Stephanie Chamberlain’s work on Lady Macbeth and the connected gender issue

It is from Lady Macbeth that Macbeth himself takes his images of manliness. His fears and scruples, his anxious dependence on his wife's opinions bespeak a sensitive 'femaleness' in his own nature which is visibly belied by her brutality. We are left in gender limbo" So Shakespeare seems to have deliberately chosen to examine what happens when a man or a woman departs from sexual stereotypes. In the case of Lady Macbeth, we see the tragic result of one who pushes for the ultimate act of violence, in a manly fashion, not able to predict the "manliness" she will unleash in her husband, or the distance it will create between herself and her "partner in greatness.

Women are a dangerous presence in Macbeth. According to Stephanie Chamberlain, fear of the power of women was a strong force in early modern England. Women could wield control over patrilineage in ways men could not. Women could be unfaithful in marriage, thus changing the lineage, and a husband could be duped into raising another man's child. Women could pass on traits, both wanted and unwanted, through nursing, rearing of children, and neglect of children. It was feared that women would commit infanticide.

Chamberlain tells us, "Perhaps no other early modern crime better exemplifies cultural fears about maternal agency than does infanticide, a crime against both person and lineage" 3. Coursen suggests, in fact, that the story of Adam and Eve underlies the entire play. He says, "The myth vibrating beneath the surface of Macbeth is of the original myths - that of the fall from a state of grace" When she says, ".

In Act I, scene seven, we see Lady Macbeth acting as the ultimate temptress. She skillfully pulls out all the stops to manipulate her husband. She does not stop there. Next, in the very same speech, Lady Macbeth utters the cryptic lines stating that, rather than back out of this promise to kill Duncan, she would sooner take "the babe that milks me: When Macbeth responds with, "If we should fail?

And she is not through yet. She has the entire plan worked out, and all her husband must do is follow instructions. Apparently, Macbeth feels he must prove his manhood to his wife even though seemingly all of Scotland has acknowledged his bravery and courage. By the end of a scene like this, what man could stand up to such a woman? Fear of women in early modern England is also evidenced by the accusations of witchcraft toward primarily women. The question is why were women the targets to such an overwhelming degree of this barbaric persecution, and why was this so readily accepted?

Where were the defenders of women? Anderson and Gordon point to the lowly position of women in the Middle Ages, "even in the earlier period of 'courtly love'" Anderson They quote Eileen Power when they say, "a fundamental tenet of Christian dogma was the subjection of women, while: The belief in witchcraft, therefore, was not new when King James took the throne of England in However, as in many things, Elizabeth took a moderate approach to their prosecution.

King James, on the other hand, fancied he was an expert, wrote his own book on the subject entitled Daemonologie , and even participated personally in some witch trials Best 1. A renewed and more enthusiastic persecution of witches was exported from Scotland along with their monarch. Between and , somewhere between three thousand and four thousand five hundred had "perished horribly" in Scotland, more thanin England, despite a much more meager population Anderson One of King James' acts once he took the English throne was to "extend the death penalty" to many more accused witches than had been the case under Elizabethan law.

The English, however, never matched the Scots in these large numbers. In fact, Anderson and Gordon report a study by Notestein suggesting that "self-confident and independent women who increasingly appear in late sixteenth and early seventeenth century drama probably mirrored real changes taking place in all levels of English society" Do the women of Shakespeare's Macbeth reflect a set of conflicting opinions about women of his day?

So we have a very conflicted image of women as source material for Shakespeare's Macbeth. On one hand, we have the text from Holinshed telling us that women were courageous and powerful members of the army in the Scotland of the eleventh century. On the other had, we have the women of Shakespeare's own time circumscribed to a very definite and subordinate role, while ever more independent women begin to appear. Simultaneously, and perhaps in part because of this, women are feared and persecuted, and seen as "inherently evil. Wouldn't women of be able to relate to operating in a society filled with conflicted feelings?

Lady Macbeth, of course, has her husband, and she very solicitously refers to him as "My thane. The superior position of the men must not be ignored if they hope to be at all persuasive. In Early Modern England, the patriarchal family was a value enforced from many directions, especially the Christian Church.

Bever explains, "European male leaders considered patriarchal families to be the foundation of society. The witches in Macbeth fly in the face of the patriarchal society. Early in the play, the witches seem to have no such male superior. Macbeth and Banquo meet three strange women on the heath with no man in sight. Or are they women? So even their appearance sets them apart from normal women.

Prior to this we hear about one escapade of the witches who take revenge against a sailor's wife who would not share her chestnuts! What does the witch do? She goes after the woman's husband. The other witches offer to send additional wind to help her. Shakespeare is letting us know a thing or two about these "weird sisters. I would ask my students to speculate.

They do not seem to be as malevolent as Macbeth will later become. We do not hear of brutal murders at their hands. Yet they are not dutiful wives or carefully chaperoned daughters. They are disorderly and disheveled, outside of society's norm, and worst of all, seem to enjoy that position.

Lady Macbeth and the witches have been depicted a wide variety of ways in theater performance and screen adaptations. Directors differ widely in their opinion of the proper way to portray her. Students will be asked to examine several productions of Shakespeare to evaluate these differences. Early in his career, Akira Kurosawa was pulled to make a film of Macbeth. However, when he heard that Orson Welles was already doing the same, he postponed his project and completed his version in This black and white film is in Japanese with subtitles, but would still be exciting enough to hold the attention of many students.

Kurosawa follows the general outline of Shakespeare's story, though in a somewhat simplified version. He saw a connection between medieval Scotland and medieval Japan, while also being relevant to contemporary society. One place where we see subtle differences is in his depiction of Asaji, his Lady Macbeth.

Anthony Dawson says, "The scene mirrors and departs subtly from Macbeth. Washizu is even less ambitious than his counterpart, more troubled and uncertain, while Asaji is much darker and more implacable than Lady Macbeth. She is the driving force throughout and. What are her exact words? Kurosawa creates a connection between the witch only one in this screen version and Lady Asaji.

He uses elements of Noh Theater to portray both women while not doing so with the male characters. Dawson also sees a strong connection between the two female characters in the film. He states, "In Throne of Blood there are really only two women, and they are mirrors of each other - Asaji and the strange, ambiguously gendered spirit in the forest, who spins her wheel and knows, perhaps even controls, the fates of vain and mortal men who 'end in fear. This witch is notable for her androgynous appearance. She is dressed like a woman, but appears to be a man in woman's clothing.

This is taking women with beards one step further, and is in complete contrast to the very lady-like appearance of Lady Asaji. Why this appearance of the witch chosen will prompt much discussion, I hope. Lady Asaji has the most steely, single-minded persona imaginable, practically unmoving behind her white mask as she proposes the murder. However, like Lady Macbeth, her "womanly" fear appears once Washizu leaves the room to commit the deed.

Orson Welles made his version of Macbeth in , thesame year that Laurence Olivier's Hamlet was due to be released. The studio producing Hamlet was so enamored of Laurence Olivier and this project that no expense was spared, either in the making of the film, its subsequent advertising, or its distribution. Life magazine featured an eleven-page spread trumpeting its arrival. The international press waited for the film in gleeful anticipation. Welles, on the other hand, was derided from the start.

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He had to make do with the smallest budget, and reviews panned his movie from all directions, especially in comparison to Olivier's Hamlet. Life magazine's review said, "'Orson Welles doth foully slaughter Shakespeare in a dialect version of his 'Tragedy of Macbeth'" Anderegg Nonetheless, it is today appreciated by many film critics and is an interesting film to compare to the other adaptations of Macbeth.

Welles depicts a world that is primitive, and the sets are sparse, but in fact this lends to the atmosphere of an eleventh century Scotland. Anderegg's view of the film could serve as an excellent starting point for students to consider the rest of the film. The scene based on Act I, scene seven between Lady Macbeth and Macbeth, when he first arrives home after the fateful predictions, contains numerous line deletions, a reordering of lines, and an execution of the traitor Cawdor in the background as Macbeth kisses his wife.

We first glimpse Lady Macbeth lying on a bed of furs, such as the ancient Scottish might have used, and she is reading Macbeth's letter. She writhes on the bed as she reads it. When she speaks to deliver her "unsex me here" speech, she has a Scottish accent. This Lady Macbeth is not young, but when Macbeth returns to the castle, the sexual relationship is apparent. According to Gil, Welles' idiosyncratic film techniques are ripe with meaning. Drawing my students' attention to the various possibilities of how one scene can be filmed would be fertile territory for interpreting a filmmaker's intent.

We can look at camera angles, such as high and low shots, as well as how often a director has placed cuts in his scenes. For instance, if the director uses quick cuts, as opposed to Welles' famous long shots, what mood does it create? What meaning, if any, can we infer? The witches in this screen adaptation are kept at a distance from the viewer.

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• Macbeth and Issues of Gender.
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We are not able to see their faces clearly, nor can we see whether or not they possess the beards mentioned by Banquo. They have long, wild hair and are holding what appear to be large pitchforks. Sarah Hatchuel says, "The forked staffs they hold connote evil and demonism, and are directly opposed to the Christian crosses carried by the Scotsman who are recent converts from Paganism throughout the film" 3.

In fact, Welles has inserted a scene with soldiers in prayer on their knees that was not written by Shakespeare. I would ask students to consider reasons for Welles to have inserted this religious motif. Welles takes a definite stand on who is at fault for the tragedy. The witches "pour ingredients and shape, out of clay, a voodoo doll representing Macbeth. Lawrence Guntner notices, Macbeth is therefore presented as 'their creation and their toy'" Hatchuel 3. Polanski directed the most bloody version of Macbeth shortly after the Manson murders of Sharon Tate, his wife, and the other unfortunate visitors in his home.

Anyone watching in would have been thinking about these much publicized brutal murders. Several very violent scenes, in fact, have been added to the film that do not appear in Shakespeare's original play. For instance, we not only hear about the murder of Lady Macduff and family. We see the murderers enter her private accommodations, finger and break her belongings much as the Manson murderers may have done at Polanski's own home , and we are also "treated" to the brutal rape of a servant in the background.

It is also interesting to note that the executive producer of the film is Hugh Hefner. Students may want to speculate what influence someone like Hugh Hefner may have had on the production. Of all the film adaptations of Macbeth using Shakespeare's original language, this Lady Macbeth is the most young, beautiful, and sexual. Was it really necessary for the witches to appear naked in the cave when Macbeth returns to question them? Francesca Annis as Lady Macbeth is shown naked as well once she has lost her mind, her long hair covers all frontal nudity.

Do these choices have a valid reason that adds to our understanding of the play? Polanski's three witches are strange in appearance, though none have beards. He begins the film with a strong hint that the witches are responsible for what happens when he shows them on a beach digging a hole, and in that hole they place a dismembered hand holding a dagger. In this adaptation, women appear to be more powerful, and they are more brutally treated. Is there a connection? It was released in , but does not seem at all dated to students in I love showing this film after we read Macbeth because it takes not only the spirit of Shakespeare's play, but imitates nearly every nuance and event while updating the language and setting.

Instead of witches, Mikey and Bankie suddenly find themselves in the strange parlor of an old woman with two male companions who goes into a trance and tells them their fortune. Instead of thanes of Scotland, the characters are members of the mob, pledging total loyalty to the "Padrino. The close connection between Mikey and his wife is made quite apparent in the scene where he lies naked in bed next to his clothed wife while she massages his neck.

It is still possible to show older high school students because his leg is strategically crossed. You do see John Turturro's backside, however. The movie is "R" rated, I believe, mainly for its violence. Is it merely to demonstrate the sexual relationship, or is it there to add to the sense of Mikey's vulnerability? How is this modern-day woman, this mob wife, portrayed?

Is she as strong or as weak as we imagine Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth to be? One would imagine that a powerful woman today would be more acceptable, but yet she is still the woman behind the man urging him on to take his rightful place at the top.

Macbeth and Issues of Gender

Is the powerful woman of today real, or does her position in the world of organized crime change her circumstances? I look forward to hearing the opinions of my students. I love teaching Shakespeare's plays to high school students. The plots are exciting, and I get to see my students progress from needing every single line explained in detail to being able to get the gist of the play on their own by the time we are half way through. This is exciting to me. In the past, when we finished reading the play, as a reward and as a method of reviewing, we would watch at least one screen adaptation in full.

This curriculum unit is intended to try another approach. It would never be possible to show more than two films in class in their entirety. With all there is to accomplish, even that much is most likely too much. With the use of film clips that focus the attention of students on particular elements of study, we have a case of "less is more. I have several specific objectives for this unit.

All of them involve increasing students' critical thinking and skills of analysis in one way or another.

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It has been my experience that by asking students to compare two things - two characters, two stories, two poems, two styles of writing, or in this case, two versions of the same work of literature one a play, the other a film , more becomes apparent in each. Someone once said that to know happiness, one must also know sadness. It is through comparison only that each is knowable. When Lady Asaji is as still as marble, Washizu looks that much more anxious.

When we look at a picture of Dame Judith Anderson as Lady Macbeth, Francesca Annis's beauty, youth and sexuality become that much more apparent. The primary objective of this curriculum unit is to provide a means of further analyzing the characters of Shakespeare's Macbeth through the use of comparison. We will have already read a good portion of Macbeth. Watching, analyzing, and comparing clips of four film adaptations will enhance my students' ability to listen, and to think critically about what they are watching. Students will be asked to attend to details beyond their usual practice, so an additional objective is to make more informed and active moviegoers of a previously passive audience.

As part of the follow-up to the unit, students will have an opportunity to enhance their analytical writing skills.

This unit is designed to develop students' skills in "reading, analyzing, and interpreting literature" as stated in Pennsylvania State Standard 1. In particular, State Standard 1. The particular objective of Lesson Plan One is to prepare students to begin thinking about gender issues. Just what does it mean to be a man or a woman? In Lesson Plan Two, it is my objective to consider gender issues, but also to give my students perhaps their first experience of a close reading of a film.

Lady Macbeth

Students will be introduced to a new vocabulary of film techniques. Then they will be asked to apply these definitions and point out how the director has placed the camera, used the lighting, decorated the stage, etc. We will then slowly watch a clip of the film and do a close reading of a scene between Lady Asaji and Washizu. How has Kurosawa skillfully used the techniques of film to express his point of view? In what ways do we see Lady Macbeth anew after watching Kurosawa's version?

We would also consider how the time period of each film has impacted the director's vision. Brainstorming, often used as a prewriting activity, is a technique to get out as many ideas as possible without any editing. This way, ideas are more likely to flow. This is the opposite of sitting in front of a blank page saying, "Oh, that's not a good idea. I can't use that one either, " and before you know it, you have writer's block.

Brainstorming sessions can free one's mind from these self-critical and restricting thought processes. A storyboard is a term taken from filmmaking. Directors such as Hitchcock sometimes created storyboards prior to filming. These are drawings of scenes, frame by frame, as the camera will later film them. In the storyboards, camera angles, long shots, close-ups, etc. In the classroom, this technique allows students to, in a sense, make their own film. Students would draw a scene frame by frame as they imagine it.

Role Playing allows students the opportunity to take on the persona of a character, or to improvise the reactions of one character in a given scenario. Lady Macbeth drugs his attendants and lays daggers ready for the commission of the crime. Macbeth kills the sleeping king while Lady Macbeth waits nearby. When he brings the daggers from the king's room, Lady Macbeth orders him to return them to the scene of the crime. She carries the daggers to the room and smears the drugged attendants with blood.

The couple retire to wash their hands. Following the murder of King Duncan, Lady Macbeth's role in the plot diminishes. When Duncan's sons flee the land in fear for their own lives, Macbeth is appointed king. Without consulting his queen, Macbeth plots other murders in order to secure his throne, and, at a royal banquet, the queen is forced to dismiss her guests when Macbeth hallucinates. In her last appearance, she sleepwalks in profound torment.

She dies off-stage, with suicide being suggested as its cause, when Malcolm declares that she died by "self and violent hands. In the First Folio, the only source for the play, she is never referred to as Lady Macbeth, but variously as "Macbeth's wife", "Macbeth's lady", or just "lady". The sleepwalking scene [3] is one of the more celebrated scenes from Macbeth, and, indeed, in all of Shakespeare. It has no counterpart in Holinshed's Chronicles, Shakespeare's source material for the play, but is solely the bard's invention. Bradley notes that, with the exception of the scene's few closing lines, the scene is entirely in prose with Lady Macbeth being the only major character in Shakespearean tragedy to make a last appearance "denied the dignity of verse.

Lady Macbeth's recollections — the blood on her hand, the striking of the clock, her husband's reluctance — are brought forth from her disordered mind in chance order with each image deepening her anguish. For Bradley, Lady Macbeth's "brief toneless sentences seem the only voice of truth" with the spare and simple construction of the character's diction expressing a "desolating misery.

Stephanie Chamberlain in her article "Fantasicing" Infanticide: In early modern England, mothers were often accused of hurting the people that were placed in their hands. The main biological characteristic that La Belle focuses on is menstruation. By having her menstrual cycle stop, Lady Macbeth hopes to stop any feelings of sensitivity and caring that is associated with females. She hopes to become like a man to stop any sense of remorse for the regicide.

La Belle furthers her argument by connecting the stopping of the menstrual cycle with the persistent infanticide motifs in the play. Some literary critics and historians argue that not only does Lady Macbeth represent an anti-mother figure in general, she also embodies a specific type of anti-mother: Modern day critic Joanna Levin defines a witch as a woman who succumbs to Satanic force, a lust for the devil, and who, either for this reason or the desire to obtain supernatural powers, invokes evil spirits.

English physician Edward Jorden published Briefe Discourse of a Disease Called the Suffocation of the Mother in , in which he speculated that this force literally derived from the female sexual reproductive organs. Because no one else had published any other studies on the susceptibility of women, especially mothers, to becoming both the witch and the bewitched i. A Study of Male Domination, in which Hester articulates a feminist interpretation of the witch as an empowered woman. Levin summarises the claim of feminist historians like Hester: Jenijoy La Belle assesses Lady Macbeth's femininity and sexuality as they relate to motherhood as well as witchhood.

The fact that she conjures spirits likens her to a witch, and the act itself establishes a similarity in the way that both Lady Macbeth and the Weird Sisters from the play "use the metaphoric powers of language to call upon spiritual powers who in turn will influence physical events — in one case the workings of the state, in the other the workings of a woman's body. Despite the fact that she calls him a coward, Macbeth remains reluctant, until she asks: The Weird Sisters are also depicted as defeminised, androgynous figures.

They are bearded 1. Witches were perceived as an extreme type of anti-mother, even considered capable of cooking and eating their own children. Although Lady Macbeth may not express violence toward her child with that same degree of grotesqueness, she certainly expresses a sense of brutality when she states that she would smash the baby's head. John Rice, a boy actor with the King's Men, may have played Lady Macbeth in a performance of what was likely Shakespeare's tragedy at the Globe Theatre on 20 April His account, however, does not establish whether the play was Shakespeare's Macbeth or a work on the same subject by another dramatist.

In the course of this essay, I will first take a closer look at gender ideology in the English Renaissance and in Renaissance tragedy and see how society justified the social subordination of women, and what kind of behaviour was considered appropriate for women.

The main part of this essay will be dedicated to the Macbeths, two strongly individualized characters. I will examine the characters of Lady Macbeth and Macbeth first, take a look at how their ambition leads to their downfall and afterwards discuss whether it is possible to talk about an inversion of the traditional gender roles since especially Lady Macbeth oversteps the boundaries of appropriate female behaviour and is, at least in the beginning, the more powerful character of the two spouses.

Marriage in those days was a mere transfer of power from one male to another. Besides, it was seen as the foundation of the family and, at the same time, the basis of the whole state. Rebellion of any kind was regarded as treason and especially rebellion over the issue of marriage constituted a serious threat to the order of the state. In Jacobean England, society was profoundly hierarchical. The family was seen as a domestic microcosm reflecting the order of the society or the macrocosm. Rebellion or disorder within the family was seen as treason since it might have had repercussions on society as a whole.

In The Trew Law of Free Monarchies published in , King James I uses the analogy of the king as father and argues that the former considers his subjects his children: Almost one hundred years earlier Christine de Pizan, a 15th century writer, counsels women to live in complete submission:. We ourselves have set a rule that a dissolute life in us is not a vice, or fault, or disgrace, while in women it means such utter opprobrium and shame that any woman of whom ill is once spoken is disgraced forever, whether what is said be calumny or not.

The attitudes towards women and appropriate female behaviour described above are also mirrored in 15th and 16th century tragedy. The Taming of the Shrew, for example, is an extreme example of the acceptance of the codes of female behaviour as mentioned above. At the end of the play Katherine seems to have lost her initial rebelliousness and complies with the norms society imposes on women. She tells other women:. Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper, Thy head, thy sovereign; one that cares for thee, And for thy maintenance; commits his body To painful labour both by sea and land, To watch the night in storms, the day in cold, Whilst thou liest warm at home, secure and safe; And craves no other tribute at thy hands But love, fair looks, and true obedience; Too little payment for so great a debt.

The subordination of women to the prescriptive power of patriarchal doctrine required them to strive for four virtues, for obedience, chastity, silence and piety. Especially chastity was very important for the social status. Then weigh what loss your honour may sustain If with too credent ear you list his songs Or lose your heart, or your chaste treasure open To his unmastered importunity.

Fear it, Ophelia, fear it, my dear sister, And keep you in the rear of your affection Out of the shot and danger of desire. If their masculine self-image is challenged, male characters descend into rage, tyranny, even madness. In the following, I am going to take a closer look at the way Macbeth challenges the typical conceptions of femininity and masculinity.

As Macbeth is a play that hugely builds on gender stereotypes, I would first of all like to take a closer look at how the play and the characters themselves define the norms and conducts of appropriate male and female conduct. Afterwards, I will go over to an examination of the Weird Sisters and King Duncan as those characters, from the very beginning of the play, hint at a blurring of the traditional categories of male and female.

The heroic world of Macbeth is established in the opening scenes describing the Scottish victory in the battle against the Norwegian army. The touchstones by which manhood is defined are not solely violence, prowess in battle and loyalty to the king; manhood is comprised of more. This view is taken by the Scottish nobles, whose definition of manhood is not as narrow as that of Macbeth and his wife.

Allowing oneself to be sensitive and to feel grief is, according to Malcolm and Macduff, also an essential part of manhood. This attitude permeates society from noble to bondsman. I will come back to the character of Macbeth and its dynamism later. The stereotypical role of women in the play defines them as passive, weak, dependent, and incapable of dealing with violence, except to become its victims. In the whole play, natural femininity is only represented by Lady Macduff although her role in the tragedy is only minor.