The condensed version of an acclaimed article.

As Freud and Psychoanalysis have taught us, men are trapped by a subconscious desire to marry women who remind them of their mothers. This, of course, is known as The Oedipus Complex. At first, one might not notice this Oedipal manifestation in Othello, especially since his lover, Desdemona, is of another race. The linking clue to the whole mystery, however, comes with the mythical handkerchief.

Othello's mother gives him a magical handkerchief, and tells him that whoever keeps it shall fall in love with him. Ultimately, he gives this magic handkerchief to Desdemona, who temporarily falls into its spell until Iago saves her from Othello's magic. The key here, however, is in the fact that the handkerchief originally belonged to Othello's MOTHER.

Historian Paul Brubeck has studied the cultural mannerisms of Elizabethan England and published them in his book entitled The Rise and Fall of English Cleanliness. According to Brubeck, "a mother's hankerchief was reserved for cleaning up more embarassing spills: blood, saliva, urine, semen, and feminine fluids. The man's hankerchief, on the other hand, was reserved for wiping up tobacco juice, and dirt leftover from fighting" (123-124).

Othello's gift, then, comes from a history of mannerisms involving a mother's intimacy, and perhaps an awareness of Othello's own maturity in the form of adolescent nocturnal emissions. Recieving such an item, then, demonstrates a closeness between the triad of Othello, his mother, and Desdemona. His love will be insured through Desdemona's keeping of a mother's personal, even embarassing item.

Why Othello would want Desdemona to have such an item is unclear, unless we consider Freud's psychoanalytic theory. Clearly, Othello suffers from a misplaced Oedipal complex, repressed through his love affair with a woman of anther race.