Desdemona, the
'eternal womanly' in its most lovely and adorable form, simple and
innocent as a child, ardent with the courage and idealism of a saint,
radiant with that heavenly purity of heart which men worship the more
because nature so rarely permits it to themselves, had no theories about
universal brotherhood, and no phrases about 'one blood in all the
nations of the earth' or 'barbarian, Scythian, bond and free'; but when
her soul came in sight of the noblest soul on earth, she made nothing of
the shrinking of her senses, but followed her soul until her senses took
part with it, and 'loved him with the love which was her doom.' It was
not prudent. It even turned out tragically. She met in life with the
reward of those who rise too far above our common level; and we continue
to allot her the same reward when we consent to forgive her for loving a
brown man, but find it monstrous that she should love a black one.[105]
There is perhaps a certain excuse for our failure to rise to
Shakespeare's meaning, and to realise how extraordinary and splendid a
thing it was in a gentle Venetian girl to love Othello, and to assail
fortune with such a 'downright violence and storm' as is expected only
in a hero. It is that when first we hear of her marriage we have not yet
seen the Desdemona of the later Acts; and therefore we do not perceive
how astonishing this love and boldness must have been in a maiden so
quiet and submissive.
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