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Disowning Daughters in Shakespeare's Othello and Romeo and Juliet

Article  in  ANQ A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles Notes and Reviews · March 2020
DOI: 10.1080/0895769X.2020.1738911

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 ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes and
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Disowning Daughters in Shakespeare’s Othello and

Romeo and Juliet

Bilal Tawfiq Hamamra

To cite this article: Bilal Tawfiq Hamamra (2020): Disowning Daughters in Shakespeare’s Othello
and Romeo�and�Juliet, ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes and Reviews, DOI:
10.1080/0895769X.2020.1738911

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ANQ: A QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SHORT ARTICLES, NOTES, AND REVIEWS
https://doi.org/10.1080/0895769X.2020.1738911

Disowning Daughters in Shakespeare’s Othello and Romeo and

Juliet
Bilal Tawfiq Hamamra

Through a system of births, parentage, bloodline, and marriage, the family emerges as a kind of
affective and identificatory field where female and male figures play constructed and defined roles
upholding both familial and national stability. Those who defy the dominant ideology of patriarchal
authority are punished by being disowned by the representatives of the masculine ideology which
consolidates itself by castrating/disowning the opposing forces/voices. Lawrence Stone points out
that parent-child relations were remote and formal, singularly lacking in affective bonds and
governed solely by a paternal authoritarianism through which the “husband and father lorded it
over his wife and children with the quasi-authority of a despot” (The Crisis of the Aristocracy 371).
Stone suggests further that most people in sixteenth-and early seventeenth-century England “found
it very difficult to establish close emotional ties to any other person” (The family, sex and mar-
riage92). As we will see, Shakespeare’s Othello (1604) and Romeo and Juliet (1595) comment on the
fatherly domination over their children, a domination that is expressed through Brabantio’s and
Capulet’s disowning of their daughters. The anger that initiates the discourse of disowning on the
parts of the father figures foregrounds an emotional intensity manifested in the reconciliation scenes
between children and their parents. Brabantio’s and Capulet’s sufferings result from the disowning of
their offspring and, hence, their violation of family bonds.
In early modern England, the relationship between father and daughter is based on paternal
domination which provokes daughters’ defiance and rebellion against patriarchal authority. Lynda
Boose, a prominent feminist critic who focuses on the politics of the family in Shakespeare’s plays,
insists that “Shakespeare’s dramas consistently explore affective family dynamics with such an
intensity that justifies the growing inference among Shakespeare scholars that the plays may be
primarily ‘about’ family relations and only secondarily about the macrocosm of the body politic”
(325). She adds that “While father and son appear slightly more often in the canon, figuring in
twenty-three plays, father and daughter appear in twenty-one dramas and in one narrative poem”
(325). The study of patriarchy is of central importance to the study of familial relations in
Shakespeare. Daughters and sons are ordered to follow the dictates of their male figures of authority
in the choice of partners. Stone asserts that in early modern England the father was “a legalized petty
tyrant within the home” and claims that the picture he gives “of a severe repression of the will of the
child, extending to his or her choice of a spouse,” is “beyond possibility of challenge” (The family, sex
and marriage7 193). In the tragedies chosen here, daughters – Desdemona and Juliet – are disowned
by their fathers whom they defy their choice of partners.
Shakespeare’s Othello shows Brabantio’s desire to objectify Desdemona as manifested in his
disowning of her once she plays the role of the subject who chooses and desires, eloping with
Othello, the Moor, a naval general, who is wavering between Christian and Muslim beliefs. Brabantio
perceives Desdemona as a “jewel” (1.3.196), “gentle mistress” (1.3. 178), and “[a] maiden, never
bold” (1.3.95), supposing that her sexual transgression is caused by Othello’s charms (1.3.62).
However, Desdemona subverts the passivity wished on her by Brabantio’s voice (1.1.122, 1.2.62),
for she has eloped of her own free will to be with Othello.
Once she moves from the role of possession and becomes a desiring subject, she is accused of
wantonness. Brabantio states that it is “treason of the blood” (1.1.167). Brabantio’s invocation of
blood reveals that Desdemona violates her nature and lineage through her marriage to Othello.
© 2020 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
2 B. T. HAMAMRA

Brabantio reacts to her marriage with a sense of disobedience and warning: “Fathers, from hence
trust not your daughters’ minds” (1.1.168). Brabantio disowns her: “I had rather to adopt a child
than get it” (1.3.191); “For your sake, jewel,/I am glad at soul I have no other child/For thy escape
would teach me tyranny” (1.3. 193–195). He asserts that she will prove unfaithful to Othello
(1.3.293–94) – a view that Iago reiterates (3.3.200) to destroy Othello’s faith in Desdemona.
However, while there is no reconciliation between father and daughter, Brabantio’s death of grief
over his daughter and her marriage to Othello highlights the emotional attachment of Brabantio
toward Desdemona. As Gratiano says to the murdered Desdemona, “thy match was mortal to him,
and pure grief/Shore his old thread in twain’ (5.2.202–2).
In the same spirit, in Romeo and Juliet, perceiving Juliet as being an obedient daughter, Capulet
arranges her marriage with the Count Paris without ever asking for her consent or opinion. He
assures Paris that “I think she will be ruled/in all respects by me. Nay, more, I doubt it not”
(3.4.13–14). Because of Juliet’s refusal to accept Capulet’s authority over her, Capulet describes Juliet
as a ‘disobedient wretch’ (3.5.160), and by suggesting that Juliet is ‘green sickness carrion’ (3.5.156),
he implies that she is a polluting disease. This comparison of Juliet to rottenness implies that her
disobedience to her father leads to the dissolution of their relationship.
Lord Capulet threatens to throw Juliet out of his house; she will “hang, beg, starve, die in the
streets” (3.5.192). He also threatens to disown her if she undermines his authority and does not
consent to marry Paris: “For, by my soul, I’ll ne’er acknowledge thee,/Nor what is mine shall never
do thee good” (3.5.193–94). The threat that Capulet launches against Juliet is that of depriving her of
the family name, and thus of considering her a bastard child who has no right to family property and
inheritance. Lady Capulet is complicit with the masculine discourse of disowning. She says to Juliet,
“Talk not to me, for I’ll not speak a word./Do as thou wilt, for I have done with thee” (3.4.204–205).
Capulet commands Juliet: “But fettle your fine joints ’gainst Thursday next,/To go with Paris to Saint
Peter’s Church,/Or I will drag thee on a hurdle thither” (3.4.155–6).While Juliet’s disobedience of her
father’s authority results in a lack of reconciliation, Capulet asserts that “with my child my joys are
buried” (4.4.89–91).
Shakespeare’s Othello and Romeo and Juliet show that the discourse of disowning reveals the
emotional strength of the father-daughter relationships. In an inversion of the Renaissance conven-
tion that patriarchal ideology consolidates itself by disowning and crushing opposing forces, the
sufferings of male figures of authority – Brabantio and Capulet – are unleashed because of their
disowning of their disobedient daughters.

Works cited
Boose, Lynda E. “The Father and the Bride in Shakespeare.” Modern Language Association, vol. 97, no. 3, 1982, pp.
325–47. doi:10.2307/462226.
Shakespeare, William. Othello. Ed. E. A. J. Honigmann, Walton-on-Thames: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1997.
Shakespeare, William. Romeo and Juliet, Ed C. Watts, Wordsworth Editions Ltd, 2000.
Stone, Lawrence. The Crisis of the Aristocracy, 1558–1641. London: Oxford U P, 1971.
Stone, Lawrence. The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500–1800. New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1977.

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