SOURCE: Cohen, Derek. “Patriarchy and Jealousy in Othello and The Winter's Tale.” Modern Language Quarterly 48, no. 3 (September 1987): 207-23.

In the following essay, Cohen compares the jealousy of Othello with that of King Leontes of The Winter's Tale, examining their fantasies of wifely infidelity and their need to regain social control and status through murderous sacrifice.

By accusing their wives of sexual infidelity, Othello and Leontes give themselves a desperately needed motive for expressing in words what they both love and fear—the image of their wives making love to other men. They transform sexual agony into an instrument of passionate blame in a kind of narcissistic adventure that enforces a transcendence of their known selves by actualizing a secret fear. They then transform the imagined sexual infidelity of their wives into a fear of chaos. Because patriarchal social formations invest female sexual fidelity with the responsibility for familial...