Othello’s jealousy was of the sensual, Oriental sort.  So far as it led to the murder, it was; but Shakspere gave it touches which allied it to the true jealousy of the heart of which Schlegel himself has aptly said that it is “compatible with the tenderest feeling and adoration of the beloved object.”  Of such tender feeling and adoration there is not a trace in the passion of the Indian who bites off his wife’s nose or lower lip to disfigure her, or who ruthlessly slays her for doing once what he does at will.  Such expressions as “outraged affection,” or “alienated affection,” do not apply to him, as there is no affection in the case at all; no more than in that of the old Persian or Turk who sews up one of his hundred wives in a sack and throws her into the river because she was starving and would eat of the fruits of the tree of knowledge.  This Oriental jealousy is often a “dog-in-the-manger” feeling.  The Iroquois were the most intelligent of North American Indians, yet in cases of adultery they punished the woman solely, “who was supposed to be the only offender” (Morgan, 331).  Affection is out of the question in such cases, anger at a slave’s disobedience, and vengeance, being the predominant feelings.  In countries where woman is degraded and enslaved, as Verplanck remarks (III., 61),

“the jealous revenge of the master husband, for real or imagined evil, is but the angry chastisement of an offending slave, not the terrible sacrifice of his own happiness involved in the victim’s punishment. When woman is a slave, a property, a thing, all that jealousy may prompt is done, to use Othello’s own distinction, ‘in hate’ and ‘not in love.’”

Another equally vital distinction between the jealousy of savagery and civilization is indicated in these lines from Othello: 

                 I had rather be a toad,
     And live upon the vapor of a dungeon,
     Than keep a corner in the thing I love
     For other’s uses.

And again: 

I had been happy, if the general camp,
Pioners and all, had tasted her sweet body,
So I had nothing known.

ABSENCE OF MASCULINE JEALOUSY

It is the knowledge, or suspicion, that he has not a monopoly of his wife that tortures Shakspere’s Othello, and constitutes the essence of his jealousy, whereas a savage is his exact antipode in that respect; he cares not a straw if the whole camp shares the embraces of his wife—­provided he knows it and is rewarded for it.  Wounded pride, violated chastity, and broken conjugal vows—­pangs which goad us into jealousy—­are considerations unknown to him.  In other words, his “jealousy” is not a solicitude for marital honor, for wifely purity and affection, but simply a question of lending his property and being paid for it.  Thus, in the case of the Blackfeet Indians referred to a moment ago, the author declares that while they mutilated