Shakespeare on the Shades of Racism by Espinosa Ruben;

Author:Espinosa, Ruben;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2021-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

While on the surface, she is simply expressing a connection to her former “maid” because, like Barbary, Desdemona has a love who is proving mad. However, there might be more at work here. Peter Erickson offers us a more compelling take on this scene. He writes: “The specific legacy of slavery that she receives through her mother also comes into play here because the hierarchical image of her white power over the black maid provides an easy replacement for the unstable, uncontrollable relationship with the black Othello.”21 It is a moment where Desdemona must resituate herself, because she is on unstable ground with her Black husband. Recalling her former slave allows her to do that along racialized lines.

What I find interesting is that Desdemona has, in her presence, Emilia, who is her attendant. I certainly do not mean to suggest here that Emilia’s role is similar to that of Barbary, but where her social status is concerned, Desdemona is still in a privileged position. Emilia’s own whiteness, though, seems to delimit how Desdemona feels about herself. Erickson goes on to write about the role of Barbary in this scene:

As her perception of Othello moves from his being the good African to the possibly bad African, Desdemona’s memory of Barbary is suddenly brought forth as the new good African who fills the vacuum left by Othello. Although she is innocent of the infidelity of which the deluded Othello accuses her, Desdemona’s gesture of claiming her mother’s black maid seems less so. Having lost her black husband, she turns for a dependable and safe alternative to a conveniently available black woman of lower social status from her childhood. The black maid is also conveniently dead: she can neither talk back nor offer resistance, and so her meaning is completely malleable to Desdemona’s needs. Through this substitution, Desdemona finds a servant who can serve as a sympathetic vehicle for expressing her own feelings … In an act of white entitlement, Desdemona adopts and channels the elegiac appeal of the maid’s plaintive melancholy.22

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