Flaws and the analysis of flaws are common in literature, partly because of their universal appeal to all people. People either read these because they acknowledge and enjoy their flaws or have a certain schadenfreude, which means that writers can explore this without fear of completely alienating their audience. In Shakespeare’s famous The Tragedy of Othello, for example, Othello is a very honorable man who is manipulated by Iago. On the face of it, the play seems like nothing but another tired “journey” into good and evil, but one must look further than the mask (so to speak). Othello thinks he is cuckolded and slowly starts to lose his mental stability, but he is too prideful to admit this to his wife Desdemona and when he finally confronts her she is too innocent to understand the implications of his accusations. There are flaws in both the characters, and (intentionally or non-intentionally) there are many more as one needs flaws to make a character. Shakespeare and Browning have different ways and reasons to explore flaws and these ways will be analysed below.

Shakespeare often makes his characters very flawed, because he uses these flaws to justify any mistakes that his characters make during the course of his plays. For example, one of Othello’s flaws is that he is too trusting. He trusts Iago too much despite the fact that his instinct tells him not to. He asks Iago for “ocular proof” and Iago replies “Is’t come to tis?” which is him manipulating Othello. When Iago is saying this, he is challenging the roots of Othello’s friendship. Shakespeare is very astutely using dramatic irony because the audience knows that Iago is a charlatan but Othello doesn’t. Iago uses Othello’s trust and turns it against the people that are loyal to him (Cassio and Desdemona). Othello murdering Desdemona is then later justified by Lodovico who understands that he was manipulated by Iago. “To you, lord governor, remains the censure of this hellish villain”, this is him directing this statement to Iago because he realises Iago’s guilt.

In Browning’s work, he presents flaws more as an important characteristic. In regards to Browning, one could say that the flaws of a character is their character (not to imply that Browning’s character have no depth, quite the contrary, but I digress). In Porphyria’s Lover, the narrator’s main flaw is his mental instability (as is evidenced by not only the murder but how he murdered her) and the poem is centered almost exclusively around it. The entire poem is in iambic tetrameter and in one large paragraph which one could interpret as a very rapid and rash stream of thought. The narrator almost glazes over the murder claiming “No pain felt she; I am quite sure she felt no pain.”, although he though mentions it repeatedly but more implicitly at other times. The narrator is not the only character that is flawed, Porphyria herself is built as promiscuous and a seductress. I believe that this is intentional on Robert Browning’s part to portray the events more equally instead of making the entire monologue a good versus bad monologue. Robert Browning was a staunch anti-spiritualist and despised the morality people derived from God, I believe that is why the line “And God has not said a word!” was added. I think this is a specific jab towards the derived morality people tend to have. Almost all of his poems have a very dark and ominous setting, which is usually juxtaposed with a religious setting (by setting, I mean place). In The Laboratory, the potion is made in an apothecary which was in a cathedral, in the poem Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister, the entire dramatic monologue is set in a monastery etc. I think Browning intentionally does this to show the Church in a negative light or to make the problems of the church more known.

In Othello, nearly all the characters are flawed and I believe that Shakespeare does this intentionally to add an element of realism in this play. Desdemona is partly responsible for her own demise because she always has an air of culpability and is very forgiving of her husband (even upon her murder, by her husband). “Unkindness may do much and his unkindness may defeat my life but never taint my love”. She even tries to absolve her killer (Othello) by claiming she killed herself. I think her fault is intentional because Shakespeare has written her as the embodiment of good in Othello. Desdemona is kind, loving and very forgiving and Shakespeare uses her to show a rather bleak message, that the embodiment of evil in Othello’s life (Iago) overpowers him. Evil vanquishing good was something that was unheard of in the entertainment at the time. Browning, on the other hand, uses his character’s flaws not as representations of the inner struggle of man but rather as things that determine the behavior of the character themselves. Like in Childe Roland,  where Roland’s paranoia affects the decision he makes in regards to the “hoary cripple”. Childe Roland is a tired knight-to-be on a quest that seems to never end, throughout his journey he develops a sense of nihilism and cynicism: “What else should he be set for, with his staff? What, save to waylay with his lies, ensnare, All travellers who might find him posted there”. This quote shows his paranoia because he is making assumptions about an old man and they are largely centered around the old man harming him. Yet, Childe Roland does as he says, not because he believes the old man but rather it would accelerate the end of his journey. This shows that Childe Roland’s fault is his lethargy. He feels contempt and boredom in regards to his “mission” and is looking for an end to it. The reasons that started his lethargy are explored and his lethargy stems from a sense of his journey being arbitrary. By this, I mean that his journey has dragged on for so long that he has lost all the passion he used to have. His passion was battered by the harsh realities of life and that is when his lethargy begins. Roland has lost a lot in this journey with no reward or acknowledgement. Shakespeare uses the classic binary “good and bad” to mask his complexity.

Flaws are used by Browning to diversify his characters whilst Shakespeare uses them as a characteristic for the audience to remember them by. These two different methods often change the entire meaning and course of the pieces.