indeed, we have already a slight example in her overflowing kindness, her boldness and her ill-fated persistence in pleading Cassio’s cause.  But the full ripening of her lovely and noble nature was not to be.  In her brief wedded life she appeared again chiefly as the sweet and submissive being of her girlhood; and the strength of her soul, first evoked by love, found scope to show itself only in a love which, when harshly repulsed, blamed only its own pain; when bruised, only gave forth a more exquisite fragrance; and, when rewarded with death, summoned its last labouring breath to save its murderer.

Many traits in Desdemona’s character have been described with sympathetic insight by Mrs. Jameson, and I will pass them by and add but a few words on the connection between this character and the catastrophe of Othello.  Desdemona, as Mrs. Jameson remarks, shows less quickness of intellect and less tendency to reflection than most of Shakespeare’s heroines; but I question whether the critic is right in adding that she shows much of the ‘unconscious address common in women.’  She seems to me deficient in this address, having in its place a frank childlike boldness and persistency, which are full of charm but are unhappily united with a certain want of perception.  And these graces and this deficiency appear to be inextricably intertwined, and in the circumstances conspire tragically against her.  They, with her innocence, hinder her from understanding Othello’s state of mind, and lead her to the most unlucky acts and words; and unkindness or anger subdues her so completely that she becomes passive and seems to drift helplessly towards the cataract in front.

In Desdemona’s incapacity to resist there is also, in addition to her perfect love, something which is very characteristic.  She is, in a sense, a child of nature.  That deep inward division which leads to clear and conscious oppositions of right and wrong, duty and inclination, justice and injustice, is alien to her beautiful soul.  She is not good, kind and true in spite of a temptation to be otherwise, any more than she is charming in spite of a temptation to be otherwise.  She seems to know evil only by name, and, her inclinations being good, she acts on inclination.  This trait, with its results, may be seen if we compare her, at the crises of the story, with Cordelia.  In Desdemona’s place, Cordelia, however frightened at Othello’s anger about the lost handkerchief, would not have denied its loss.  Painful experience had produced in her a conscious principle of rectitude and a proud hatred of falseness, which would have made a lie, even one wholly innocent in spirit, impossible to her; and the clear sense of justice and right would have led her, instead, to require an explanation of Othello’s agitation which would have broken Iago’s plot to pieces.  In the same way, at the final crisis, no instinctive terror of death would have compelled Cordelia suddenly to relinquish her demand for justice and to plead for life.  But these moments are fatal to Desdemona, who acts precisely as if she were guilty; and they are fatal because they ask for something which, it seems to us, could hardly be united with the peculiar beauty of her nature.