Othello as a Case Study: What Shakespeare Portrayed as Idolatrous Love

As I mentioned before in my hub post, I am looking at how volatile the romantic emotions can seem in Shakespeare. Othello is a perfect example of this. He and Desdemona have this whirlwind romance in which they defy the social constraints placed on them. But once they consummate their love, Othello is put in a position where he believes that the very thing he values most has betrayed him. This raises the question of whether he does indeed love "not wisely but too well."

In order to answer this question, it's important to analyze the ways in which Othello expresses love for Desdemona, as well as to analyze the relationship they had before suspicion poisoned it.
For this, I found two sources:

1. Shakespeare On Love and Lust, by Maurice Charney, which I found at Google Books. It focuses on ways love plays out in Shakespeare, and focuses a good part of that on Othello. 

2. Idolatrous Love: A New Approach to Othello, by RN Hallstead, which I found on JSTOR. This article focuses on the sexual aspects of Othello and how they relate to his love for Desdemona.

These sources speak about the obssessive nature of Othello's love for Desdemona, as well as Desdemona's love for Othello.



Charney gives an excellent description of the murder scene that sheds some light on Othello's attitude:

"When Othello enters to strangle his wife in the last scene of the play, he comes in the guise of a priest performing a religious ritual; it is a sacrifice, not a murder." Here we have this motif of a worshipper at the shrine of his goddess. He sacrifices Desdemona because she does not live up to the ideal he had in his mind, according to Iago. The tragically ironic thing about this scene, is that she actually does live up to his ideal, he just doesn't know it. 

This raises the question of why Othello would believe Iago and suspect Desdemona, when he has no concrete proof? Did he already doubt the verity of Desdemona's affections? Is Othello really that easily fooled? He is an army general after all, he would have to be pretty saavy.

According to Hallstead:

After the consummation of his marriage, Othello, as Iago points out and as he himself confesses, makes Desdemona the source of purpose, meaning, and value in his life. This is to say that he worships her, that she becomes his "god." But as Desdemona says, "We must think men are not gods", for, as they are human, things of body, men and women fail those who worship them.

Perhaps this explains better Othello's thought process. Desdemona, in being unfaithful, failed her worshipper, Othello. Othello, driven by the loss of his idol, seeks to completely eliminate her from his life. He jumps to the idea of murder because as a professional soldier, he is used to doing distasteful things.

The conclusion to be drawn from this information:

When love becomes idolatrous or obsessive in nature, it leads to eventual failure in the relationship.