The “Un”-Sexed Women of Macbeth

Lady Macbeth: so heartless, brutal, and viciously cruel. Anyone who could, even in jest, talk about dashing in the brains of a smiling infant must be deranged.  And, yet, I wonder whether she is all talk, and the only power that she has is in beguiling and manipulating Macbeth.  Why, I wonder, is it so important to her that Macbeth secure the throne?  Everyone wants some semblance of power, and this basic human drive easily turns into pathology.  Perhaps, Lady Macbeth’s desire to be the Queen is sourced in her own sense of disempowerment as a woman in the hierarchy of Scottish society during the Elizabethan era; as far as society is concerned, she is nothing but a pawn of her father and husband.   In order to embody evil, she must call to supernatural forces to fill her with the “direst cruelty”(I.v.50).   While Lady Macbeth criticizes Macbeth for being cowardly and “unmanly,” she reveals her weakness when she admits that she would have done the deed of killing Duncan had he not resembled her father.  I think this admittance does suggest the inescapably of her paternalistic servitude. Lady Macbeth bolsters that she is "man" enough to go back to Duncan's

crime scene, and that only children are afraid of the dead, but it is Lady Macbeth who falls apart in the end, and eventually takes her own life (we are led to assume), because she is so riddled with guilt.  While Macbeth lives in torment, he also comes to embrace the tyrannous monster that he has become.  When Malcolm and Macduff have laid siege on his homestead, Macbeth comes face to face with Siward, whom he violently slays.  After the young man is slain, Macbeth scorns him in saying, “Thou wast born of woman./But swords I smile at, weapons laugh to scorn,/Branished by man that’s of a woman born (V.vii.15-18).  Being a woman is Lady Macbeth’s weakness.  Having any link to the nurturance of a yielding woman is the downfall of all.  Macduff, who was ripped from his mother’s womb too early, is the only one who is able to bring peace to the kingdom. 

Ultimately, it is the witches, the “Weird Sisters” who haunt Macbeth, and who are the ones who instigate the whole chain of events that lead to Macbeth’s downfall.  Lady Macbeth aligns with their supernatural powers, becoming as like the incarnate of an evil womanhood.  The “women” enact their destruction through the manipulation of the powers of Hecate, the goodness of darkness.  The witches personify the grotesqueness of a woman more powerful than her place, one who calls upon the sinister to do her “unnatural” bidding. 

Much Ado About Womanhood

Ending with harmony and joy, Much Ado About Nothing is an engagingly playful comedy that leaves the audience feeling light of spirit.  Beatrice is one of the most dynamic and interesting female characters Shakespeare ever wrote, as she is bursting with spirit, intelligence, humor, and compassion. Her banter with Benedick is ingenious, ripe with multiple layers of irony and subtexts.  The beauty of Beatrice is that she is utterly likeable; she is not coarse like Katharina, naive like Juliet, or docile like Hero, or simplistic like Bianca.  She is a woman in command, yet charming enough to get away with it.  And, yet, Beatrice is not too proud to expose her kindly heart, as she dies a thousand deaths with Hero or gently refutes Don Pedro’s offer to marry her. In Kenneth Branagh’s film adaptation, Emma Thompson does a brilliant job personify the feisty vitality of this character.  

Beatrice surrenders easily to Benedick’s alleged love of her, but is not “tamed” like Katharina.  In a final confrontation between Benedick and Beatrice, he asks her if she loves him, to which she responds, “Why, no; no more than reason” (V.iv.78).  Beatrice refuse to show her belly under Benedick has first.  As a side note, speaking of Beatrice,

Even though women were subjugated by men in the Elizabethan era, and were expected to obey and  submit to the finer sex, it is not completely out of sync that Shakespeare created a strong woman suggestive of a woman from freer social times.  Women like Beatrice likely did exist, and did so in the likeness of the archetype of Queen Elizabeth herself.  If a woman like Beatrice in his time was as rare as the cuckoo bird, then Shakespeare was more than the visionary we have ever imagined.

The one aspect of the play that remains unsettling is Hero’s besmirching and her unquestioning forgiveness of the wrong.  She is powerless and does not think twice about it—her fate is in her father’s and her future husband’s control.  It is a sad case that is, unfortunately, as realistic as any other detail in the play.  A disgraced woman was to be dispensed of.   

Tame or Be Tamed!

I speculate that “shrews” have always since the beginning of mankind, or, shall I say, hot-headed, temperamental women have existed since the beginning of time.  Actually, According to Online Etymology, the term that describes a woman who is "peevish, malignant, clamorous, spiteful, vexatious, turbulent" originates in the late 14 century, so the fully assigned label had been used and worn for quite a while by the time Shakespeare had written his canon.   It is clear that Shakespeare loved to create feisty female characters with tongues like whips, as much as he depicted docile and naive maids like Juliet or Desdemona.  One does wonder, though, whether Shakespeare was merely have a jolly good time in drawing these characterizations, or whether his goal with to appeal to the masses;  I imagine it was a little of both.  Pamela Allen Brown wrote a brilliant chapter in her book Better a Shrew than a Sheep which was devoted to “Shrews Versus Wife Beaters.”  From what she has gathered, it appears that Elizabethan women did rally together to gain vengeance against men who had mistreated a fellow “sister,” so to speak.  Whether these stories were mere folktales, or whether there were women who did act out spitefully, such behavior runs contrary to obligations of the social role assigned to women in the Elizabethan era. 

Kate is such a vulgar misanthrope that her character is equally comically and vexing. Why does she act the way she does?  Is she envious of her sister, angry about social conventions, or saddened by her father’s lack of affection?  Even more puzzling is the fact that, upon marrying Petruchio, she flips around denounces her shrewish ways, announcing that she is a reformed woman:  a dutiful wife.   Our unbridled Kate is submitting to the servitude that is asked of her?   Nobody really has a complete explanation.  I assert that Kate is neither winking at us in her last monologue nor is she broken—both of those interpretations are merely part of the playful multi-dimensionality of Shakespeare’s playwright.  No, instead Kate is a comedic character fulfilling the role of a Shakespearean comedy.  Shakespearean comedies are fundamentally about love and social harmony.  They end harmoniously, settled.  Kate undergoes a transformation that brings her harmony.

This theme is fully played out in the BBC’s ShakespeaRe-Told production of Taming of the Shrew.  Kate has so alienated other people that her meeting of Petruchio pulled her out of her isolation.  He clearly melted her as he mirrored some of the erratic and coarse behavior that she displayed herself.  Petruchio made her a human and led her to a fully life—one that was rich with love.  Even though I tend to be critical of modern remakes, I thought this production was divine, and the masculinization of the female roles enhanced the contrast between the traditional definitions of an Elizabethan woman from that of a modern woman.   

Juliet in Modern Times

This past week, we viewed Luhrmann’s modern film adaptation of Romeo and Juliet.  The Juliet from this film was a modern girl with modern love issues, who had an overbearing father and was caught betwixt a civil dispute between her family and the family of her lover.  This Juliet was not a subjugated young lady from the Renaissance Age.  This week we also read the words of John Knox in Against the Monstrous Regime of  Women which blasted Queen Regent, Mary of Guise.  In the piece, Knox quoted Augustine as stating that,

“’Woman,’ says he, ‘compared to other creatures, is the image of God, for she bears dominion over them. But compared unto man, she may not be called the image of God, for she bears not rule and lordship over man, but ought to obey him[…]The woman shall be subject to man as unto Christ. For woman,’ says he, ‘has not her example from the body and from the flesh, that so she shall be subject to man, as the flesh is unto the Spirit[…]’” (Augustine quoted in Knox 1558).

Luhrmann’s Juliet seemed to have a head on her shoulder and command of her will.  Even the domineering attitude of her father, particularly in the explosive moment when he overreacted to her refusal to marry Paris, came across as a frustration with a precocious child.  On the DB, I expressed my distaste for Luhrmann’s film because of the liberty it took with the historical context and the “slaughtering” of Shakespeare’s intent and meaning.   It did not highlight the trials and tribulations of an Elizabethan lass, nor that of a young maid of the Renaissance era.  However, it was a story of a young girl with modern or timeless (is it set in the future, present, or parallel universe?) issues. 

Juliet: Through the Eyes of Zeffirelli

Zeffirelli’s version of Romeo and Juliet is probably my favorite.  Olivia Hussey plays a wide-eyed, breathtakingly beautiful Juliet who is innocent yet headstrong.  She is coy, but knows what she wants.  She is subservient but doesn’t hesitate to talk back to her mother and her nurse.   On this week’s Discussion Board I talked about how Juliet was torn in her devotion to her father and her husband.  In some ways, according to Renaissance society she is correct by choosing to align with her husband, Romeo, because she is her father’s property while she is a maid and her husband’s when she is no longer.  However, she had not been given permission by her father to marry Romeo, therefore, that marriage would not have been honored. She was in a tough bind; one which she would not have won. If she had succeeded in her scheme to run off to Mantua, I imagine that if or when Lord Capulet found out that she was indeed alive and well living in wedlock with Romeo Montague, she would be dragged back by her toenails to be punished by death, perhaps.  Renaissance men did not take kindly to disobedience by their daughters.  As Juliet admitted to her father, “I am forever ruled by you” ( 4.2, 21).  She is right:  the only door to her autonomy is through death.  It surprises me that Friar Laurence believed that his interception would somehow enable a transcendence of the social norms of the time, or would even repair the schism between the two families--he should have known better.
Nonetheless,   Zeffirelli captured the innocence and purity of a noble maid; the coarseness of an enslaved nurse who had no life of her own except to serve her noble family; the adoring eyes of a mother (Lady Montague) whose sole surviving child is a prized son; and the envy, suspicion, and slight bitterness of a woman (Lady Capulet) who was imprisoned in a dutiful marriage before her time when she was merely a ripe young maid.  No, I do not envy any of these women.

Bound: The Story of a Elizabethan Womanhood

Last week I extrapolated on how the character Juliet conformed to the gender role assigned to her by Elizabethan society.   Since the film Shakespeare in Love took the creative liberties to create a female lead (Viola De Lesseps) by whom Juliet was based what implied to have been based on, the film echoed the embedded boundaries and expectations that defined a women’s role in Elizabethan society.  Like Juliet, Viola De Lesseps ‘s destiny was written at her conception when the double XX chromosomes were fused.  Viola was to live a life of obedience, obscurity, and subservience to the man the ruled her, whether it be her father or her husband.  She was bartered off to Lord Wessex like a piece of property, and Wessex was assured that he could “send her back” if she did not turn out to be “fertile” and “obedient”  (Shakespeare in Love).
Viola was passionate about the poetry of words and theatre, and “just wanted to be an actor” (ibid).  Disinterested in the bores of court, she felt a kinship with artists and writers.  Her call to the theatre was desperate enough that she bound her breasts and auditioned for Romeo disguised as a male.  However, she could not escape the yoke of her destiny—her gender choked her like a noose and John Webster “outed” her and forced The Rose to halt production due to “lewdness” and “indecency.”  It seems foreign to think that the mere presence of a woman on the stage was consider a conspiracy in offensiveness.

Viola was a romantic who believed in love, but was also pragmatic.  Unlike Juliet, she did not assert her agency by changing the course of action, as it concerned her impending marriage.  She accepted was most modern post-feminist Western woman would consider in no way acceptable: that she had no choice.  What I find to be most interesting is that while most Elizabethan woman had no rights, the country was ruled by one venerable woman, Queen Elizabeth.  In the film, men of all statuses were shaking in their boots in her presence, and she even stated “I know who I am,” (ibid)by which she meant that she was fully aware of her power.  However, the only way to maintain the elusiveness of her power was by being “unsexed,” in Lady MacBeth fashion; the Queen chose to be ambiguous in her sexuality, so as not to make herself weakened, nurturing, and vulnerable.  She maintained her virginity (at least to the public) did not give her power a way to anyone.  Quite a contrast from the average woman of her day, won’t you agree?

Work Cited

Shakespeare in Love. Dir. John Madden. Perf. Joseph Fiennes, Gwyneth Paltrow, Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, Judi Dench, and Ben Affleck.  Miramax, 1998. Film.

To Deny thy Father's Name or not to Deny thy Father's Name: That is the Question, Juliet

Beauty, modesty, passivity, and obedience—these are the essential ingredients that were prescribed to a Renaissance woman.  A sparkling Renaissance beauty came into this world to be held under total dominion of her father until she was married whereby the power would be transferred to her husband.  She was to fully submit to her husband, and uphold her role as a  dutiful wife.  Beauty was the a key attribute for a Renaissance women, and as scholar Carroll Camden described, “[..] it appears to be the order of nature that what is lacking in one sex is supplied in the other, and since man is endowed with wit, judgment, and a mind almost divine[…]woman is given bodily beauty that she may be superior to man in this respect” (Camden 20).
Enter Juliet: young, chaste, royal, and beautiful.  She starts out by informing us that she is not quite the dutiful Renaissance girl by insisting right away that she ever wants to get married.   In Act III
Juliet fully pronounces her free agency declaring,

"I will not marry yet, and when I do I swear

It shall be Romeo, whom you know I hate,

Rather than Paris.   These are news indeed!"( 3.5.121-23)

Now Juliet did not outright speak these words directly to her father but to her mother.  To her father she respectfully asked to be heard to which Lord Capulet replied,

Hang thee, young baggage! disobedient wretch

 I tell thee what: get thee to church o' Thursday,

Or never after look me in the face:

 Speak not, reply not, do not answer me ( 3.5.160-3).

As a young Renaissance woman Juliet was required to obey her father’s will at any cost.  Juliet was aware that she could only gain autonomy through a subversive means which is why she stewed up a plot to fake her death and run off with Romeo.

Towards the end of Act III Juliet compliantly approached her father, expressing repentance for her unruliness.

              Where I have learn'd me to repent the sin

Of disobedient opposition

To you and your behests, and am enjoin'd

By holy Laurence to fall prostrate here,

 And beg your pardon: pardon, I beseech you!

Henceforward I am ever ruled by you. (3.5.16-21).

Juliet knew that she had no option but to demonstrate deference for her father.  And yet did not put a stop to her rebellion.  She rebelled and lost her life.  Perhaps death was the only way to break the constraining bounds. 

Works Cited

Camden, Carroll. The Elizabethan Woman. Mamaroneck, NY: Paul A. Appel, 1975. 
Shakespeare, William. Romeo and Juliet. Ed. K. Deighton. London: Macmillan, 1916. Shakespeare Online. 20 Feb. 2010. 05 Sept. 2011 < http://www.shakespeare-online.com/plays/romeo_3_5.html >.