point, “From the moment of her
appearance after the murder to the moment of her death she is transfigured; and yet remains per-
fectly true to herself ... She is the only person who utters for us the violent emotions which we
feel together with those tragic emotions which she does not comprehend” (78). Ellen Terry ob-
serves:

[Emilia] knows no fear. How she shames the fearful, those who fear the opinions of the
world, or fear to make themselves ridiculous, or fear the consequences, and so are silent in
defense of truth. It is significant that chivalrous champions of the honour of the living Hero,
as of the dead Desdemona, should both be women! Significant, and original. Shakespeare is
one of the very few dramatists who seem to have observed that women have more courage
than men.
(67)

On the contrary, however, Kenneth Burke de-emphasises Emilia’s actions as heroic with the fol-
lowing observations:

... because of [Emilia’s] relation to Iago within the conditions of the play, because of the
things she alone knows, she is in the best position to take over the vindictive role we eagerly
require of someone at this point. Or, you could state it thus: Some disclosures are due, she is
in a position to make them, and if she makes them venomously, she will do best by our pent-
up fury, a fury still heightened by the fact that Desdemona died Christ like.
(145-46)

While I agree with Burke that Emilia is in the best position at the close of the play to reveal
Iago’s venomous plot against Desdemona because she alone knows about the handkerchief
around which the pusillanimous intrigue revolved, I do not believe that she is a mere functionary
(as Burke would have her). Terry is right in drawing our attention to Emilia’s heroic action. But
simply drawing our attention to it is not sufficient; she needs to show, as I intend to demonstrate
in this short essay, why we must view Emilia’s action not only as daring, but as noble and he-
roic.

Shakespeare in Southern Africa Vol. 21, 2009, 69-72

70 SHAKESPEARE IN SOUTHERN AFRICA

The Venetian world presented within the play is a patriarchal world in which “women must
think of themselves as ‘other’ and man as primary or ‘subject’; banish ideas of self-sovereignty;
rely on economic independence to assure freedom; and forego challenging societal pat-
terns” (Dash 249) – in short, a world of masculine power in which “men marginalise women to
privilege manly virtues”, as Othello implies when he says of Desdemona, “Yet she must die, else
she’ll betray more men” (5.2.6). The marginality of women in this society, the treatment of
women as passive objects rather than persons, to be seen rather than to be heard, is forcefully
made clear by Francesco Barbaro in his 1416 treatise On Wifely Duties: “[I]t is proper ... that not
only arms but indeed also the speech of women never be made public, for the speech of a noble
woman can be no less dangerous than the nakedness of her limbs” (quoted in Kohl et al 205).
Writing two centuries later, Benedetto Varchi also underscored the importance of adopting the
‘code of silence’:

Maides must be seene, not heard, or selde or never,

O may I such one wed, if I wed ever.
A maide that hath a lewd tongue in her head
Worse that if she were found with a man in bed.
(28)

Emilia’s pungent, cynical comment – laced with crude, sensual images – sums it up:

Tis not a year or two showed us a man:

They are all but stomachs, and we all but food;
They eat us hungrily, and when they are full
They belch us.
(3.4.103-6)

Stressing the maltreatment of women in Venetian society and the potential for women to revolt
and take revenge against men, Emilia observes:

But I do think it is their husbands’ faults

If wives do fall. Say that they slack their duties
And pour our treasures into foreign laps,
Or else break out in peevish jealousies,
Throwing our restraint upon us; or say they strike us,
Or scant our former having in despite –
Why, we have galls; and though we have some grace,
Yet have we some revenge. Let husbands know
Their wives have sense like them. They see, and smell,
And have their palates both for sweet and sour,
As husbands have. What is it that they do
When they change us for others? Is it sport?
I think it is. And doth affection breed it?
I think it doth. Is’t frailty that thus errs?
It is too. And have not we affections?
Desires for sport? And frailty? As men have?
Then let them use us well; else let them know,
The ills we do, their ills instruct us so.
(4.3.87-104)

The scene in Othello which illuminates Emilia most clearly occurs in the fifth act. After Othello
murders Desdemona, Emilia is about to reveal the truth about the handkerchief at the centre of
Iago’s plot:

Emilia Oh, Heaven! Oh, heavenly powers!

Iago Zounds! Hold your peace!
Emilia ’Twill out, ’twill out! I peace?
 THE LIBERATION OF EMILIA 71

No, I will speak as liberal as the north.

Let Heaven and men and devils, let them all,
All, all, cry shame against me, yet I’ll speak.
Iago Be wise, and get you home.
Emilia I will not.
(5.2.215-220)

Betrayed by her husband, Emilia repudiates the corrupt, male-dominated world of Venice. As
she lies dying after she has been stabbed by Iago, Emilia addresses Othello thus:

I will play the Swan,

And die in music. [Sings] “Willow, willow, willow.”
Moor, she was chaste. She loved thee, cruel Moor,
So come my soul to bliss as I speak True
So speaking as I think, I die, I die.
(5.2.244-248)

By choosing to speak and act as she thinks and feels, she attains psychological freedom, liberat-
ing herself from societal domination and from her own self-imposed restraints. From a contem-
porary point of view, Emilia’s decision to ‘speak out’ is a unique existential event. James Cal-
derwood observes, “Repeatedly in Shakespeare the test of life itself is not whether a character
can be seen but whether he or she can be heard ... if the sign of life is speech, the sign of death is
silence” (30). For the first time, Emilia is true to herself and she dies triumphantly, if tragically,
“in music”, confronting the world with her honest feelings. Clark Moustakas makes the point:
“Honesty implies a willingness to assert what one sees and allegiance to what one perceives. Be-
ing true to one’s own experience is the central requirement in the continued existence of a real
self” (65). When Iago orders Emilia to go home (5.2.194), he is addressing the ‘former’ Emilia, a
wife who was psychologically a slave to him, who would do anything to please him, because she
had learned wifely obedience; she was his property. But at this point, the ‘new’ Emilia has aban-
doned conventional wifely behaviour and has broken out of her own self-imposed restraints.
From a theological point of view, Emilia speaks out to rid herself of the burden of guilt and
liberate herself from eternal damnation. We should not forget how important the state of one’s
soul at the moment of death was to Renaissance Catholics. If Emilia remains silent, she will be
damned; her one hope for salvation lies in confessing the truth. She is entirely aware of the need
to confess and declares her reason quite plainly: “So come my soul to bliss as I speak True.”
At the beginning of the play, Iago adopts a new mode of existence independent of social con-
straints because he believes Othello has betrayed him by not awarding him the promotion he
earned with his faithful, spotless service: “I follow but myself” (1.1.58). With this proclamation,
Iago’s thoughts and actions become totally individualised and he frees himself of moral or ethi-
cal considerations, proceeding with vengeance, creating a new reality that conforms to his own
definition and not to the one prescribed by society (Gray 395). Iago’s use of freedom, however,
stands in strong contrast to that of Emilia. While freedom presents Emilia with the opportunity to
affirm Desdemona’s virtues and to expose the truth behind Iago’s falsehood, Iago’s freedom
gives him the opportunity to commit to himself and to falsehood, to victimise and exploit others,
including Emilia. In this crucial episode, Emilia – for the first time in the play – asserts her own
existence, independent of Iago: “Tis proper I obey him, but not now./Perchance, Iago, I will
ne’er go home” (5.2.195-96). Emilia’s action is one Iago cannot tolerate, for in his narcissistic
view of the world, her psychological freedom repudiates his existence and violates his psychic
being; Iago’s freedom entails domination and control of others. Humiliated by his failure to si-
lence Emilia (5.2.183, 194, 219) and to dominate her as he has in the past (3.3.319), Iago loses
control for the first and only time in the play. Fatally stabbing his wife is an act of impulsive, not
premeditated, violence. After murdering Emilia, he adopts the code of silence, again for the first
time in the play (5.2.299-300). Thus Iago’s silence becomes the sign of his demise, his eternal
damnation.
72 SHAKESPEARE IN SOUTHERN AFRICA

As for Emilia, her decisive action in these crucial scenes transfigures her from a ‘common
member’ of society to a heroine. She is not a mere functionary, as Kenneth Burke argues, but has
instead been transformed from a scheming, pragmatic, cynical and narcissistic individual into
someone who is selfless and altruistic. She becomes – too late – less masculine, less like Iago,
and more feminine, more like Desdemona; and she finds, at last, the courage to defy the tyranny
of evil.

WORKS CITED
Bradley, A.C. Shakespearean Tragedy. London: Macmillan, 1905.
Burke, Kenneth. “Othello: An Essay to Illustrate a Method” in Othello, Critical Essays ed. Susan Snyder.
Calderwood, James L. The Properties of Othello. Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1989.
Dash, Irene G. Wooing, Wedding and Power. New York: Columbia University Press, 1981.
Gray, Garry. “Iago’s Metamorphosis” in College Language Association Journal 28 (4, 1985): 389-97.
Kohl, B.G., Witt, R.E. and Welles, E.B. Eds. The Earthly Republic: Italian Humanists on Government
and Society. Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1978.
Moustakas, Clark. Creativity and Conformity. New York: D. Van Nostrand Company, 1967.
McFarland, Thomas. Tragic Meaning in Shakespeare. New York: Random House, 1966.
Rymer, Thomas. A Short View of Tragedy. Menston: The Scholar Press, 1970 [1693].
Shakespeare, William. Othello (New, Revised Edition) ed. Alvin Kernan. New York: Penguin, 1986.
Snyder, Susan. Ed. Othello: Critical Essays. New York: Garland Publishing, 1988.
Terry, Ellen. “Desdemona” in Othello, Critical Essays ed. Susan Snyder.
Varchi, Benedetto. The Blazon of Jealousie trans. R. Toste. London: 1615.
Contributors
Justus Baleka is a Cape Town-based theatre practitioner.

Eugenie R. Freed is a Research Fellow of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.

Having taught for many years in the Wits Department of English, she continues to enjoy
teaching graduate courses there, mainly in her original field of specialisation, medieval literature.
In the Early Modern field her interests include Spenser, Shakespeare, Donne and Milton. Her
abiding passion for the poetry and art of William Blake has borne fruit in a number of
publications.

Annie Gagiano is Professor Emerita and research associate in the English Department of
Stellenbosch University, where she taught for almost forty years. She is the author of Achebe,
Head, Marechera: On Power and Change in Africa (Rienner, 2000) and of Dealing with Evils:
Essays on Writing from Africa (Ibidem, 2008) as well as numerous articles, mainly on African
English fiction. She wrote her Masters on “The Language of Relationship in Shakespeare’s
Sonnets” and took pleasure in teaching literature ranging from Chaucer to Wallace Stevens,
although she enjoys concentrating on her research and selective doctoral supervision since
retiring from undergraduate teaching.

Kevin Goddard is currently co-ordinator of the doctoral programme in the department of

development studies at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth. He is a
former head of English Studies at the same university.

Timothy Hacksley is a graduate of Rhodes University where he read English, Greek and Latin.
For his Masters thesis he produced a critical edition of the poems of the sixteenth-century priest-
smuggler Henry Vaux. He is currently a freelance teacher and editor.

Victor Houliston is Professor of English Literature at the University of the Witwatersrand,

Johannesburg. His most recent book, Catholic Resistance in Elizabethan England, appeared in
2007. He is currently working on a 3-volume annotated edition of the Correspondence of Robert
Persons, whose international network makes him one of the most significant figures in Europe in
the 1590s and early 1600s.

Solomon O. Iyasere teaches in the Department of English at California State University

(Bakersfield), U.S.A. Aside from Shakespeare, his areas of specialisation are modern world
literature, African-American literature and African literature. Publications include
Understanding Racial Issues in Shakespeare’s Othello (Whitston, 2008; with Marla W. Iyasere)
and Understanding Things Fall Apart: Selected Essays and Criticism (Whitston, 1998).

Scott L. Newstok teaches in the English department at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee,
U.S.A. He is editor of Kenneth Burke on Shakespeare (Parlor, 2007), co-editor (with Ayanna
Thompson) of Weyward Macbeth: Intersections of Race and Performance (Palgrave, 2010), and
author of Quoting Death in Early Modern England: The Poetics of Epitaphs Beyond the Grave
(Palgrave, 2009), as well as articles and reviews in Shakespeare Quarterly, Shakespeare Studies,
Shakespeare Bulletin, Upstart Crow, Borrowers and Lenders and other journals.

Brian Pearce is a former editor of Shakespeare in Southern Africa. He has published articles on
Henry Irving, William Poel, Harley Granville Barker and Herbert Beerbohm Tree and on the
critical reception of Shakespeare’s late plays. He recently returned to teach Drama Studies at the
Durban University of Technology, where he had previously been Associate Professor in this
department and Research Coordinator for the Faculty of Arts. His work as a theatre director has

Shakespeare in Southern Africa Vol. 21, 2009, 103-104

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