In ‘Desdemona’, Morrison gives a voice to the women of Othello who were kept silent or relegated into the periphery of the story through passing reference and allows them to develop a sisterhood, bringing their voices together, allowing Desdemona to hear their stories and grow. Most significantly the characters of Barbary, Emilia and M. Brabantio and Soun. Through their voices Morrison provides ‘a diasporic consciousness that gives voice to Africa’ and women. Emilia is a crucial character within Shakespeare’s ‘Othello’ yet remains silent until the last scenes of the play, the crucial ‘unpinning’ scene and her betrayal of Iago in the final scene exposing his devilry. Sa’ran is only mentioned in the unpinning scene by Desdemona who then sings her song, appropriating her song and replacing her voice. Morrison allows both these characters to finally speak for themselves, allowing Emilia to speak her mind and Sa’ran to sing her song. Through allowing them a voice Morrison liberates these characters allowing them to speak honestly, an honesty that is facilitated by Morrison’s setting of the ‘afterlife’ ‘for the timelessness of the afterlife, where there is nothing to lose allows for honest revelations, productive encounters, and genuine forgiveness’. Allowing these women to form bonds that strengthen them instead of the heterosexual bonds to men that have caused suffering, a bond that eventually transcends the boundaries of social status and race, a universal sisterhood.
Morrison’s focus on the development of sisterhood in Desdemona is first evident in Scene 5 where the mothers of the tragic lovers come together and meet. Neither characters actually appear in ‘Othello’ but in ‘Desdemona’ they are fully realised characters. Their meeting follows the structure of ‘Desdemona’, a structure based around conflicts and encounters. The characters vent their complaints and differences to reach forgiveness or the hope that forgiveness may follow. M. Brabantio is described by Desdemona as ‘a lady of virtue’ who focused on ‘sensible punishment’and ‘constraint’rather than nurturing and caring for her child.They are however both just grieving mothers. Soun asks M. Brabantio, “Are we enemies then?’ which M. Brabantio confirms. However, they eventually form an almost sisterhood through their common ground and with Soun’s suggestion of using her cultural tradition and ‘build an altar to the spirits who are waiting to console us’to help them deal with their grief rather than harbour anger towards one another. Morrison’s use of the unifying pronouns ‘our’and ‘we’ also suggests this turn from opposition to sisterhood, a ‘gradual movement towards mutual respect’. It is due to Morrison’s gift of a voice to these characters that they reach this unification. They are given a voice in order to voice their honest and genuine expression of their anger. In Morrison’s afterlife the absence of Senator Brabantio or other male figures allow the women that were once tied in heterosexual relationships with them freedom of speech. No longer by constrained by these old ideals of women that prevented them from expressing their own ‘willfulness’. A ‘willfulness’that M. Brabantio worked to prevent her daughter having to allow her to fit the mould of their patriarchal society. This conflict ending in slight unification and sisterhood carries through to Desdemona’s encounters with others.
Scene 8 hones in on and develops on the previously mentioned ‘unpinning’ scene of ‘Othello’, where the two women converse whilst Desdemona prepares for bed. This scene has been across the history of Othello as a play been controversial and has frequently been cut from performance due to Emilia’s frank dialogue about the inequality between male and female sexuality. A frankness and openness that Emilia wasn’t given by Shakespeare throughout the rest of the play. Only briefly allowing her a voice which is then immediately silenced by Iago in the final scene of the play. While this scene has often been thought of as a moment of female solidarity in a male dominated play ,however it is only brief as ‘in ‘Othello’, female solidarity overwhelmingly buckles under the dominance of the heterosexual bond’. Emilia’s forced loyalty to her husband overrides her relationship with Desdemona making her stay silent, allowing Desdemona to be the victim to her husband’s violence. The heterosexual bond is given priority over the bond of sisterhood.
Morrison however ‘confronts this scene from Othello and its ramifications for female community in her encounter between Desdemona and Emilia’ Their confrontation once again follows Morrison’s structure, beginning with aggression and perhaps ending in forgiveness and sisterhood. Morrison’s Emilia remains pragmatic and Desdemona unknowingly imperious saying ‘You and I were friends, but didn’t the man you knelt to protect run a gleaming sword through your survival strategies?’. Emilia instead reveals the oppression she suffered under Desdemona:
‘“Unpin me, Emilia” “Arrange my bed sheets Emilia” That is not how you treat a friend; that’s how you treat a servant. Someone beneath you, beneath your class which takes devotion for granted”
But as Emilia explains that her cynicism and pragmatism came from the disappointment and lack of fulfillment she had felt from her life, she and Desdemona approach common ground due to the power they had both placed in the heteroexual bond that eventually betrayed them. Emilia confesses to Desdemona, ‘Like you I believed marriage was my salvation. It was not.’Her marriage is barren, without love like both of their childhoods and ends with matricide. A small understanding is reached between them as Desdemona realises her naive nature and perhaps becomes aware of her privilege.
‘You are right to correct me. Instead of judging, I should have been understanding’
Morrison ends this scene with a lyrical description of a lizard that “shed her dull outer skin . . . exposing that which had been underneath — her jeweled self’ but she doesn’t ‘leave the outer one behind. She dragged it with her. As though the camouflage would still be needed to disguise her true dazzle.’ Although Emilia uses this as a metaphor for her survival it could also be interpreted as Desdemona being the jewelled lizard and Emilia being the skin having to be dragged behind her, a cover for her ‘true dazzle’. An accessory to Desdemona that has been dragged along, something that has allowed Desdemona to succeed by covering her.
At the beginning of the play Desdemona herself seems to shed her old skin. She renounces her mainstream innocent and submissive reading.
‘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?’
We must remember that ‘In Toni Morrison’s creation, Desdemona is no longer a teenager but a mature woman with perspective and the opportunity to gradually recognise and let go of her own illusions’ perhaps allowing her to be more bold. However even in Shakespeare’s ‘Othello’, Desdemona ‘leaves behind her domestic life of “house affairs” and quickly finds her own voice in the public arena’ with moments of wit and intelligence, speaking back to Iago in Act 2 Scene 1:
‘O Heavy ignorance! Thou praisest the worst best. But what praise couldst thus bestow on a deserving woman indeed? One that, in the authority of her merit, did justly put on the vouch of very malice itself.’
During her bold and witty banter with Iago, Emilia suffers insult from her husband who refuses to praise her. While Desdemona takes pleasure in the witty and often innuendo filled interaction Emilia is her cover, the skin dragged behind that suffers the consequences for female impudence toward men.
Perhaps this shows that this old sisterhood merely placed women of fewer opportunities as accessories to other women with more. Emilia and Sa’ran are something disposable to Desdemona that she can use to distract from her true ‘headstrong’ and ‘passionate’nature. They are slaves to another slave Although Desdemona’s ‘prison was unlike [theirs]…it was prison still’. Sisterhood further entrapped them as Desdemona depends on them to allow her to succeed in a mans world.
However, perhaps even in Morrison’s Desdemona, the women are covers for her in her development, although she becomes aware of her privilege and status as an oppressor to Emilia, when she faces Sa’ran she appropriates Emilia’s argument. Arguing that they are both just women and then appropriates her use of unifying pronouns to try and connect with Sa’ran. Using the women around her as a way to facilitate her desire to maintain a romanticised view of the sisterhood between them all rather than truly become conscious of her flaws. The interaction with Sa’ran complicates this further as ‘if social status was an impediment in Desdemona’s relationship with Emilia, race is an added complication in her relationship with Sa’ran.’ and a complication Desdemona must face. Desdemona still uses ‘Sa’ran’s westernised name’, Barbary, she defines her by stereotypes of her country, that she is just ‘the foreigner, the savage.’ Desdemona attempts to order her- ‘Listen to me’. Although Desdemona, insists that racial differences didn’t matter to her as she married Othello and was killed by him just as Sa’ran was by her love Sa’ran refuses Desdemona’s justification and attempts at kinship. Desdemona however attempts to breach this racial divide between them by asking ‘Was I ever cruel to you? Ever?’ turning her anger onto the man that killed her by asking “Who did?’ when Sa’ran replies ‘No. You never hurt or abused me’. By reminding Sa’ran of the suffering that heterosexual relationships caused which their relationship never caused perhaps brings these women together on a common ground. The betrayal and violence from men not from other women. Sa’ran is then given by Morrison the opportunity to finally sing her song the ‘willow song’ and a new reprise concluded with ‘What bliss to know I will never die again’ Desdemona replaces Sa’ran’s ‘I’ with Emilia’s unifying pronoun: ‘We will never die again.’They arguably reach a universal sisterhood that transcends race allowing them to come to terms with their deaths at the hands of men.
However, it could also be seen as a simple trivialisation of the pain that Sa’ran and Emilia must have felt at their forced servitude to Desdemona simply due to elevated class and perhaps a critique by Morrison of this idea of ‘universal sisterhood’’. That all women regardless of factors outside of gender have suffered equally from patriarchal oppression. That simply because they are all women they have common ground from male oppression, arguably Sa’ran and Emilia suffered more as they faced oppression from another woman even if unknowingly done.
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