“What I’m doing with mine today is to look at expectation versus actuality,” said Farnham. “We just started the play this week, and I thought I’d present some history about Elizabethan stereotypes of blacks.”
That sounded good to Warden. He had to respect Farnham for knowing his stuff. Here was Farnham, twenty-five years old and with less than three years of experience, giving advice to the chairman of the department. If only he didn’t wear that ridiculous little mustache. Groucho Marx had more hair in one eyebrow.
Warden had hired Farnham last year on the strength of his resume and the quality of his instruction, which Warden had seen firsthand when Farnham had taught a sample class as a part of his interview. The man was good, and he should have been, having graduated from a strong prep school in Chattanooga, finished high in his class at Bowdoin, completed a master’s in one year at Duke, and taught for two years at the Spring Hill Day School in Montgomery. Yet Warden had a hard time warming up to Farnham. The fellow was always trying too hard to be perfect. Warden suspected that he suffered from a sense of inferiority over his lack of height; Warden, at 6'2", was eight inches taller. Farnham compensated for his shortness by lifting weights and jogging and playing squash and even basketball. He had requested an apartment in the gym, and Dr. Lane had obliged him. There was no arguing Farnham’s fitness. At a party for the faculty last fall, Warden had seen him win a bet by bare-handedly twisting a soup can into a shape like a bow tie.
There was no question of his competence in the classroom or outside it, either. His students complained that he was tough; Warden liked that. Better to be too tough than to pander to students’ taste the way that new biology teacher, Carella, did. Farnham was professional enough to know that he wasn’t here to pal around with the students, but to guide them. His work in the theater was impressive, too. Last fall, with nearly every student who could breathe already signed up for one of the football teams, Farnham produced a clever pair of one-acts by Chekhov.
It bothered Warden that he couldn’t like Farnham better. Farnham was reliable, intelligent, talented, good for the department and for the school. Warden knew enough about psychology to realize that what he found distasteful in others was probably a mirror of his own weaknesses. And Warden himself was susceptible to feelings of inferiority, a physical inferiority with which he had been born, this red patch on his face, but also an academic inferiority, the result of his having grown up just down the road in Charlottesville, attending Montpelier School, and then earning a B.A. from the University of the South. He had no master’s degree himself. Even as a publishing poet, he could not get away from his disdain at his own flimsy academic pedigree. When Cynthia had announced her intention to go on for a doctorate, he had been pleased, of course, but he had also recognized a slight dismay that his wife would have a degree so much higher than his own.
He picked up a paper clip and began to straighten it. As Farnham talked about his approach to Othello, Warden wondered what he found so threatening about this earnest young man. Was it his job? Farnham was ambitious. He would make a good department head someday, Warden suspected; he was organized where Warden was haphazard, punctual where Warden was likely to forget entirely about a meeting he’d called himself. Or was it Cynthia, for whom Warden sensed Farnham had a powerful attraction? His job and his wife. How about your money or your life, Warden asked himself. He found his own behavior ridiculous.
“You disagree?” said Farnham.
“Not at all,” said Warden. Farnham had been talking about what, the appearance versus reality motif?
“It’s just that you started looking disgusted.”
Warden was embarrassed. “Not with you. I was distracted.”
“About Cynthia? Sorry she’s ill. I was quite upset when I heard,” said Farnham.
Warden assumed Farnham had heard from Sam Kaufman, who somehow had got wind of the news and had alarmed everyone on the campus. “We’re still hoping it’s a trivial illness,” said Warden.
They spent a few minutes talking about the typical Elizabethan image of a Moor: lascivious, passionate, dangerous. Warden hadn’t taught Othello for years, and he’d never approached it as a play about stereotypes. But there it was: Othello defies the audience’s expectations at the beginning of the play, then confirms them when he becomes the excitable and lusty African, then recovers his dignity at the end.
“That whole motif of expectation versus actuality runs through the whole play,” said Farnham. “We’ve got honest Iago, who turns out to be dishonest in the extreme, and Othello the Moor, who turns out to be noble, and then we’ve got the added problem of Desdemona, who turns out to be exactly what she appears to be—chaste and virtuous. Shakespeare plays around so much with his audience’s expectations that he makes it easier for us to believe Iago’s duping of Othello with a handkerchief.”
Farnham was warmed up, and he went on. Warden found himself drifting back to Cynthia, who was so damned stubborn about insisting that he carry on with his normal routine. He should be with her now. She was having a spinal tap this morning, then X-rays and a myelogram.
“Mr. Warden?” The voice came from the doorway. It was his advisee, Thomas Boatwright. “I was wondering if you were busy.”
“Of course I’m busy,” said Warden. That was so typical of these boys, to interrupt an essential conference and then plead ignorance. “Mr. Farnham and I
