"Being Born a Girl": Toni Morrison's Desdemona
Jo Eldridge Carney, The College of New Jersey
Abstract
Desdemona is a collaboration among writer Toni Morrison, theater director Peter Sellars, and musician Rokia Traoré. Morrison's text, a series of monologues and dialogues spoken by an actress who plays Desdemona and channels various other characters, alternates with songs written and performed by Traoré, a renowned Malian singer and composer. This hybrid narrative of words and music insists upon a radical rereading of Othello as it pushes against aesthetic, generic, and ideological boundaries. Both prequel and sequel to Shakespeare's play, this work expands and re-envisions the story of his tragic heroine by imagining Desdemona's girlhood as well as her afterlife. Desdemona tells us her story from the other side of the grave, the "undiscovered country" Hamlet famously evokes. Morrison's desire to create a more significant role for Desdemona came from her sense that Shakespeare's tragic heroine has been given insufficient attention, particularly in performances, a neglect that can be located in the critical tradition as well. Morrison's reconstruction of Desdemona as a young girl is a rich lyrical narrative in itself, but as a creative appropriation it explicitly positions itself in dialogue with Shakespeare's articulation of Desdemona and with a tradition of critical and performative interpretations of her character.
On 15 May 2011, Desdemona premiered at the Akzent Theatre in Vienna, Austria. Billed as a combined concert and theatrical experience, Desdemona is a collaboration among writer Toni Morrison, theater director Peter Sellars, and musician Rokia Traoré. Morrison's text, a series of monologues and dialogues spoken by the actress who plays Desdemona and channels various other characters, alternates with songs written and performed by Traoré, a renowned Malian singer and composer. Among Shakespeare's works, Othello is one of the plays most frequently adapted and appropriated by playwrights, poets, novelists, and composers, but Desdemona, a hybrid narrative of words and music, insists upon a radical rereading of Othello as it pushes against aesthetic, generic, and ideological boundaries.
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After its initial staging, Desdemona was performed throughout Europe before travelling to New York and Berkeley, and finally London, where it was featured in the World Shakespeare Festival, as part of the Cultural Olympiad of 2012. In numerous interviews, Morrison, Sellars, and Traoré describe the conception and creation of Desdemona. In short: Sellars once explained to Morrison that he found Shakespeare's Othello "a thin play" with stereotypical principal characters. Morrison convinced Sellars that there was more textual depth to Desdemona than productions had typically extrapolated, but she conceded that even Shakespeare had not allowed Desdemona to tell her full story. Sellars challenged Morrison to write that story and after enlisting Traoré's participation in the project, a three-part collaboration was born. Theatrical performances are ephemeral; there are some brief YouTube clips but no full-length video or audio recordings, without which we cannot provide a full analysis of the musical components of the production. However, Morrison's text was published in 2012, allowing us to readDesdemona in conjunction with Othello.
Desdemona is both prequel and sequel to Shakespeare's play, for it expands and re-envisions the story of his tragic heroine by imagining Desdemona's girlhood as well as her afterlife. Desdemona tells us her story from the other side of the grave, the "undiscovered country" that Hamlet famously evokes. Morrison's reconstruction of Desdemona as a young girl is in itself a rich lyrical narrative, but as a creative appropriation it positions itself explicitly in dialogue with Shakespeare's articulation of Desdemona and even more importantly, with a tradition of critical and performative interpretations of her character.
As Sellars writes in the foreword to Desdemona, Toni Morrison's entire fictional oeuvre "honors the missing histories of generations whose courage, struggles, achievements, loves, tragedies, fulfillments and disappointments have gone unrecorded" (Sellars 2012, 7). In this work, it is the lacunae in Desdemona's history that Morrison is filling. "Talking back to Shakespeare," a term common in intertextual discourse and one that Morrison herself adopts, is not a new phenomenon. Particularly since the late twentieth century, women writers and feminist scholars have responded to Shakespeare with numerous retellings, revisions, amplifications, and critical re-readings, as those by Kate Chedgzoy (1995), Christy Desmet (1999), Peter Erickson (1991 and 2013), Marianne Novy (1993 and 1999) and many others have demonstrated. Nor is it the first time Morrison herself has engaged with Shakespeare in her fiction. Malin LaVon Walther, for example, reads Morrison's Tar Baby as a "corrective counterpoint to Shakespeare'sTempest" (1993, 137), while Chris Roark claims that in The Bluest Eye, "Morrison uses Hamlet as a foil in order to critique . . . the alienation imposed by Hamlet's 'soliloquy sense' of the self" (2013, 1). Perhaps even more important than tracing intertextual connections to specific Shakespeare plays is Morrison's larger project: "her trademark juxtaposition of African-American texts with" canonical European and US American texts in order to "critique and reconstruct the assumptions, practices, and critical interpretations of Euro-North American texts" (Walther 1993, 137).
The scholarly discourse on adaption, appropriation, and intertextuality is rich, extensive, and often productively contested, as evidenced by the mission of this journal. Julie Sanders's distinction between adaptation and appropriation offers a useful departure point: whereas adaptation "signals a relationship with an informing source text or original" and that relationship is explicit and recognizable, appropriation "frequently affects a more decisive journey away from the informing source into a wholly new cultural product and domain" (2006, 26). According to this paradigm, Morrison's Desdemona is clearly an appropriation, for it is something "wholly new" — so much so that its creators were not even sure what to name it. As Sellars explained in an interview, "A concert? A theatrical experience? We'll split the difference" ("Desdemona Takes the Microphone" 2011).1
Another innovation of this "theatrical experience" is the superimposition of text, prominently displayed on the background of the otherwise spare, dark stage. Because Desdemona was performed in multiple countries, this served the simple, practical purpose of translation for the audience. Sellars's long career as a director of opera may have inspired this strategy, but in the world of Shakespearean productions, such a fusion of text and performance is unusual. In an essay on Prospero's Books, the avant-garde film based on The Tempest, Douglas Lanier discusses the tension between Shakespeare on the page and Shakespeare on the stage, the debate over whether the "book" or theatrical productions can claim greater authority. For Lanier, Prospero's Books bridges this "familiar competition," confronting and transforming the burden of the book into a visually rich cinematic vocabulary. Similarly, Morrison's Desdemonasuccessfully conjoins the lyrics boldly printed on the backdrop with the words spoken by the actress playing Desdemona and the songs performed by Traoré. No single artistic element claims dominance.
The new cultural product that Morrison creates, however, is not just a matter of expanding the generic boundaries of theater. Morrison's initial interest in this project was driven by the characterization of Desdemona: she argued that the Desdemona of Shakespeare's text was richer and more substantial than most stage and screen representations, but that she still deserved the amplification of character conferred by having a fuller narrative. Gérard Genette's description of character revision as one of many intertextual strategies speaks to Morrison's purpose: "The revaluation of a character consists in investing him or her — by way of pragmatic or psychological transformation — with a more significant and/or more 'attractive' role in the value system of the hypertext than was the case in the hypotext" (Genette 1997, 50).
Morrison's desire to create a more significant role for Desdemona came from her sense that Shakespeare's tragic heroine has been given insufficient attention, particularly in performances; this neglect can be located in the critical tradition as well. In her survey of the theatrical history of Othello, Virginia Mason Vaughan demonstrates that "before the arrival of feminist criticism, English-language critics had little to say about Desdemona," a minimization also found in stage productions (1997, 48). The principal reasons for this neglect were "an aesthetic definition of tragedy [that] excluded most of her scenes as trivial" and an idealization of Desdemona that the text did not consistently support (66). Edward Pechter also describes Desdemona's legacy of theatrical misrepresentation: "Whether celebrating or deploring it, the critical tradition has been remarkably consistent for two centuries in describing Desdemona as silent, submissive, and in a sense even complicit in her own murder. It is therefore worth noticing on what an unsubstantial foundation this massive interpretive edifice has been constructed" (2012, 124). In particular, Pechter reads Desdemona's verbal objections and physical struggle in the bedroom scene as a refutation of charges of passivity and acquiescence in her murder. In recent decades, numerous critics have also objected to the tradition of Desdemona's diminishment and various authors have rendered a more powerful Desdemona in their feminist revisions.
Indeed, Toni Morrison's Desdemona is not the first example of an artistic reconfiguration of Desdemona. Anne MacDonald's 1990 comedy, Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) (1990) unites two of Shakespeare's familiar heroines and rescues them from their tragic demise. Paula Vogel's 1987 comedy, Desdemona: A Play About a Handkerchief, goes even further in creating an audacious Desdemona who proudly acknowledges her sexual exploits. However, as Elizabeth Gruber points out,"Though Desdemona redresses the marginalization of female characters in Shakespeare's play, Vogel's text also offers a piercing critique of women's collusion in patriarchal structures" (2008, 2). Vogel's Desdemona professes to take control of her sexual desires, but this independence does not ultimately prevent her tragic death. Both Vogel and MacDonald are interested in a spirited and contemporary response to the heterosexual politics of tragedy; Morrison's work, on the other hand, offers a more complex and expansive narrative, situating Desdemona within her own historical context and within the homosocial community of women that Shakespeare's play invokes.
The first strategy that Morrison uses to create a more substantial Desdemona is to allow her a childhood. In Othello, we meet Desdemona as a young woman of marriageable age, but we hear nothing of her girlhood until 4.3, when she briefly and obliquely mentions her mother's maid, Barbary. But in Morrison's work, Desdemona vividly describes her experiences growing up, her relationship with her parents and with Barbary, and her attempts as a young girl to construct and defend her own identity in a rigidly patriarchal world. Peter Erickson argues that whereas in Othello, Desdemona's initial display of verbal authority is erased by her ultimate silencing, symbolically rendered by the particular manner of her death, Morrison, "closely attuned to the dynamic of female speech and silence in Shakespeare's plays . . . restore[s] Desdemona's voice" (2013, 2). For our purposes, we would add that Morrison establishes this restoration by recounting Desdemona's girlhood: hearing about Desdemona's development as a child enlarges our understanding of the adult woman she becomes and the choices she makes.
The work begins with Desdemona defiantly laying claim to her own selfhood: "My name is Desdemona," she declares in the opening line, but after explaining that her name means "misery," "ill fated," and"doomed," she rejects the connotations of the identity her parents gave her: "I am not the meaning of a name I did not choose." In refusing to accept the tragic implications that her name forecasts, Desdemona resists the circumscribed role dictated by both her parents and Venetian high society:
While Desdemona is reflecting back from the vantage of adulthood, she understood even as a young girl that "men made the rules, women followed them," a practice Desdemona's mother and father willingly accepted:
Social historians Sara Mendelson and Patricia Crawford describe the commonly shared gender prejudices of early modern parenting: "In practice, a good deal of contemporary evidence supports the view that even before the birth of a child, elite parents felt differently about the prospect of a son or daughter. One preacher observed, 'it is a greater blessing to have a sonne, then a daughter.' More bluntly, the Italian Ochino remarked, 'commonly we rejoice at the birth of Boyes, and grieve at the birth of Girles'" (1998, 80). As Mendelson and Crawford demonstrate, class concerns intersected with gender bias: "elite parents" — as Desdemona's were — were often disappointed about the birth of daughters, who represented a financial liability and demanded a particular upbringing: "Most girls remained with their families, where they were educated by their mothers. They were taught to behave differently from boys. They were to be more restrained, and to preserve their chastity. Bodily comportment for the two sexes was different. While a girl was cautioned about modesty before she was three a boy of the same age was urged to 'take up his Coats, and piss like a Man'" (89).
While Desdemona is reflecting back from the vantage of adulthood, she understood even as a young girl that "men made the rules, women followed them," a practice Desdemona's mother and father willingly accepted:
| My parents, keenly aware and approving of that system, could anticipate the future of a girl child accurately. (13) |
The duration of girlhood was also dependent upon class status. Lower-class girls were typically sent into service at a fairly young age, precipitating an earlier transition to adulthood. On the other hand, "daughters of families of higher status were more likely to remain at home under the direct supervision of their mothers. In this sense, the childhood of wealthier girls as a privileged and protected status was prolonged, while independence was forced upon the poorest girls at a very early age" (Mendelson and Crawford 1998, 92). But as Desdemona's story demonstrates, privilege and protection equaled confinement.
Morrison's Senator Brabantio, Desdemona's father, corresponds with Shakespeare's description of a powerful Venetian statesman who wants to make a respectable marriage for his daughter:
More significant — and not atypical in either early modern practice or drama — is that Desdemona's mother participates in the oppressiveness of what Desdemona calls "that system." In a now well-known essay, "Where Are the Mothers in Shakespeare?" Mary Beth Rose (1991) reminds us that an increased presence of Shakespearean mothers would not necessarily have mitigated the strictures of patriarchal rule over daughters: witness Lady Capulet's refusal to support Juliet's objections to marrying Paris. When Juliet begs her mother to intervene with her father, her mother dismisses her: "Talk not to me, for I'll not speak a word" (Romeo and Juliet, 3.5. 202).
| His sole interest in me as I grew into womanhood was making certain I was transferred, profitably and securely, into the hands of another man. (Morrison 2012, 20) |
In Desdemona, Madama Brabantio adheres to the same code of wifely obedience as Lady Capulet, modeling proper female submissiveness for her daughter:
Desdemona's mother cares more about appropriate outward behavior, the deliberate fashioning of her daughter as "a lady of virtue," than her daughter's "interior life." This recalls the thematic opposition between "being" and "seeming" in Othello, where the tragic outcomes are driven by characters' privileging of appearance over reality. Morrison's Desdemona, however, resists these constraints over her true, inner life and sensuous pleasures:
Desdemona's mother cares more about appropriate outward behavior, the deliberate fashioning of her daughter as "a lady of virtue," than her daughter's "interior life." This recalls the thematic opposition between "being" and "seeming" in Othello, where the tragic outcomes are driven by characters' privileging of appearance over reality. Morrison's Desdemona, however, resists these constraints over her true, inner life and sensuous pleasures:
But if Desdemona's mother was punitive and restrictive, the young girl found comfort in her relationship with her nursemaid, whom she called Barbary. In Othello, we hear of Barbary briefly in 4.3, often referred to as the "unpinning scene" because Emilia, Desdemona's maid and confidante, is undressing her in compliance with Othello's command that she prepare for bed. Desdemona reminisces while Emilia attends her:
From this brief reference in Shakespeare's play, Morrison constructs Desdemona's relationship with her servant from northern Africa. Barbary represented all that Desdemona's mother did not: comfort, generosity, pleasure, spontaneity:
Through this fuller characterization of Barbary, Morrison reminds us that Othello would not have been Desdemona's first encounter with a person of colour; nor were his infamous and seductive tales of adventure the first exotic stories she heard:
Barbary, a black woman, complicates the simpler binaries that obtain in Shakespeare's play: Othello/Desdemona, male/female, black/white. In Desdemona, Barbary is associated with both Desdemona and Othello. She becomes a surrogate mother figure for Desdemona: they both find comfort in the arts of storytelling and music; they both appreciate the sensual pleasures of the natural world; and they both die because of ill-fated love. But Barbary's race, her origins, and her captivating narratives also signal her kinship with Othello. And like Othello, Barbary is connected with a wild and primitive natural world; however, Barbary's "nature . . . is sacred and instructive" whereas Othello's is manifest in a savage bestiality. The most obvious correspondence between the two occurs when Desdemona first meets Othello. At the time, Desdemona is mourning Barbary's recent death: forsaken by her lover, "her spacious heart drained and sere, Barbary died" (20). Complicating Desdemona's grief is her determination to learn from Barbary's experience and "search more carefully for the truth of a lover before committing my own fidelity" (20). When she is introduced to Othello, she immediately thinks of Barbary: "I saw a glint of brass in his eyes identical to the light in Barbary's eyes" (23).
From this brief reference in Shakespeare's play, Morrison constructs Desdemona's relationship with her servant from northern Africa. Barbary represented all that Desdemona's mother did not: comfort, generosity, pleasure, spontaneity:
| My solace in those early days lay with my nursemaid, Barbary. . . . . . She was more alive than anyone I knew and more loving. She tended me as though she were my birth mother; braided my hair, dressed me, comforted me when I was ill and danced with me when I recovered. I loved her. Her heart, so wide, seemed to hold the entire world in awe and savor its every delight. (Morrison 2012, 18) |
Barbary, a black woman, complicates the simpler binaries that obtain in Shakespeare's play: Othello/Desdemona, male/female, black/white. In Desdemona, Barbary is associated with both Desdemona and Othello. She becomes a surrogate mother figure for Desdemona: they both find comfort in the arts of storytelling and music; they both appreciate the sensual pleasures of the natural world; and they both die because of ill-fated love. But Barbary's race, her origins, and her captivating narratives also signal her kinship with Othello. And like Othello, Barbary is connected with a wild and primitive natural world; however, Barbary's "nature . . . is sacred and instructive" whereas Othello's is manifest in a savage bestiality. The most obvious correspondence between the two occurs when Desdemona first meets Othello. At the time, Desdemona is mourning Barbary's recent death: forsaken by her lover, "her spacious heart drained and sere, Barbary died" (20). Complicating Desdemona's grief is her determination to learn from Barbary's experience and "search more carefully for the truth of a lover before committing my own fidelity" (20). When she is introduced to Othello, she immediately thinks of Barbary: "I saw a glint of brass in his eyes identical to the light in Barbary's eyes" (23).
In both Othello and Desdemona, storytelling is Othello's means of wooing: when Brabantio invited Othello to entertain him with the "story of [his] life," Othello explains, Desdemona would "with a greedy ear / Devour up my discourse." Observing her interest in his tales, Othello continued to narrate his "pilgrimage":
While some critics have seen Desdemona's auditory role as a sign of passive reception, others have ascribed more agency to Desdemona's listening. Heather James, for example, argues that Desdemona's response to Othello's narrative "reveals how her emotions, through sympathetic audition, have become as strange and wondrous as Othello's tale of heroic suffering . . . Attentive, serious, lovesick, greedy, [she] is ready to leap from representation to action" (2001, 376). In Morrison's articulation, however, what matters is that the stories Barbary told to Desdemona as a young girl — stories "of other lives, other countries / places where gods speak in thundering silence" — are what stimulate further interest in Othello's exotic tales.
While some critics have seen Desdemona's auditory role as a sign of passive reception, others have ascribed more agency to Desdemona's listening. Heather James, for example, argues that Desdemona's response to Othello's narrative "reveals how her emotions, through sympathetic audition, have become as strange and wondrous as Othello's tale of heroic suffering . . . Attentive, serious, lovesick, greedy, [she] is ready to leap from representation to action" (2001, 376). In Morrison's articulation, however, what matters is that the stories Barbary told to Desdemona as a young girl — stories "of other lives, other countries / places where gods speak in thundering silence" — are what stimulate further interest in Othello's exotic tales.
Rather than adding "missing scenes" to Shakespeare's Othello, Morrison gives her Desdemona the opportunity to tell her stories from the "other side of the grave." This literary tactic harkens back to Homer and Dante, but in Morrison's work, the setting represents more than a temporary trip to the underworld. As Morrison herself explains, this was an artistically liberating strategy, for the timelessness of the afterlife, where "there is nothing to lose," allows for honest revelations, productive encounters, and genuine forgiveness. In the same interview, Traoré adds that composing musical dialogue to be sung"from the grave means you're beyond a place of fear . . . you have the space to speak about things that are difficult to speak about in life" ("Desdemona Takes the Microphone," Part 1 [2011]). Desdemona celebrates the narrative freedom of the afterworld: "I exist . . . between life on earth and life beyond it . . . I exist in places where I can speak, at last, words that in earth were sealed or twisted into the language of obedience" (Morrison 2012, 14). The setting, which Morrison argued was essential to the success of her enterprise, offers an opportunity for human interaction and reconciliation not accommodated by the conventional genre of tragedy.
Morrison's project extends beyond giving Desdemona herself a more complex role to amplifying her relationships with the other women in Othello. While other contemporary appropriations may reconfigure elements of plot, Desdemona maintains the contours of Shakespeare's narrative; instead, she refocuses the dispositions of the central and marginal characters in Othello — namely, the women. Morrison ascribes interiority to the female characters, more fully imagines and complicates Desdemona's relationships with them, reconfigures the nature of her relationship with Othello, and dramatically minimizes the role of Iago, all of which create a space that undermines male dominance and asserts female autonomy. That the actress who plays Desdemona also channels the other characters — except Barbary — is another interesting innovation of this work: by giving them voice, Desdemona fully internalizes their experiences, signifying her developing empathy and understanding.
Morrison's emphasis on the female relationships in Desdemona is first evident in the brief scene in which the mothers of the tragic lovers come together. Neither of these characters actually appears in Othello, and they are only mentioned briefly, but in Desdemona they are realized and given voice. Their meeting typifies the overarching pattern of Desdemona, in which encounters between two characters begin by acknowledging antagonisms and differences and end in forgiveness — or end with at least the potential for forgiveness. M. Brabantio may have been a strict and unforgiving mother, but she is devastated by Desdemona's murder, just as Soun, Othello's mother, grieves her son's suicide. When Soun asks, "Are we enemies then?" M. Brabantio replies, "Of course. Our vengeance is more molten than our sorrow."However, they eventually come together with Soun's suggestion that they adopt her cultural tradition and"build an altar to the spirits who are waiting to console us" (Morrison 2012, 26-27). This gradual movement towards mutual respect is never sentimentalized; Morrison's characters only achieve a generosity of spirit because they are first allowed honest — if uncomfortable — expression of their anger. This fraught but ultimate understanding also marks Desdemona's encounters with Emilia, Barbary, and Othello.
Desdemona's meeting with Emilia recalls the "unpinning scene" of Othello, in which the two women converse while following Othello's orders that Desdemona prepare for bed. As Vaughan (1997), Pechter (2012), and others have demonstrated, this scene has frequently been eliminated in performance because the frank dialogue about sexuality between Desdemona and Emilia does not conform to an image of idealized womanhood. Denise Whalen also explores the performance history of this scene, demonstrating that the differences between the edited 1622 quarto and the 1623 Folio text "reveal an inclination to suppress and restrain female agency." Whalen concludes that "the history of this scene in performance shows an unnerving disposition to still the female voice, which makes it all the more remarkable that Shakespeare wrote the scene at all" (2007, 508).
In recent decades, however, stage and film performances have typically restored this scene, in which the two women discuss marriage, infidelity, and gender inequities with such candor that some critics uphold it as an example of Shakespeare's proto-feminism. Emilia's angry outburst that men can be unfaithful with impunity while women are punished for the same deed is contrasted with Desdemona's more naïve doubt that women would "abuse their husbands / In such gross kind" (Othello, 4.3.62-63). Against Emilia's saucy resentment and sexual banter, Desdemona's innocent questioning reinforces the ubiquitous virgin/whore dichotomy. However, as Lynda Boose points out, their seemingly blunt conversation is also marked by numerous retractions and digressions that indicate a significant "interplay of denial, repression, and displacement" and challenge notions of simplistic female characterization (2004, 439). Furthermore, while this scene has often been touted as an occasion of female community rarely found in Shakespeare's tragedies, Boose reminds us that the women in the play more often displace the problems in their heterosexual relationships onto each other than on men. In Othello, female solidarity overwhelmingly buckles under the dominance of the heterosexual bond.
Morrison confronts this scene from Othello and its ramifications for female community in her encounter between Desdemona and Emilia. Their conversation begins in harsh recrimination: as in Othello, Morrison's Emilia is brazen and pragmatic and Desdemona quietly self-righteous. Desdemona reminds Emilia,
Emilia's rebuke reveals the fissures in their alleged friendship:
But as Emilia explains that her hardened worldview resulted from the many disappointments in her life, she and Desdemona approach common understanding. Emilia tells Desdemona, "Like you I believed marriage was my salvation. It was not." Not only was her marriage filled with lust rather than love, but "that passion generated nothing." Her childlessness was even more painful because she was herself an orphan. This is a revelation to Desdemona, who replies sympathetically, "I wish I had known you when we were children . . . You had no mother. I had no mother's love." When Emilia objects that "It's not the same," Desdemona apologizes: "You are right to correct me. Instead of judging, I should have been understanding" (44). Emilia is given the last word; after thanking Desdemona for her apology, she concludes with a lyrical description of a lizard she once saw that "shed her dull outer skin . . . exposing that which had been underneath — her jeweled self," but she keeps the old skin in case she needs to camouflage "her true dazzle." Emilia cites this as a metaphor for her own survival skills, and her conclusion, "that little lizard changed my life" announces her insistence on being seen as resourceful and resilient (44).
| . . . You and I were friends, but didn't the man you knelt to protect run a gleaming sword through your survival strategies? (Morrison 2012, 43) |
But as Emilia explains that her hardened worldview resulted from the many disappointments in her life, she and Desdemona approach common understanding. Emilia tells Desdemona, "Like you I believed marriage was my salvation. It was not." Not only was her marriage filled with lust rather than love, but "that passion generated nothing." Her childlessness was even more painful because she was herself an orphan. This is a revelation to Desdemona, who replies sympathetically, "I wish I had known you when we were children . . . You had no mother. I had no mother's love." When Emilia objects that "It's not the same," Desdemona apologizes: "You are right to correct me. Instead of judging, I should have been understanding" (44). Emilia is given the last word; after thanking Desdemona for her apology, she concludes with a lyrical description of a lizard she once saw that "shed her dull outer skin . . . exposing that which had been underneath — her jeweled self," but she keeps the old skin in case she needs to camouflage "her true dazzle." Emilia cites this as a metaphor for her own survival skills, and her conclusion, "that little lizard changed my life" announces her insistence on being seen as resourceful and resilient (44).
If Shakespeare's conversation between these two women is problematic for its circumlocutions, Morrison's rendering is equally disconcerting for its penetrating honesty. Morrison does not rush her characters to facile friendship; they ultimately achieve a measure of mutual understanding, but only after airing their grievances and sorrows. While these truthful encounters give voice to the women individually, they also strengthen female bonds, in counterpoint to the representation of same-sex relationships inOthello, in which male allegiances overwhelm ties between women.
The trajectory from recrimination to empathetic understanding is particularly evident in Desdemona's meeting with Barbary, which is the centerpiece of Morrison's work. Desdemona is thrilled when she first sees Barbary, recalling the intimacy of their past together. But just as Desdemona misread her relationship with Emilia, she assumes that Barbary shared her view of their friendship. Instead, Barbary's response is pointed and bitter:
She explains that her real name was Sa'ran, but Desdemona, still insisting upon her romanticized view of their relationship replies, "Well, Sa'ran, whatever your name, you were my best friend." Sa'ran disagrees:"I was your slave . . . I am black-skinned. You are white-skinned . . . So you don't know me. Have never known me" (45-46).
She explains that her real name was Sa'ran, but Desdemona, still insisting upon her romanticized view of their relationship replies, "Well, Sa'ran, whatever your name, you were my best friend." Sa'ran disagrees:"I was your slave . . . I am black-skinned. You are white-skinned . . . So you don't know me. Have never known me" (45-46).
If social status was an impediment in Desdemona's relationship with Emilia, race is an added complication in her relationship with Sa'ran. Just as Shakespeare's Othello is repeatedly constructed in racial terms — including a comparison to a Barbary horse — Sa'ran's westernized name, Barbary, defines her in racial terms as "the foreigner, the savage." But Desdemona, in the problematic posture of alleged "colour blindness," insists that racial differences were irrelevant to her:
Sa'ran refuses Desdemona's justification and proffered kinship and elaborates on her role as servant: "I have no rank in your world. I do what I am told." But Desdemona counters that she too suffered restraints: "I had no more control over my life than you had. My prison was unlike yours but it was prison still." Desdemona's next question marks the turning point in their conversation: "Was I ever cruel to you? Ever?" to which Sa'ran replies, "No. You never hurt or abused me" (48).
| . . . Think. I wed a Moor. I fled my home to be with him. I defied my father, all my family to wed him. I joined him on the battlefield. (Morrison 2012, 46) |
Sa'ran acknowledges that her deepest suffering was caused by the lover who betrayed her, an experience Desdemona understands: while social status and race separate them, they share common ground as women who died because of the men they loved. Desdemona seems to invoke her own death when she asks Sa'ran:
Sa'ran then sings the iconic "willow song" from Othello, but follows with a more triumphant revision, concluding, "What bliss to know I will never die again." Desdemona rejoins, replacing Sa'ran's individual pronoun with a plural: "We will never die again." Morrison's purpose is not to rewrite the women's past experiences and differences, but to transcend them in the afterlife: now, they both refuse to represent victimized women. But their common understanding does not come easily.
| . . . Remember the song You sang every day until you wasted away and embraced death without fight or protest? (48) |
Desdemona's conversation with Othello is also marked by a tentative progression towards revelation and acceptance. They begin by acknowledging what numerous readers and critics of Othello have cited as one source of their tragic outcome: Desdemona and Othello fell in love with idealized versions of each other. Morrison elaborates on this reading with Othello's complaint to Desdemona:
While Shakespeare's Othello celebrates Desdemona's appreciation of his storytelling, Morrison's Othello criticizes Desdemona for her blind attraction to his exotic narrative that was "a useful myth, a fairy's tale cut to suit a princess' hunger for real life."
| . . . You never loved me. You fancied the idea of me, the exotic foreigner who kills for the State, who will die for the State. (Morrison 2012, 50) |
As with the other characters, Morrison allows Othello a fuller backstory, making him a more complex character who becomes both more and less sympathetic. Just as Morrison's more substantial characterization of Desdemona is informed by an account of her girlhood, Morrison's Othello offers a detailed description of his boyhood. His mother died when he was young, and he was raised by a woman whose affinity for music and the natural world recalls Barbary:
But this idyllic upbringing ends when he is captured by Syrians and becomes a child soldier, an immersion in a military world that challenges Shakespeare's articulation of Othello as noble warrior and great general. Morrison's Othello offers a pragmatic explanation of his early training "where food was regular and clothing respectable" and where he turned his "childish anger" into military accomplishments: "I was happy, breathless, and hungry for more violent encounters" (31). Othello tells Desdemona stories of his exotic travels during wartime, including an account of Amazon women that Desdemona finds inspiring, and these tales are even more lyrical and elaborate than the counterparts in Shakespeare's play. But he also adds "tales of horror and strange," of a soldier's world in which drugs were routine and "rape was perfunctory" and then confesses the most disturbing experience of all: once, "aroused by bloodletting" in combat, he and Iago came upon two elderly women hiding in a stable, and they raped them repeatedly. This horrific act created a bond between the two men, "an exchange of secrecy" (38).
But this idyllic upbringing ends when he is captured by Syrians and becomes a child soldier, an immersion in a military world that challenges Shakespeare's articulation of Othello as noble warrior and great general. Morrison's Othello offers a pragmatic explanation of his early training "where food was regular and clothing respectable" and where he turned his "childish anger" into military accomplishments: "I was happy, breathless, and hungry for more violent encounters" (31). Othello tells Desdemona stories of his exotic travels during wartime, including an account of Amazon women that Desdemona finds inspiring, and these tales are even more lyrical and elaborate than the counterparts in Shakespeare's play. But he also adds "tales of horror and strange," of a soldier's world in which drugs were routine and "rape was perfunctory" and then confesses the most disturbing experience of all: once, "aroused by bloodletting" in combat, he and Iago came upon two elderly women hiding in a stable, and they raped them repeatedly. This horrific act created a bond between the two men, "an exchange of secrecy" (38).
Morrison highlights the contrast between homosocial bonding for men and women; particularly in a war zone, male alliances result, at least in part, from shared violence and cruelty. In taking on the project ofDesdemona, Morrison explained that one of her goals was to eliminate Iago's overwhelming presence so that other characters could reclaim the narrative, but she does not erase him entirely, as his destructive impact is still evident. While Shakespeare's Othello seems entirely deceived by Iago, Morrison's Desdemona, however, insists that Othello must have known that Iago was lying about her alleged infidelity, yet still chose to believe him because of the power of "brotherhood." As Desdemona describes the "bright, tight camaraderie" between men, she positions it explicitly against their relationships with women:
In Coming of Age in Shakespeare, Marjorie Garber explores the tension between homosocial friendships and heterosexual relationships prevalent in Shakespeare's plays, a theme that has been taken up by subsequent scholars (Garber 1981). From Garber's perspective, in plays such as A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Winter's Tale, or The Two Noble Kinsmen, same-sex friendship — either male or female — is portrayed as pre-sexual and innocent, almost prelapsarian, while relationships between men and women are inherently corrupted by the specter of sexuality. For Morrison, however, the distinction is not simply between innocence and experience regardless of gender, for Desdemona treats female community differently than "brotherhood." The female characters in Desdemona have confrontations that eventually develop into conversation and community, but there are no such encounters among the male characters. Homosocial bonding is destructive in that it results in violence against women and turns on itself, as evidenced within the confines of Shakespeare's play and in Othello's confession of rape in Desdemona. What Morrison acknowledges but does not condone is that this destructive behavior often derives from a culture of war. Thus, the references to conflict in Syria or child soldiers are not anachronistic, but a reminder of the timelessness of the issues Desdemona explores.
In Coming of Age in Shakespeare, Marjorie Garber explores the tension between homosocial friendships and heterosexual relationships prevalent in Shakespeare's plays, a theme that has been taken up by subsequent scholars (Garber 1981). From Garber's perspective, in plays such as A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Winter's Tale, or The Two Noble Kinsmen, same-sex friendship — either male or female — is portrayed as pre-sexual and innocent, almost prelapsarian, while relationships between men and women are inherently corrupted by the specter of sexuality. For Morrison, however, the distinction is not simply between innocence and experience regardless of gender, for Desdemona treats female community differently than "brotherhood." The female characters in Desdemona have confrontations that eventually develop into conversation and community, but there are no such encounters among the male characters. Homosocial bonding is destructive in that it results in violence against women and turns on itself, as evidenced within the confines of Shakespeare's play and in Othello's confession of rape in Desdemona. What Morrison acknowledges but does not condone is that this destructive behavior often derives from a culture of war. Thus, the references to conflict in Syria or child soldiers are not anachronistic, but a reminder of the timelessness of the issues Desdemona explores.
Morrison's reunion of Desdemona and Othello is not romantic and joyous; it is measured, mature, and mutually understanding. Desdemona tells Othello she cannot forgive the violence he committed against her — and other women — but that she can still love the flawed man: "Honest love does not cringe" (Morrison 2012, 39). For his part, Othello regrets his behavior and realizes that "we should have had such honest talk, not fantasy" when they married. They apologize to each other, though Othello says that"apology is a pale word for what I am called upon to recognize" (54).
At the end of her work, Morrison directs Desdemona and Othello to a vision that is larger than their individual relationship. What they can now possess is "the possibility of wisdom" and the potential of helping to create a world in which "human peace" can be imagined:
Desdemona culminates by celebrating the possibility of a community that transcends gender, cultural, and racial differences, of a world that offers hope and redemption. In the hands of a less accomplished writer, these concluding passages could become sentimental, even saccharine. Given Morrison's gift for lyricism, her conclusion is instead a profound alternative to the tragic destruction of Othello. It is almost axiomatic in Shakespearean studies that the male-centered tragedies privilege the individual, while the female-centered comedies celebrate community. Morrison's Desdemona does not transform Othello into a life-affirming dramatic comedy, but it does redirect the spotlight from the individual to the "greater good."
Desdemona culminates by celebrating the possibility of a community that transcends gender, cultural, and racial differences, of a world that offers hope and redemption. In the hands of a less accomplished writer, these concluding passages could become sentimental, even saccharine. Given Morrison's gift for lyricism, her conclusion is instead a profound alternative to the tragic destruction of Othello. It is almost axiomatic in Shakespearean studies that the male-centered tragedies privilege the individual, while the female-centered comedies celebrate community. Morrison's Desdemona does not transform Othello into a life-affirming dramatic comedy, but it does redirect the spotlight from the individual to the "greater good."
According to Gerard Génette's intertextual taxonomy, Morrison's revisionary project is to imbue Desdemona with greater significance in the "value system" (Génette 1997) than she had in Othello. Through the incorporation of Desdemona's girlhood experiences, which reveal her nascent sense of autonomy, and the confrontations and conversations within the parameters of female community, Morrison empowers Desdemona to overcome her destructive relationship with Othello. Even at the outset, however, Morrison hints at Desdemona's strength, for she defiantly asks,
If Desdemona was ever imagined this way, Morrison asks us to think again.
| Did you imagine me as a wisp of a girl? A coddled doll who fell in love with a handsome warrior who rode off with her under his arm? (Morrison 2012, 16) |
"'Late' has no meaning here": Imagining a Second Chance in Toni Morrison's Desdemona
Abstract
Toni Morrison's Desdemona dramatically displaces Othello as the title character in Shakespeare's play. Morrison's renaming signals her re-vision of Othello by giving Desdemona an afterlife that restores her voice and activates her pursuit of further development beyond Shakespearean limits and without Othello. What enables this change is Desdemona's exploration of newly established and newly emphasized bonds with female characters, notably Emilia and Barbary.
In our Shakespeare-centric culture, we participate in the continuity of a great tradition through which we receive and renew this legacy. Such renewal is valuable as an ongoing historical marker and artistic resource. But a potential danger of this reiteration is the complacency that results when a cultural heritage becomes static because new developments are always interpreted and co-opted, in circular fashion, as an adaptation and extension of Shakespeare's plays, which are viewed as the origin and foundation for all subsequent work. For a culture to keep growing, it also needs change and new directions.
One way to clarify and circumvent this problem is to pursue a dual critical approach that makes a sharp distinction between adaptation and re-vision. The present article is part of a cluster of new essays I have written since 2007 on a range of adaptive and revisionary responses to Othello by contemporary writers and visual artists.1 In Adrienne Rich's classic definition of re-vision, "We need to know the writing of the past, and know it differently than we have ever known it; not to pass on a tradition but to break its hold over us" (Rich 1971, 35). From this perspective, it is possible to envision a departure that moves outside the Shakespearean framework. What is striking about Toni Morrison's engagement with Shakespeare is the extent to which her reinterpretation of Othello is grounded in close reading of Shakespeare's play.2 This baseline allows Morrison to perform the nearly impossible task of acknowledging the power of the old story in the process of creating a re-vision that breaks new ground.
Prior to Desdemona's appearance on stage in Shakespeare's drama, Othello's narration of "the story of my life" (Othello1.3.128) casts her in the role of listener, as the receiver of his well-told story, albeit an eager, appreciative one "with a greedy ear" (148).3 As soon as she arrives at the meeting of the Senate, however, she demonstrates a linguistic power of persuasion equal to Othello's. As though inspired by hearing Othello, Desdemona leaves behind her domestic life of"house affairs" (146) and quickly finds her own voice in the public arena. First, she addresses her father with confidence and exactitude about her marriage and allegiance to Othello (1.3.179-88). Her assertive stance is crystallized in the verb"challenge" (187), with which she concludes her speech. This forceful tone is amplified, when in her second, even more emphatic speech, she "trumpet[s] to the world" the "downright violence and storm of fortunes" (248-49) driving her love for Othello.
Acting on her own initiative, Desdemona makes a public appeal to Othello's superior, the Duke of Venice. No longer the "greedy ear" herself, she now becomes the speaker who offers her "unfolding" to the Duke's "prosperous ear" (246). Her request to accompany Othello on his assigned mission catches her husband off-guard and implicitly counters his conventional assumption that she would stay behind. Only after rehearsing, and reserving for himself, "the flinty and steel couch of war / My thrice-driven bed of down" (228-29) does Othello observe protocol by attending to the necessary domestic arrangements: "I crave fit disposition for my wife" (234). Faced with Desdemona's unexpected rejection of "a heavy interim" (257) at home, Othello immediately backtracks and falls in line behind his wife's insistence that she will share his martial, as well as marital, "bed."
The wonderfully loud broadcast implied by Desdemona's image of the trumpet is not entirely music to Othello's ears, however. As though inspired by Botticelli's painting Venus and Mars (c. 1483), Othello's vivid anticipation of a "wanton dullness" (268) that makes a mockery of military gear almost seems to be asking for it: "Let housewives make a skillet of my helm" (271). When Othello again surveys the prized accoutrements of war, it is to say "farewell" (3.3.353): his"occupation's gone" (362), and "the shrill trump" (356) matches the shrillness of his agony.
Othello's belated support of Desdemona's desire to go to Cyprus exposes him because he feels the need to launch on a linguistically torturous digression on the reliability of his military masculinity and his immunity to male vulnerability to women. Although the intention is to reassure the senators, the effect of spelling out, and dwelling on, the threat posed by the disabling distraction of female sexuality is to confirm the seriousness of this potential danger. The insecurity of his self-defense reactivates the hint of apprehensiveness already expressed in his negatively tinged definition of marriage as"circumscription and confine" (1.2.27). If the long final scene in Venice begins with Othello's display of verbal command, it ends with Desdemona's exercise of verbal authority.
The overall outcome of Othello is the silencing of Desdemona. In the final scene, Shakespeare emphasizes the importance of Desdemona's vocal power by prolonging the dramatization of its loss. Othello's chosen method of smothering targets the symbolic site of vocalization. Against Desdemona's bargaining for ever-shorter amounts of time — "Kill me tomorrow" (5.2.87), "But half an hour" (89), "But while I say one prayer" (91) — Othello is adamant: "It is too late" (92). Despite Othello's insistence that "there is no pause" (90), Shakespeare makes him wait until he is sure that Desdemona is dead — "Not quite dead?" (94). Othello continues to wait — "I think she stirs again. No . . . If she [Emilia] come in, she'll sure speak to my wife" (104-105) — so that he can verify her inability to speak before opening the door to allow Emilia to enter. Even then, Shakespeare upstages Othello — "That? What?" (128) — by reviving Desdemona to speak long enough to establish communication with Emilia: "Out and alas, that was my lady's voice! / . . . O lady, speak again! / Sweet Desdemona, O sweet mistress, speak" (129-31). As though directly from Desdemona, the speaking role passes to Emilia — "I am bound to speak" (191) — until, in parallel with Desdemona, she too is silenced by her husband and dies bearing witness: "So come my soul to bliss as I speak true" (257).
Toni Morrison is closely attuned to the dynamic of female speech and silence in Shakespeare's play. Her drama foils the definitive finality of Othello's tragic ending by creating in Desdemona an afterlife that builds on, and extends, Desdemona's revival by making it permanent rather than temporary. Othello's Shakespearean claim that "It is too late" is overturned: as Desdemona informs him, "'Late' has no meaning here" (10.55; Morrison 2012).4 This point of intervention allows Morrison to restore Desdemona's voice and to reopen the dramatic action. With the time constraint removed, she can not only resume speaking but also begin rethinking. Retrospective reflection facilitates a new understanding not possible to achieve under extreme pressure; hence, this special space becomes the basis of Morrison's potential alternative of a second chance.
| Figure 1. Peter Sellars, Rokia Traore, Toni Morrison |
| Figure 2. Peter Sellars, Rokia Traore, Toni Morrison |
In its overall structure, Desdemona consists of two main lines of action. The first is Desdemona's ongoing dialogue with Othello in the postmortem exploration of their relationship, conducted in sections 4, 6, 7, and 10. Running parallel to but apart from the first strand, the second line is the development of female relationships in sections 5, 8, and 9. These two distinct threads are held in a dramatic tension that generates the production's galvanic force and revisionary edge.
The differences between Othello and Desdemona begin with Morrison's reorganization of the Shakespearean characters. A crucial step is the demotion of Iago when Morrison eliminates his onstage presence and limits him to marginal status as a name-only reference. Through this strategic interpretive move, Morrison places the emphasis on Othello and Desdemona as the makers of their own destinies and thus makes them logically the ones in the afterlife who are responsible for coming to terms with their own actions, with no recourse to blaming Iago. In downgrading Iago's importance, Morrison develops further Harry Berger's view that, in conventional readings of Othello, Iago's control and therefore responsibility are greatly exaggerated. Rather, Othello's and Desdemona's problematic contributions in effect do Iago's work for him: "If it all happens with startling rapidity, that's because it has already happened. Poor Iago has to huff and puff to keep up with his victims. It is almost too late to do further harm. The rapidity with which they destroy their relation makes him all but belated and dispensable" (Berger 2013, 137).
| Figure 3. Rokia Traore Seated with Guitar |
In creating female characters, Morrison reverses the process. In Shakespeare's play, Desdemona's mother (1.3.185, 4.3.25), Othello's mother (3.4.54), and Barbary (4.3.25) are largely notional figures who never actually appear but exist only as tangential references. Morrison changes the cast by making these women full-fledged characters, thereby expanding and empowering the female community. As already announced in her change of title, Morrison shifts the balance by re-centering the focus on Desdemona. By giving her access to an alternate world of women, Morrison's play gives Desdemona the option, not available in Shakespeare, of in-depth woman-to-woman conversations.
| Figure 4. Rokia Traore with Chorus, Surrounding Desdemona |
In his final speech after killing Desdemona, Othello issues to himself, as well as to others, this instruction: "Nothing extenuate" (5.2.351).5 There is, however, a conspicuous gap between this stipulation and the extenuations Othello actually makes as he strives to reshape the narrative structure of his identity in a way that remains ingratiating. Instead of the successive audiences of Brabantio (1.3.127-32), Desdemona (144-54), and the full senate (76-94) to whom he had told his story in Venice, Othello now has a one-man audience in the person of the state's representative Lodovico, to whose framework Othello's new self-presentation directly responds and adapts. The terms — "Till that the nature of your fault be known / To the Venetian state" (345-46) — set the stage by implying that the nature of Othello's "fault" is not yet determined. This unresolved issue thus warrants further consideration and negotiation, to which Othello might contribute first-hand testimony and thus conceivably influence the verdict.
Perhaps Othello and the state have a mutual interest in protecting their common brand. The concerted Venetian effort to zero in on Iago as the culprit (311-12; 341-44; 378-79) could give Othello further encouragement to hope for a generous or at least mitigating assessment that would preserve his heroic image. His appeal to the Venetian state as the ultimate decision maker is direct: "I have done the state some service, and they know't" (348). As an extenuating gesture, this opening gambit makes its point with such embarrassing boldness that Othello quickly pivots to humble disclaimer: "No more of that" (349). Yet "no more" is as inaccurate as "a word or two" (347), since the end of Othello's long speech will circle back to his exemplary state service by employing his role as the protector when the "state" is"traduced" (363). This memorable final image should have the power to validate the Senate's first impression of his military value and virtue.
Othello's "bloody period" (366) is not the end of the story, however. The final period is the kiss he bestows on the mute Desdemona as he proclaims his right "To die upon a kiss" (369), as though this demonstration might reenact, and thus reclaim and restore, his preferred former image as a lover. In fact, this moment is a grotesque realization of Othello'sLiebestod-motivated kiss upon arrival in Cyprus: "May the winds blow till they have wakened death" (2.1.183); "If it were now to die / 'Twere now to be most happy" (186-87). At the end, Desdemona is not alive to utter her previous retort after their mutual kiss: "The heavens forbid / But that our loves and comforts should increase / Even as our days do grow" (2.1.190-92). The final scene presents Othello's kisses as literally a one-way communication. The last kiss recapitulates in full-circle display the opening kisses for Desdemona asleep: "One more, and that's the last" (5.2.19); these initial kisses foreshadow the last: "So sweet was ne'er so fatal"(5.2.20). Both moments demonstrate acts of self-involvement in which Othello writes his own script. Yet Othello's climactic gesture may nonetheless facilitate the best-face account toward which Lodovico instinctively gravitates because, with a sympathetic tweak, "dying upon a kiss" provides a tolerable closure for Othello's story; tragedy has its own forms of sentimentality.
Lodovico's summary in the final lines of the play — "Myself will straight aboard, and to the state, / This heavy act with heavy heart relate" (5.2.380-81) — sounds potentially aligned with Othello's request that "When you shall these unlucky deeds relate, / Speak of me as I am" (350-51). In the play's last word, Lodovico echoes Othello's "relate," a term that calls attention to the act of telling as a narrative construction that poses choices among various possible styles and contents. If the "heavy heart" with which Lodovico transmits the updated story to the Senate invokes the spirit of Cassio's praise of Othello as "great of heart" (371), then the extenuating, painfully uncritical spin that Othello puts on the relation of his "unlucky deeds" may be modulated for Venetian consumption into an acceptably conventional tragic form, as deserving our pity and support.
One has to agree with Othello's comment toward the very end of Toni Morrison's drama: "We should have had such honest talk, not fantasy, the evening we wed" (10.54). Belatedly, the couple attempts to articulate now what needed to be said then. Yet obstacles remain in play, and too often the new conversation veers back to a repetition of the old conversation. The question becomes to what extent "should have" is successfully translated into "honest talk."
The most astonishing new backstory information that Morrison provides for her Othello concerns the sexual activity at the heart of his military exploits. In the transition from section 6 to 7 of Desdemona, the pieces of Othello's story are recorded with the prefatory verb "told" four times until, reaching the fifth item, the verb switches to "confessed" when the subject of "rape" (6.36) is introduced and, in the next section, becomes a graphic account of the prolonged rape of the two elderly women that he and Iago pursue together. The two men's "mutual pleasure" (7.38) in shared sexuality creates an erotic charge that crystallizes Othello's primary allegiance to Iago. In her acerbic retrospect, Desdemona notes her recognition of the powerful force of the "bright, tight camaraderie" in "brotherhood" (7.37): "Romance is always overshadowed by brawn. The language of love is trivial compared to the hidden language of men that lies underneath the secret language they speak in public" (7.37).
By sharing this confession with Desdemona, Othello proposes to make his "exchange of secrecy" (7.38) with Iago the basis of Othello's relationship with Desdemona: "Your gaze, spilling pity and understanding, emboldens me, giving me hope that this, my secret, will be our bond" (6.36). From Othello's point of view, the secret should function as a bond of trust with Desdemona, though at its core this secret negates the marriage. Othello's secret with Desdemona can never equal Othello's prior secret with Iago. Transfer of male power into the center of marriage asks Desdemona to accept her own subordination. This confession continues Othello's pattern of extenuation since, in expecting pity, he declines self-examination and seeks unearned forgiveness, as though the solution is her capacity for understanding, not his.
| Figure 5. Tina Benko as Desdemona |
In the second chance afforded by the afterlife, Desdemona explicitly rejects the primacy of male relations to which Othello remains bound: "But real love, the love of an Amazon, is not based on pretty language or the secret sharing between males" (7.37). On the strength of the Amazon image, Desdemona speaks forthrightly and sets limits. To Othello's question "Can you forgive me?" she responds: "No, I cannot" (7.39). This setting aside of the issue of forgiveness begins to suggest how Morrison's revisionary approach to Othello differs from that of Djanet Sears'sHarlem Duet. In line with Langston Hughes's poem "Harlem" (Harlem Duet 114), Sears's main character Billie has"exploded" but her recovery is made to hinge on "Forgiveness" (115): "I hate — I love him so — I forgive him now. And now" (116). This halting commitment is not completed, nor is it clear that this direction would completely address the full range of issues that Billie has so painfully raised throughout the play. Billie may risk cutting herself off from the"prophetic fury" contained in her given name Sibyl, which not only comes from Shakespeare's Othello (epigraph,Harlem Duet [19]) but also is passed down from her grandmother through her father (81). The second syllable of her given name echoes her nickname (byl/Bill) and, if we hear Billie as a version of William, suggests a family-derived alternative to Shakespeare. In bypassing forgiveness as the necessary outcome, Morrison keeps the prophetic voice active to the end. This firm limit creates a clear separation between Desdemona and Othello that changes and complicates their relationship in the afterlife and makes the deeper conversation in which they are now engaged so tentative and uncertain. In contrast to the female encounters, Desdemona's meeting with Othello ultimately seems unresolved, suspended, and even beside the point.
In Morrison's version, Desdemona's first meeting with Othello is based on a direct link to Barbary: "I saw a glint of brass in his eyes identical to the light in Barbary's eyes" (4.23). "Not yet recovered from Barbary's death" (4.23), Desdemona circumvents, and perhaps prematurely short-circuits, her deep mourning for the loss of Barbary when she quickly turns to Othello to fill the gap. The compressed overlapping of the two events maps Barbary onto Othello, making Othello almost a Barbary substitute. But Morrison's play enables Desdemona to differentiate between these two figures through her respective encounters with them in the afterlife. Ultimately Morrison reverses the Barbary-to-Othello trajectory as Desdemona, with the benefit of the afterlife, moves away from her marriage to Othello toward commitment to a newly fashioned alliance with Barbary.
| Figure 6. Rokia Traore at left, Tina Benko at right, with Chorus |
The sharp juxtaposition of Morrison's title Desdemona with Shakespeare's Othello is no sooner announced than it is further sharpened by Desdemona's immediate rejection of her name in the opening speech: "My name is Desdemona. The word, Desdemona, means misery . . . I am not the meaning of a name I did not choose" (1.13). In Shakespeare's play, Desdemona was silenced by a physical but bloodless assault directed at her throat and mouth, the source of vocalization. The work of this performance is to redefine her given name and hence the structure and meaning of her character.
| Figure 7. Rokia Traore with Desdemona |
By restoring Desdemona's voice, Morrison gives her the opportunity to tell a different story — "I exist in places where I can speak, at last, words that in earth life were sealed or twisted into the language of obedience" (1.14) — to create a narrative of her identity that focuses on "my interior life" (2.17). In Othello, the deferred declaration of disobedience is associated with Emilia, who with increasing urgency insists on speaking: "'Tis proper I obey him but not now" (5.2.203). Emilia's outspoken defiance of her husband fills the vacuum left by Desdemona's refusal fully to confront Othello. In Morrison's play, Desdemona sets out to question "obedience" (1.14) from the very beginning. Given this agenda, Desdemona embarks on a stunning revision of the Shakespearean precedent.
The principal means by which Desdemona gains access to a new mode of expression is through a sequence of increasingly intense woman-to-woman conversations that Morrison stages. The first of these encounters, which establishes a model for the ones to follow, involves two characters who are mentioned only in passing and make no appearance in Shakespeare's drama. We are thus hearing their voices for the first time. Morrison visualizes a manifestly uncomfortable meeting between Desdemona's and Othello's mothers. In their brief moment, the two women reach a modest accommodation by contemplating the "way of cleansing" (5.27) recommended by Soun, whom we later learn is"a root woman" who "adopted me [Othello] as her son" (6.31). This "cleansing" holds a tentative promise of consolation:"We build an altar to the spirits who are waiting to console us" (5.27). What specific form this consolatory gesture might take is left to subsequent encounters in sections 8 and 9 to work out in greater detail. But in section 5, the prospect of female collaboration has been broached.
This moment initiates the theme of transformation. The shift in focus from the graves of Othello and Desdemona to the building of an altar in their memory suggests that the outcome of their story is not fixed but mutable, still in play: a different ending is possible. In addition, this meeting of the mothers symbolically indicates that cultural mixing is not a problem but a positive resource when it enables the flexibility to occupy multiple vantage points and to attain a more far-reaching, broader world view.
The second exchange between Desdemona and Emilia is more sustained and more argumentative, beginning with the air-clearing sarcasm of Emilia's greeting — "Well, well. If it isn't the martyr of Venice" (8.42). Emilia rebuffs Desdemona's assumption that they have a friendship of equals by insisting on her difference as "a servant" (8.43) and as an orphan: "It's not the same. An orphan knows how quickly love can be withdrawn" (8.44). The conversation intimates the self-examination that Desdemona must undergo in order to arrive at a position where she is capable of remaking her sense of herself.
The striking tonal shift in Emilia's concluding image of the lizard that sheds "her dull outer skin" to reveal "her jeweled self" (8.44) signals the hope for a new self-image and self-awareness. The shedding of the old comes from within: "No one helped her; she did it by herself" (8.44). As Emilia puts it in her final metaphoric sentence, "That little lizard changed my life" (8.44). This visionary model belongs not only to Emilia but also implicitly serves as inspiration for Desdemona.
The third encounter, which is also the longest and most elaborate, immediately follows in the next section when Desdemona talks with Barbary, who explicitly identifies herself as "black-skinned" (9.45). The moment is heightened to the level of climactic impact because Barbary, who never actually appears in Shakespeare's play, is granted the power of speech and is elevated to a major onstage role. The part is further enhanced by having it performed by Rokia Traoré, the Malian singer who collaborated with Morrison in creating the production. The African woman missing from Shakespeare at last takes the stage.
Unlike Desdemona, Barbary has been renamed, so that her original African name, Sa'ran, marks her non-Shakespearean reality. The meaning of her alternate name is "joy," which contrasts sharply with the continuation of misery signified by the name Desdemona. Joy opens up the possibility of a shift in a new direction (Kitts 2011, 10). Again, the encounter begins with Barbary/Sa'ran throwing cold water on Desdemona's enthusiastic claim of their shared experience — "We shared nothing" — and strongly registering the difference in their status — "I was your slave" (9.45). Sa'ran's assertiveness brings us back, with a new perspective, to Desdemona's reminiscences at the beginning: "My solace in those early days lay with my nursemaid, Barbary . . . She tended me as though she were my birth mother" (2.18). Sa'ran demonstrates the other, negative, side of this "solace."
In a further twist, however, as the earlier reference to "willow trees" (2.18) prompts, Desdemona's initial account returns us also to the problematic model that Barbary's submission bequeathed to Desdemona: "Yet that same heart, wide as it was, proved vulnerable. When I needed her most, she stumbled under the spell of her lover" (2.18). The preliminary skirmishing over, their shared problem now resurfaces: "And your lover slaughtered you as surely as if he had strangled you. Remember the song you sang every day until you wasted away and embraced death without fight or protest?" (9.46). Although it is unclear whether Barbary's lover is located in Africa or Venice and whether we should imagine him as black or white, the immediacy of Desdemona's account makes it seem as though she witnessed the entire event as having taken place in Venice.
Sa'ran responds by simultaneously repeating and renouncing the willow song that Desdemona had learned from her and had recited prior to her own death at Othello's hands (Othello 4.3.38-55). This is the play's turning point because, at the point of closest conjunction with Shakespeare, Morrison steers clear by having Sa'ran sing a different song that displaces the one inherited from Othello. In Sa'ran's preface, the turn and the rejection are explicit: "No more 'willow.' Afterlife is time and with time there is change. My song is new:" (9.48, original punctuation).
| Figure 8. Rokia Traore with Two Musicians Playing the Ngoni and the Kora |
The sequential placement of sections 8 and 9 emphasizes their structural parallel. Both present a contrast between old and new. Both stress the motif of change, whether in Emilia's "That lizard changed my life" (8.44) or Sa'ran's "with time is change" (9.48). At the authorial level, these terms speak to Morrison's metaphorical relationship to Shakespeare.Othello is the old song to Desdemona conceived as the new song that brings change. Morrison's artistic reflexiveness is particularly notable with regard to the old skin that the lizard sloughs off but does not discard: "she did not leave the outer one behind. She dragged it with her" (8.44). The express purpose of Morrison's intervention is to disrupt and change the legacy of Othello, but her project also acknowledges a respect for Shakespeare's work through the image of the retention of the old skin.
Sa'ran's new song, "Someone leans near" (9.49), is written by Toni Morrison, but not new to her, for it appeared as the third poem in her Five Poems, published ten years before, with each poem accompanied by a black silhouette work created by the African American artist Kara Walker (Morrison 2002).6 Since Morrison has altered slightly the original version for use in Desdemona, I pause here to summarize the modifications. For Desdemona, Morrison replaces the second-person "you" address with the first-person "I" to create a more immediate, intimate effect. Word changes are also inserted in two of the poem's sixteen lines. The more dramatic "sudden" is added to "Then on my skin a sudden breath caresses" (Morrison 2002, line 11) and the penultimate line 15, "Once more you know," becomes the far more vivid "What bliss to know." In both cases, the result is more emphatic. In particular, "bliss" stands out as a carry-over from the fourth poem, "It Comes Unadorned," where the revelation of the referent of the repeated "It" is deferred to the next-to-last line, which contains the single word "Bliss."
The existence of the earlier version of "Someone leans near" raises the question of whether Morrison was thinking aboutOthello in the 2002 poem. The question may be unanswerable, but it is worth noting that the phrase "the salt your tears have shed," which appears in both lines 2 and 12 of the original poem, as well as in Desdemona (9.49), corresponds to "Her salt tears" in Shakespeare's willow song: "Her salt tears fell from her and softened the stones" (Othello 4.3.44;Desdemona 9.47). In addition, the entire poem may be associated with a Desdemona who "waits, longing to hear / Words of reason, love or play" but hears none — only "a fury in the words" (Othello 4.2.34); a Desdemona who herself is at a loss for words — "Silence kneads your fear"; and a Desdemona who is immobilized and defenseless, with no way out — "You shore up your heart to run. To stay. / But no sign or design marks the narrow way." Finally, the pivot point of the poem's "Then on your skin a breath caresses" may identify Othello as the "someone who leans near"when he "smells thee on the tree" (Othello, 5.2.15) as he pauses in the act of "plucking her rose" and killing Desdemona.
It is also appropriate to consider Morrison's previous collaboration with Kara Walker, whose style can be seen as a felicitous critical match for the grotesqueness of what Morrison calls the "murderous silence" (8.42) in Shakespeare'sOthello. In particular, Walker's illustration for the poem "Someone leans near" shows a huge raptor hovering above the precariously exposed and pinned woman, with "YOU" incised in large letters down the front of her naked torso, by which the bird has staked his claim on the woman's body. If we imagine the raptor as an emblem for Othello and the upside-down woman as Desdemona, Walker offers a brilliantly apt, ironic image for the intertwined fates of the two Shakespearean characters, an image suggestive of the prelude to murder at the opening of the play's final scene.
In the context of Desdemona, "Someone leans near" represents "change" (9.48) by releasing the grip of tragedy. The positive tone of the last two lines suggests that death is not the end but rather symbolizes a new start: "What bliss to know / I will never die again" (9.49). Desdemona joins and ratifies the final note of Sa'ran's song by transforming her first-person singular "I" into the collective "we": "We will never die again" (9.49). This choric refrain conveys a shared resolution in which the two women, and by extension all women, potentially participate. Since "We will never die again"is the final sentence in the entire section, the statement commands attention. By contrast, Desdemona's corresponding "we" formulation in the context of her relationship with Othello at the end of the drama — "We will be judged by how well we love" (10.56) — is far more provisional. Here, with Sa'ran, Desdemona's culmination cannot be gainsaid but stands affirmed.
The two biggest surprises in Morrison's play are intertwined: Othello's revelation about his "mutual pleasure" in the twin rapes that he and Iago coordinated in section 7 is matched and answered by Desdemona's counter-confession. Her startling renunciation of Othello's military identity is held back until the final section:
If Desdemona's eloquent disclosure sounds out of context, this is a vivid sign of the re-vision with which Morrison has decisively altered the context.
If Desdemona's eloquent disclosure sounds out of context, this is a vivid sign of the re-vision with which Morrison has decisively altered the context.
Against Othello's profession of war, Desdemona concludes by presenting herself as a proponent of "human peace" (10.56). The contrast and disparity produce a gap that is too wide to be bridged. The hypothetical ideal reunion of Othello and Desdemona in section 10 cannot compete with the combined force of the immediately preceding sections 8 and 9, where the alternative world of female bonds with Emilia and Barbary/Sa'ran replace the male bonding offered in secret by Othello.
As their conversation proceeds, Othello follows the same pattern of critique as in the women's examples. Yet Othello's attempt to criticize Desdemona feels flat and unconvincing: "You never loved me. You fancied the idea of me, the exotic foreigner who kills for the State . . . What excited you was my strange story" (10.50-51). Othello's indulgence in self-pity and his absence of self-awareness are conspicuous. In his courtship of Desdemona, Othello himself played up and exploited an exoticized self-presentation: "She loved me for the dangers I had passed, / And I loved her that she did pity them" (Othello 1.3.166-67). As the crucial second line indicates, Othello is fully complicit in this process. Yet he takes no responsibility for his part in their reciprocal exchange. Rather, pursuing the course of self-extenuation, he tries to place the blame entirely on Desdemona, who rightly speaks out against Othello's predictable, self-serving tack: "You are wrong!" (10.51).
In the new world of Desdemona, Othello's final line consists of four anxious, compressed questions — "And now? Together? Alone? Is it too late?" (10.55) — that ring hollow when met with Desdemona's confident rejoinder: "'Late' has no meaning here. Here there is only the possibility of wisdom" (10.55). Implicit in her response is the assertion that they have not yet achieved this "wisdom." The overriding ambiguity of Othello's interrogative juxtaposition of "together" with the word "alone" also registers the distance that separates them. Othello is burdened by working with past assumptions, while Desdemona has moved on. After this point, Othello fades from view and arguably disappears from the text: there are no further speech prefixes designating Othello. Desdemona takes over and acts as though alone for the remainder of the performance. The scope is expansive rather than Othello-focused. Othello's capacity for a new understanding beyond Shakespeare cannot keep up with Desdemona's development, as represented here by Morrison.
| Figure 9. Rokia Traore Singing |
With Othello having become at best a bystander, Desdemona speaks about her own vision of "passionate peace": "And if we haven't secured the passionate peace we yearn for, it is because we haven't imagined it" (10.56). The "we" in the subsequent lyrics seems all-encompassing, rather than specific to Othello. The final appeal to a cross-racial "working together" moves in Sa'ran's direction: "Whether we are from the same place or not. / Whether we are from the same culture or not" (10.56). In this context, the twice-repeated line "It would fill me with joy" (10.56) points to Barbary, whose rechristening as Sa'ran animates the invocation of joy.
In conclusion, I turn to two observations by Toni Morrison with regard to Desdemona. First, Morrison refers to Shakespeare's Othello as an Africanist conception (Morrison 1992; Sellars, Morrison, et al. 2011).7 In a response to Darieck Scott, Morrison applies the term Africanist to Othello (at about 1:34) when she comments on the presentation of his character "not as a complicated human being but as a kind of male Africanist black warrior symbol of something" (Sellars, Morrison, et al. 2011). Opposed to this reductive version, Morrison allows that "there is another Othello that he does not let anyone see except Desdemona. And she recognizes this other person, who may or may not be the classic powerful killing machine that he is understood to be by everyone else." Yet the phrase "may or may not be" preserves an ambiguity. The play raises the issue of whether there is an authorial imprint inherited from Shakespeare that makes Othello's character an impervious structure and limits its depth. The answer remains an open question. Shakespeare's fashioning of Othello "may not" lend itself to refashioning. Perhaps, then, the lesson of this project is that the restricted boundaries of Othello's character are intractable, making it impossible fully to transform and to reinvent the Othello figure as constructed by Shakespeare's play. This may help to explain why Morrison found it more fruitful to explore the possibilities for Barbary as an undefined and thus not yet permanently fixed character.
Second, Morrison downplays the seemingly mandatory themes of forgiveness and redemption by stating her purpose more simply: "The whole thing is about the acquisition of knowledge . . . it's not necessarily even about reconciliation . . . it's finally knowing more" (Sellars, Morrison, et al. 2011, 1:06). For Morrison, understanding need not automatically lead to or guarantee reconciliation. Instead, we should value understanding for its own sake. Desdemona deliberately withholds a happy ending: we should not expect the tragic elevation of Othello, the magical reconstruction of the Othello-Desdemona relationship, or our validation as kind-hearted spectators. Instead, Morrison takes us outside the Shakespearean comfort zone into the stark exploratory world of critical re-vision toward which Adrienne Rich points. The austere, even harsh, approach of Toni Morrison's response to Othello in her Desdemona strikes me as an edifyingly productive stance and a noble cause.
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