OTHELLO, FREUD AND FEMICIDE

 

 

The murder scene from Act V of Othello contains an act of femicide: Othello kills his wife Desdemona, whom he accuses of being unfaithful. Othello acts under two basic instincts or impulses, called Eros (sexual instinct) and Thanatos (aggressive instinct). According to psychiatrist Sigmund Freud, human beings share these natural instincts with animals but the difference is that humans can (or at least should) control them, letting their “ego” prevail and suppress those instincts. Actually, it’s our subconscious to be exposed to these impulses, but there’s still our ego whose job is to try to calm them down.

 

In Othello these two impulses merge in the image of Othello dying while kissing his love Desdemona. Eros and Thanatos are opposite instincts but not divided: Thanatos is the other side of Eros. Throughout the tragedy, the “white” love of Othello leads to death because of Iago. As Othello’s personal attendant, he knows what his weaknesses are and this allows him to work on his psychology and manipulate his mind. Othello is an honest and brave man but he’s psychologically and emotionally weak and insecure: this would explain his idea of possessing his wife Desdemona. At the end of the tragedy, Othello will end up killed by his own naivety and blind jealousy.

 

When jealousy leads to killing then it’s not real love, it’s a distortion of what love should be: jealousy is an ill form of love that very often can lead to violence.

The idea of possessing people, especially men possessing women, comes from ancient history when men really did own their wives. Men are still seen as the one who should be in power and control everything, while women are still seen as weak and someone to protect, own and use as objects of desire.

In some ways, we still live in a patriarchal society where men dominate and are convinced they have the right to maintain their power over women, as it’s always been. And so femicide is a result of the position women occupy in the social system.

 In the past 50 years women have achieved great results in fighting for their rights and power, they’ve fought and are still fighting to erase a female stereotype that’s been passed on through the centuries. And now that women have started gaining more power, men just don’t like it, they don’t accept it because they see it as an attack to their “virility”: they don’t want to be told what to do by a woman, they want to keep telling a woman what to do. When men think they need to own a woman, they show that they aren’t as strong as they think they are since they need to possess to feel more “manly”.

And this is what exactly happens to Othello. Since the beginning of the story, we learn that he’s a brave and kind general and is essentially a good person but he has significant weaknesses: he thinks Desdemona belongs to him, and this immoral idea would make the story end up in tragedy.

Othello is free to choose, he isn’t forced to kill Desdemona, but he chose to: in his last words, it seems like he really doesn’t want to kill her, but, according to what it’s called “crime of passion”, he has to.

His ideals of possession and jealousy are stronger than his common sense. In the end, Thanatos will prevail and transform Othello into the opposite of the brave and kind general he was.

I think the solution to this issue is only one: working on education since childhood. By education, I mean emotional education, also known as emotional intelligence, that is learning to express and control our emotions. That is the key. Many people take it for granted, but I personally think that having an efficient emotional intelligence is important in order to coexist with other people and to train our mind to repress the instincts I talked about before.

 

Maria, 4scB