Shakespeare's Women

Shakespeare's Women

Macbeth

In what Zimmerman (2000, 320) describes as 'the hallucinatory realm of Shakespeare's Macbeth', the picture of a society which is in meltdown is inextricably linked with the portrayal of gender categories that shift and collapse. The women characters in Macbeth - the witches and Lady Macbeth - drive Macbeth forward in his course and exercise a controlling power over his destiny. In that Lady Macbeth is portrayed as the energising and controlling force that impels Macbeth to kill Duncan, she is certainly characterised as being stronger willed that Macbeth. When Macbeth hesitates, she accuses him of cowardice: 'Artthou afeard / To be the same in thine act and valour, As thou art in desire?' (I.vii.39-41). Furthermore, she invokes the image of manliness and courage in action: 'When you durst do it, then you werea man' (I.vii.49). She shows no sign of entertaining the doubts andworries about failure that Macbeth voices. Yet, crucially, she cannot carry out the murder herself and this is for a very specific reason: 'Had he not resembled / My father as he slept, I had don't'(II.ii.13). In this moment, when Macbeth is in the very act of murdering Duncan, Lady Macbeth identifies the source of power that she cannot overcome: patriarchal power. For all her strength of character, Lady Macbeth is thwarted by the socially gendered role of a woman within a patriarchal society. Her attempts to subvert her feminine role are symbolically represented by the presence of the witches, whose presence on the margin of society demonstrate the destiny of women who challenge the status quo..

In early modern England, the social exclusion of some categories ofwomen was associated with witchcraft and it is the marginalized natureof feminine power that is embodied by the weird sisters. Newman (1991,56) comments:

Not only were the practitioners of witchcraft in England women, they were often disorderly or unruly women who transgressed cultural codes of femininity. ... Significantly, all those behaviours transgressing traditional gender roles were conflated - a witch typically was said to be a scold, a shrew; to 'live unquietly with her husband'; to be a'light woman' or a 'common harlot' - witches were regularly accused of sexual misconduct.

Women who were thus identified as transgressive were criminalized and punished. In Macbeth, the witches are situated outside of thenormal bounds of society, physically located on a heath. Their situation with regard to the normal bounds of femininity also places them outside. As Banquo comments, their humanity as well as their femininity is in doubt:

--What are these,

So wither'd and so wild in their attire,

That look not like th'inhabitants o' th' earth,

And yet are on't? Live you? Or are you aught

That man may question? You seem to understand me,

By each at once her choppy finger laying

Upon her skinny lips: you should be women,

And yet your beards forbid me to interpret

That you are so.(I.iii.39-47)

Here the utilisation of female characters to reveal what is most evil and fearful reveals the anxiety of early modern society about women who refuse to conform to traditional gender roles and usurp thepower which legitimately belongs to men. Thus, Banquo is confounded by the androgynous appearance of the witches who should be women, but havean appearance that is at odds with normal expectations. Rackin (2005,132) cites this as an example of 'the prototypically modern assumption that the qualities of gentleness and pity are naturally grounded in women's bodies'.

The social unease which these women embody is perhaps indicative of the uncertainties associated with the growth in mercantilism of the early modern period. Literacy increased during the reign of Elizabeth; cities expanded and there was a growing middle class who took advantage of the possibilities of social mobility. These social changes inevitably created uncertainty and the unease appears to have been particularly focussed upon changes in women's behaviour. Sermons and pamphlets of the period attempted to divert the flow of change byrestoring the older certainties and the traditional order. Lady Macbeth embodies the possibility and also the fear that is engendered by these social conditions. She is strongly motivated by ambition and she urges her husband to take the necessary action to achieve her goal. In a society based on order and authority, such behaviour is dangerous. Just as the witches' femininity has been called into question, so Lady Macbeth's pursuit of power is seen to reflect an aspect of her gender; her femininity has to be actively suppressed in order to take action. She calls up the powers of evil to 'unsex' her, replacing the soft and nurturing aspects of her nature with cruelty and murder.

Come, you Spirits

That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,

And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full

Of direst cruelty! ...

... Come to my woman's breasts,

And take my milk for gall, you murth'ring ministers,

Wherever in your sightless substances

You wait on Nature's mischief!(I.v.40- 43, 47-50)

In this overt rejection of the social expectations of femininity, Lady Macbeth allies herself with the witches and it is therefore unsurprising that the outcome of her action is that her state becomes marginalized by her descent into madness. As with Ophelia, madness isa state that is associated with existing outside of the normative boundaries of a socially gendered role. In this state, although Lady Macbeth comes from the aristocracy and is now Queen, her position becomes strongly associated with that of the witches, who areoutsiders. Janet Adelman (1995, 105) argues Lady Macbeth's affiliation with the witches becomes an embodiment of female power and that the play 'becomes ... a representation of primitive fears about male identity and autonomy itself, about those looming female presences who threaten to control one's actions and one's mind, to constitute one's very self, even at a distance'. The physical distancing of the witches is mirrored in the