In order for love to be true it must come from both sides equally. Its power will not be strong enough to overcome all obstacles if its foundation is not pure. In Pride and Prejudice, Austen paints a portrait of the power of love as merely unbreakable whereas Shakespeare arguably portrays it as weak and vulnerable. Both Shakespeare and Austen use dialogue as a tool for the construction of their characters. Although Austen relies on narration as well as speech, Shakespeare relies completely on speech as Othello is a play.
Arguably, before ‘the moor’ arrives in the play, he is described as an ‘old black rum’ by the ‘malicious’ Iago. This phrase is somewhat a racial term, followed by ‘the thick lips. ’ Othello was set during the 17th century – the Elizabethan/Jacobean era, where racism was heavily present and therefore referring to a black person in this way was considered socially normal. The imagery Iago uses to describe Othello’s relationship with Desdemona is animalistic: ‘old black ram is tupping your white ewe’.
The audience at this stage of the play are unable to shape their own opinion of Othello as they have not met him, so therefore the only image they are provided with, comes from Iago. Additionally, some could argue that a sense of Iago’s hatred for the ‘beast’ echo’s through his dialogues which may force the audience to question the reliability of what they are being told by him as he knows he is ‘not what I am’ (Act 1 scene 1, line 66). Arguably, this phrase provides a sense of deceit from Iago and reflects on the tragedy he creates at the end.
Othello is manipulated to believe Desdemona’s betrayal – but of course we know it is not what it appears to be yet Iago to all is a ‘fellow’s of exceeding honesty’ (Act 3 scene 3, line 260)- yet we know this is not the case. The use of the adverbial intensifier ‘exceeding’ is arguably a sign of jumping to conclusions and reveals a lack of restraint of thought by Othello. This therefore puts the audience at an uncomfortable position with the idea of Iago being ‘honest’ planted in his mind which brings fear to the audience that Othello may have doubts of Desdemona’s faithfulness to him.
This questions the power of love from Othello’s side. The audience witnesses the drastic change in Othello from the beginning of the play where he delivers an unequivocal testament of his love for the ‘gentle Desdemona’ (Act 1 scene 2, line 25) to his use of dark imagery to refer to her: ‘devils’ (Act 4 scene 4, line 35), ‘whore’ (Act 4 scene 4, line 85) and ‘black vengeance’ (Act 3 scene 3, line 448). This questions the power of Othello’s love for Desdemona, that it takes just a ‘false’ story of ‘pluck’d up kisses’ (Act 3 scene 3, line 424) from Iago to manipulate his thoughts into thinking Desdemona’s ‘not honest.
Is Shakespeare saying that the power of love is over-rated? Similarly, Austen relies on dialogue to deliver her characters to the reader; they criticise themselves out of their own mouths by their choice of subject matter and the way of expressing themselves. With most characters in Austen’s novel, they often tend to give a different impression of themselves from the one they intended; a type of irony present in Austen’s novel. An illustration of this is Mrs Bennett, who adopts a sentence structure which is long and rambling, portraying her as a woman of ‘mean understanding, little information and uncertain temper’ (pg 7).
The use of the triple syntactical structure by the narrator is forcing this painted portrait of Mrs Bennett’s character on the reader, and therefore right from chapter one this is how we think of her till the very end of the book. The phrase ‘little information’ could also reflect on her moral status in the novel. Due to her ‘little information’, Mrs Bennett usually talks about inappropriate or unnecessary subject matters. For example, during chapter 9, Mrs Bennett’s states she ‘dine with four and twenty families’ (pg 43). This choice of subject matter is firstly unnecessary and inappropriate constructing her as narrow minded.
Additionally, not being able to speak appropriately is punished by receiving a lower moral status in the novel than those who are able to such as the Gardiners. Could having such a mother be a disadvantage for the marriage of her daughters? According to the upper class, this seems to be the very case. Miss Bingley intentionally teases Darcy about what ‘charming mother in law’ (page 28) Mrs Bennet will be if he chooses to marry the ‘intelligent’ Elizabeth. During Regency England, the upper class chose to only ally themselves with those of a similar ranking; with a higher moral status and did not attract a bad mage to themselves the way Mrs Bennet does (unconsciously of course). This idea is reinforced when Darcy states that it must ‘very materially lessen their chance of marrying men of any consideration in the world’ (page 37). Darcy has arguably further enforced is social status, position and wealth.
Perhaps he had directed this particular comment for Elizabeth, as he believes she will not be able to marry someone as wealthy as him. However, by the end of the novel Darcy looks beyond all the ‘misfortunes’ by overcoming what arguably is his greatest weakness; his ‘pride. Could Austen be saying that love is so powerful it always wins in the end? Narration also plays a strong role in both texts. Similarly to Pride and Prejudice, Othello too could be said to contain some sense of narration. Whilst, the narration in Pride and Prejudice is third person omniscient and from the author, the narration in Othello comes from Iago through his soliloquies, using first person. A soliloquy can be used to foreshadow upcoming events and in Othello, Shakespeare uses Iago’s soliloquies to reveal his motivations for Othello, putting him in ‘jealousy so strong that judgement cannot cure’ (Act 2 scene 2, line 290).
The word ‘jealousy’ itself is a powerful word and to phrase it as ‘strong’ with the added superlative ‘so’ scares the audience into the seriousness of Iago’s motivation that we become to unconsciously fear what comes next. The narrator in Pride and Prejudice uses Elizabeth to guide us through events – she’s the focaliser. This is an advantage to the audience as we are able to get a privileged insight of her personal thoughts. Unfortunately, the text as a whole lacks any form of emotion, and arguably there appears to be a barrier between the characters and the audience as we are unable to share their feelings.
Arguably, this could be reflecting Regency England; love was often not considered necessary or even desirable and perhaps Austen wanted this to come out strongly throughout the novel; to present the negativity of Regency England’s culture. However could it possibly be that the idea of marriage with no love during the 17th century is an idealistic view? It is obvious that the author admires Elizabeth as she had a ‘lively, playful disposition’ (page 14) that no one else had and shares the same view about love as the author.
This is evident during the end of chapter 22, where Elizabeth’s thoughts are visible to the reader as she is disappointed at Charlotte for she had ‘sacrificed ever better feeling for worldly advantage’ (page 123). Debatably, the word ‘feeling’ is referring to love and ‘worldly advantage’ is referring to materialism etc. Personally, it appears quite peculiar that Austen has chosen to both those phrases in one sentence as they are two completely different matters that happen to compete against each other. Marriage takes place for the two main reasons, either for love or material security.
Perhaps Austen chose to place them so close together to indicate that they are near Iago and Wickham are very similar in their deceiving natures, and both texts would be tedious without them, they play an important role. Additionally, they both use language to manipulate the other characters. In Othello, Iago changes from prose to blank verse, adapting his style to suit his different audiences and purposes. The frank, persuasive and articulate prose of his conversation with Rodriego conveys Iago’s base nature, especially when he states’ I am not what I am. Additionally, the standard also makes use of an elevated style, an example being his parody of Othello’s expression in Act 3 scene 3 (lines 465-72). This very speech is a clear portrayal of the power Iago has as he is able to influence and manipulate his style naturally. Othello’s lack of judgement and Iago’s rising influence on him is evident in these lines too as he starts to use the apparently ‘honest’ Iago’s expressions when he decides to take revenge on Desdemona ‘for the fair devil. ’ This questions his love for Desdemona from even the beginning.
He states he ‘lov’d her that she did pity’ his ‘story. ’ Could it be that he fell in love with an image rather than a person? It could also be said that his love for Desdemona is secondary as he started to feel an affection after she had ‘wish’d heaven had made her such a man. ’ According to JK Freedom: ‘Love is not a reaction. If I love you because you love me, that is mere trade, a thing to be bought in the market; it is not love. ’ This perspective is arguably relevant to Othello and Desdemona as it is arguably clear that his love was a ‘reaction’ to Desdemona’s affection for him.
Therefore, Desdemona’s love is perhaps real as even after she is falsely accused of being a ‘whore’ she says ‘not to pick bad from bad, but by bad mend. ’ She is taking equal blame for Othello’s surprising rage, illustrating her as the most innocent and purest character in the play. Likewise, Wickham also uses language to manipulate Elizabeth into believing Darcy a ‘wicked man. ’ He too does this through his language however mainly through his structured style.
It is because Wickham is able to adopt the measured, sophisticated and persuasive device called the triple syntactical structure that he can deceive Elizabeth, for she thinks he’s a ‘sweet tempered, amiable, charming man. ’ The use of the triple syntactical structure here by Austen is perhaps to influence the reader to also think this of Wickham, as Elizabeth is described as ‘intelligent’ by Austen, we are made to believe whatever Elizabeth says must be true. Austen her self praises Wickham as ‘whatever he said, was said well; and whatever he did, done gracefully. It could be said that both texts, a ‘villain’ has been awarded an important role for plot suspense. In Pride and Prejudice, Wickham was caught and Elizabeth was able to overcome her false ‘prejudice’ against Darcy whereas in Othello, Iago was not caught out until Desdemona dies a ‘guiltless death. ’ Could Othello easily have been a comedy romance if Iago been caught out in time? Personally, Wickham’s role in the novel is to test the strength of the true love present between Elizabeth and Darcy and to emphasis on the ‘horrid’ obstacles they both had overcome by the end of the novel.
