peer review

Back to Basics: The Importance of Communication in Healthy Relationships

My paper talks about relationships in William Shakespeare’s plays Othello and Much Ado. Specifically, it focuses on the nature of communication in the two plays. It is up for debate whether communication is included in a healthy relationship. I haven’t yet decided whether I want to limit my scope to romantic and sexual relationships, but I may decide to do so. I do have some research that is really good for not those specific types, and I may want to throw that in there. Now here is my main claim. William Shakespeare, in his comedy Much Ado about Nothing and his tragedies Romeo and Juliet and Othello, the Moor of Venice, explores the idea that healthy relationships are founded on communication and mutual trust, and relationships that do not incorporate these practices are doomed to failure, death, and destruction.

Othello, the Moor of Venice is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare. The play revolves around Iago, an aide to military general Othello. In the play, Iago undermines the marriage of Othello and Othello’s wife, Desdemona. “The Moor is of a free and open nature / That thinks men honest that but seem to be so / And will as tenderly be led by the nose / As asses are” (Othello, I.III). Iago is under the delusion that Othello has been sleeping with his wife, and acts on this presumption, working his way further into Othello’s confidence until he can make any statement and have Othello believe him. Eventually, Othello becomes so deceived by Iago’s treachery that he murders Desdemona. Othello believes that she has been committing adultery with Othello’s lieutenant, Cassio.

Romeo and Juliet is perhaps Shakespeare’s most infamous tragedy. “From forth the fatal loins of these two foes / A pair of star cross’d lovers take their life / Whose misadventur’d piteous o’erthrows / Doth with their death bury their parents’ strife” (Romeo and Juliet, Prologue). Two warring families, the Montagues and Capulets, each sire a child. Romeo, the Montague, and Juliet, the Capulet, meet at a Capulet party that Romeo has snuck into with his friends. The two become infatuated with each other and are married by a Benedictine friar. Juliet’s quarrelsome cousin Tybalt attacks Romeo’s friend Mercutio and slays him. Romeo kills Tybalt in a fit of rage and is banished from Verona for his crime. Meanwhile, Juliet has been arranged to marry County Paris, a local nobleman. Juliet convinces the friar to put her into a temporary coma and advise Romeo of the situation so he can return and whisk her away from the city. Romeo never receives the message, and upon returning to Verona, believes Juliet to be dead. He kills himself moments before she awakes, and she commits suicide despite the friar’s attempts to take her away to a nunnery.

After a short and uneventful civil war, soldiers Benedick and Claudio, with the captive rebel leader Don John in tow, begin a stay in Messina. Claudio immediately becomes infatuated with Hero, their host’s daughter, and asks for her hand in marriage. Benedick once again runs into Beatrice, Hero’s cousin, with whom he shares an ongoing battle of wits. Don John hears of the impending nuptials and takes it upon himself to wreak civil havoc. He convinces his compatriots to make it appear that Hero is unfaithful to Claudio, and dresses one of her servants in her nightgown. Claudio is invited to view the servant and Borachio (Don John’s aide) in an intimate setting, where the servant is called Hero. The next day, Claudio denounces Hero at their wedding and leaves her. During this action, Benedick and Beatrice have each been convinced that the other is in love with them. As everyone exits from the failed wedding, Beatrice and Benedick each profess their love for each other, and Beatrice demands that Benedick kill Claudio as his first act of love for her. Benedick offers to talk to Claudio and try to get him to see reason. In the end, Benedick and Beatrice are married, and Leonato (Hero’s father and the house-holder) offers a fictional other daughter (actually Hero) as Claudio’s bride if he admits his wrongdoing. He does, and he and Hero are wed. This is the plot of William Shakespeare’s comedy Much Ado about Nothing.

Communication skills are a constantly developing and improving field. In “The American Family: Where We Are Today”, history and family studies teacher Stephanie Coontz notes that “People who raised children in the 1940s and 1950s typically report that their own adult children and grandchildren communicate far better with their kids … than they did” (13). This subjective information shows us that people who raised children in the 40s and 50s can recognise that their communication with their kids has been surpassed by their children’s communication with their offspring. If most people have the ability to recognise improved methods of communication, society should see growth in the ability to communicate.

Research on familial communication (including that between parents and their children, and spouses) has been published since the 1980s. In their article “An Examination of Family Communication within the Core and Balance Model of Family Leisure Functioning” (2009), Kevin Smith, Patti Freeman, and Ramon Zabriskie refer to previous research as they argue that families with improved communication skills have healthier levels of emotional codependence and healthy techniques for adapting to both short-term and long-term change (79-81). These studies of models of family relationships provide an objective base from which to draw conclusions about communication’s effect on family life. This proves that the field is considered valid by scholars and merits study.

In Othello, the Moor of Venice, Othello fails to communicate with Desdemona and uses physical action to express his unfounded anger. In the latter parts of Othello, Iago convinces Othello that Cassio has had sex with Desdemona. “I will make him tell the tale anew-- / Where, how, how oft, and when / He hath, and is again to cope your wife:” (IV.1). “Cope” refers to a sexual act; “making the beast with two backs” is another euphemism for mating that Iago uses earlier in the play. Later in the scene, Othello confronts Desdemona, and instead of asking her whether she has committed adultery with Cassio, strikes her. In Act IV, Scene 1, Othello trusts the unvetted accusations of Iago over the statements made by his own wife. This shows how communication in Othello and Desdemona’s relationship is flawed because Othello does not trust Desdemona to be truthful. His striking her shows that she loses worth in his eyes and becomes something that needs to be punished instead of valued.

Listening is a central part of communication. If the needs of each party are not understood, the relationship will founder. In Much Ado about Nothing, William Shakespeare creates a positive environment for communication. In their blog post, Tumblr user Penfairy argues that “Beatrice stands up and rails against men for their cruel conduct towards women. … And Benedick, her suitor, listens to her (sic)”. User Penfairy argues that in this scene (Act 4, Scene 1), by Benedick being willing to listen to Beatrice, he is able to overcome his male-dominated views of the world and see things in a more compassionate light. Had Benedick not listened to Beatrice, and tried to solve the problems of the play by himself, Much Ado about Nothing could quite easily become a tragedy. Harmony is restored in Much Ado, because, unlike in Romeo and Juliet, characters are capable of listening to each other.

Works Cited

Coontz, Stephanie. “The American Family: Where We Are Today.” U.S. Diplomatic Mission to Germany, U.S. Embassy, Jan. 2001, usa.usembassy.de/etexts/soc/ijse0101.pdf. Accessed 9 Feb. 2017.

Coontz, Stephanie. “The Real Story of the American Family.” The American Prospect, vol. 26, no. 2, Spring 2015, prospect.org/article/real-story-american-family. Accessed 8 Feb. 2017.

Coontz, Stephanie. “Women’s Equality Not Quite There Yet.” stephaniecoontz.com, The Evergreen State College, 7 Mar. 2011, www.stephaniecoontz.com/articles/article63.htm. Accessed 8 Feb. 2017.

Corbett, Lisa Ashley. Male Dominance and Female Exploitation: A Study of Female Victimization in William Shakespeare’s Othello, Much Ado about Nothing, and Hamlet. 2009. Clark Atlanta University, PhD dissertation. DigitalCommons, digitalcommons.auctr.edu/dissertations/93/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2017. In her thesis “Male Dominance and Female Exploitation: A Study of Female Victimization in William Shakespeare’s Othello, Much Ado about Nothing, and Hamlet”, Lisa Ashley Corbett examines how women are made inferior in the face of male competition. In examining Much Ado, Corbett argues that Claudio, a soldier, “dehumanizes” Hero, his bride-to-be, by slandering her on their wedding day. Corbett then examines how Iago is able to trick Othello into believing that Desdemona has cheated on Othello, legitimizing this action by arguing that Othello is more trusting of his male advisor than his own wife. In Hamlet, the title character ignores his companion Ophelia’s descent into madness and is part of the reason she drowns. Corbett argues that all three of these characters; Desdemona, Hero, and Ophelia become victims of male ego and bullishness. 

This thesis has a nearly perfect score on the CRAAP test, only wavering because there is no contact information for the author (even though such information could be acquired through university resources. The requirements for a thesis paper to be submitted are not as rigorous as an academic article, but I expect, given the evident quality of the work, that Corbett had a long and involved research and revision process. The paper lists some forty different sources in its bibliography, evidence that it was extensively researched.

Crawley, Jocelyn Dukes. On Gender and Identity in Three Shakespearean Texts. 2010. Georgia State University, PhD thesis. Semantic Scholar, www.semanticscholar.org/paper/On-Gender-and-Identity-in-Three-Shakespearean-Crawley-Crawley/9d6eca44e04cabf06b8e234bfbda1c337218eccb. Accessed 12 Feb. 2017. Jocelyn Crawley’s “On Gender and Identity in Three Shakespearean Texts” examines how Shakespeare wrote male and female characters with different aspects in mind, based on the ideas of masculinity and femininity in Elizabethan England. Crawley examines Kate and Petruchio’s relationship in The Taming of the Shrew as Petruchio forces Kate to accede to his statements, no matter how false they are. Kate’s eventual submission is the “taming” referenced in the title. In Othello, Desdemona agrees to take a backseat to Othello and Brabantio (her husband and father, respectively) as they decide the outcome of her life. With this, Desdemona loses her agency in the play and ends up smothered by her husband after he believes she was unfaithful. Crawley goes on to argue that Romeo’s obsession with Juliet in Romeo and Juliet causes him to lose focus on the rivalry between his family and hers that plagues Verona. Crawley ends their paper with the claim that Shakespeare’s plays are fraught with patriarchal subtext.

This paper has a solid list of other scholarly sources that lend it credence. Because it examines Shakespeare’s work, it being current is of less import than it would be for more modern topics (apartheid, for one). I am happy to use this paper as a source in my work because it is of higher-level academics than my own, even though it is written by an undergraduate student. The claims in this paper are very well-supported and accessible to readers familiar with the plays. There is no discernible bias in the paper that reduces its legitimacy. 

Othello. Directed by Jonathan Miller, performance by Anthony Hopkins, Bob Hoskins, and Penelope Wilton, BBC, 1981. Othello is a film adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Othello, The Moor of Venice, produced by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in 1981. See http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082861/fullcredits?ref_=tt_ov_st_sm for full cast and crew listing.

Penfairy. Weblog post. Perfidious Snatch: Fatalistic Piece of Bread, Dec. 2016, penfairy.tumblr.com/tagged/shakespeare/page/4. Accessed 1 Feb. 2017. In an untitled December 2016 blog post, Tumblr contributor Penfairy demonstrates how women in Shakespeare’s plays, when they are appreciated, keep society healthy; and when they are ignored, have society crumble around them. The author examines the tragedies Romeo and Juliet, Othello, Hamlet, and King Lear, and juxtaposes them with the comedies As You Like It, Much Ado about Nothing, The Merry Wives of Windsor, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and the romances The Tempest, The Winter’s Tale, and Cymbeline. Each category of the plays has a different flavor. The tragedies have oppressed female characters that are ignored at the cost of lives; the comedies, active female protagonists; and the romances, daughters and wives through whose compassion the men are redeemed. The destruction of this society brought about with the tragedies compares to spiking divorce and abuse rates in the late 20th century, as the model of the nuclear family started to fall apart.

This information is not current, but it does not need to be, as Shakespeare’s plays have been around for four hundred years. There are no links to be used. The information answers some of my questions for Othello, mostly about the final stages of Othello and Desdemona’s relationship. The author is a self-professed ‘historian’, no credentials are given. The author can be contacted (I did in order to ask their permission to use the essay as a source) and is fairly quick to reply. URL reveals nothing additional to what is above. The evidence is all in the plays themselves, and so is easily accessible. While not reviewed, it is free of emotion and propagandist purpose. The general purpose is to inform, with a slight rebuke (the essay was prompted by a comment urging Penfairy to “Take a break from your women’s studies major and get some fresh air”.

Rallings, E. M. “Problems of Communication in Family Living.” The Family Coordinator, vol. 18, no. 3, 1969, pp. 289–291., www.jstor.org/stable/581997.

Shakespeare, William. William Shakespeare: Complete Plays. Compiled by Arthur Henry Bullen, New York, Fall River Press, 2012, pp. 818-57. William Shakespeare’s Othello, the Moor of Venice (1604) tells the story of a young couple who are broken by false jealousy. {more summary} This is an original work, therefore all the information in it is true within the world of the story. I looked through several Shakespeare tomes before choosing this one; I prefer it to my others because it is the most readable while maintaining the true text.

Smith, Kevin M., et al. “An Examination of Family Communication within the Core and Balance Model of Family Leisure Functioning.” Family Relations, vol. 58, no. 1, 2009, pp. 79–90., www.jstor.org/stable/20456838.