Herrera 1

Are You a Man?1

Pablo Herrera pablo.herrera@comunidad.unam.mx

When reading Shakespeares Macbeth one may notice that there is something queer about Lady Macbeth. She seems to be

obsessed with telling her husband that he is not a man. But why does she say that? To what extent Macbeth is not a man? Does that mean that he is acting like a woman? If he is not a man, then which is Lady Macbeths role as wife? This essay will develop around these questions, focusing on the

consequences that Lady Macbeths soliloquy in act I scene V has to the general progress of the play. . . .Come, you Spirits That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
1

Macbeth III. iv. 57.

Herrera 2 That no compunctious visitings of Nature Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between Theffect and [h]it2! Come to my womans breast, And take my milk for gall. . . (I. v. 40-41, 45-48) The invocation of the Spirits in her soliloquy is an indicator that in Macbeths castle the weird sisters fog and filthy air is present. Her prayer to the spirits to unsex her expresses her desire of not giving birth to a child, that is, not to fulfill her function as a woman by means of rejecting the possibility of an heir to Macbeth; that rejection of futurity3 breaks the balance in the power relation that she should have with her husband and it is part of the mechanism of this tragedy. The reference to

menstruation and breastfeeding makes that point stronger and is a clue towards understanding the tone in her conversations with Macbeth, in which she is not passive at all. Actually most of the things she says to him are commands which, of course, are rare coming from a female character of that era.

To the purposses of this essay is better to read hit (F1-2)

than it (F3-4). This annotation is based upon Muirs note in Arden edition.
3

am

using

the

term

futurity

as

the

hypothetically

natural drive to reproduce developed by Lee Edelman in No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive.

Herrera 3 A killing couple King of scenes later Macbeth is doubtful him about he

Duncan,

Lady

Macbeth

questions

and

responds in reference to his manliness: Lady Macb. . . .Wouldst thou have that Which thou esteemst the ornament of life, And live a coward in thine own esteem, Letting I dare not wait upon I would, Like the poor cat Ithadage? Macb. I dare do all that may become a man; Who dares no more, is none. (I. vii. 41-47) His answer is very telling on the role he is playing. He says that he would do anything that becomes a man; he is positioning himself as not being a man, he desires do become everything that a man should be. He is being guided by her wife as if he was her son, not her husband. Lady Macbeth speaks again and accepts, to some extent, that Macbeth is her son but she is tired of that role: . . .I have given suck, and now How tender tis to love the babe that milks me: I would, while it was smiling in my face, Have pluckd my nipple from his boneless gums, And dashd the brains out. . . (I. vii. 54-58) Macbeth is that babe that milked her, the one that she hates now and whom she wishes not having fed. That I would sounds like a resonance from the fifth scene, indicating that she waited upon desire and did not take action when it was necessary. If she had taken action when it was necessary, then maybe Macbeth would have become a man, or at least she would not have had to pray the Spirits to unsex her.

Herrera 4 As Macbeth is not ready to do what a man would, Lady Macbeth has to instruct him on how he should murder King Duncan. To convince him she lets him know that, as soon as the job is done, they will do what they couldnt with him alive. He responds: [b]ring forth men-children only! (I. vii. 73;) which, ambiguously seems to be a direct request for an heir. Nevertheless the compound noun men-children may be tricky and bear the meaning of men that are children at the same time; to say, men like him. In act III scene V, Lady Macbeth notes You lack the seasons of all your natures, sleep (III. V. 140). Macbeth plans to go to the Weird Sisters to modify his own past. Macbeths error here is of temporality, because as Lady

Macbeth remarks: Whats done cannot be undone (V. i. 64;). The seasons that Macbeth is lacking are precisely those that become a man; and a man without seasons is nothing but a child. The point in to this the analysis play by is means not of applying the a

psychological

test

Freudian

Oedipus complex. I argue that Macbeths being a child is part of a complex substitution of functions and roles that affect the balance of power and challenge the natural order giving the play a setting prepared for tragedy.

Herrera 5 In 1990 the Mexican feminist, Marcela Lagarde argued that women had a specific set of roles inside society. That set of roles was performed as an infinite continuum and was unavoidable. Women were at the same time mother-wives,

whores, nuns, nuts, and jailbirds4. Though she was analyzing contemporary subjectivities and social categories that did not exist back then in the 17th century, the multiplicity of roles she describes may be of some use in the description of the characterization of Lady Macbeth. While I have focused in pointing out the parts of the play where the reading of Lady Macbeth as Macbeths mother can be grounded, we must acknowledge that she is not

performing only one function. She is Macbeths wife, but at the same time she is his mother, and his sidekick, and his lover. While being that, she is a woman too, and eventually a queen, and a weird sister and a guide. It is not only the blood in her hands that made her lose her mind, but also the complex set of functions that she has to perform. What we might se a transgression to the norms of gender differentiation when Lady Macbeth asks to be unsexed, or when the gender of the Weird Sisters becomes ambiguous (you

should be women, / and yet your beards forbid me to interpret

Madresposas, putas, locas, monjas y presas.

Herrera 6 / That you are so [I. iii. 45-47,]) but we have to take into consideration that at that time the gender system was neither binary nor stable, the idea of gender subjected to a complex system of becomings5. In the analysis of the

process of selection of a sexual object of desire we must take into consideration that sexualities are

undifferentiated in the period, because both boys and women are regarded as potential sexual objects for adult males (Goldberg 110). In that period our modern category of woman included anything that was not a man (slaves, servants,

children, men without honor or

courage, etc.). When Lady

Macbeth asks to be unsexed she is trying to put herself into the position of a mother, and she manages to do so by taking Macbeths manliness by making him a child. In that sense, Lady Macbeth becomes the adult that takes a child as his sexual object taking advantage of the premise that it is possible for someone to become anything as long as their seasons are the ones required. (as in I. vii. 46). But Macbeth does not renounce completely becoming a man, and, in action, he becomes one. That is the moment when the balance is completely broken. That is the moment in the play where madness turns to be unavoidably evident.

devenires

Herrera 7 Macbeth is, in the fist acts of the play, not only a child, but also an effeminate when he is doubtful and has to consult everything with Lady Macbeth, that effeminacy ads up a level of complexity to their relationship given that: Effeminacy was more easily associated with, and was a charge more often made about, men who displayed excessive attention to women than taken as an indication of same-sex attraction. (Goldberg 111) These operations of shifting and substitution are not useless to the analysis of the play, because they will help us identify a characteristic that was common to find in the literature of the period: Thus when he looks for instances of sodomy in Marlowe, he finds them in effeminized men, bad kings like Henry III or Mycetes in Tamburlaine, or more generally in any man who displays female emotion, or any man put into the feminine position of being the object of the sexual gaze of another man. (Goldberg 127) Nevertheless, Heather Love argues in favor of

interpreting of Lady Macbeth and Macbeths relationship as a horrific maternal transmission that causes that on stage the audience cannot differentiate oneself from the other and be positioned inside the body of the mother (207.) That adds another effect unsexed. In act III, scene IV Macbeth is uneasy because Banquos ghost enters the room and makes objects move. His uneasiness layer and to hit the of tragedy. Lady We as audience become to the be

Macbeths

impossibility

Herrera 8 is noticed by the noblemen of Scotland who were invited to the feast and decide to leave, but Lady Macbeth stops them: Sit, worthy friends. My Lord is often thus, And hath been from his youth: pray you, keep seat; The fit is momentary; upon a thought He will again be well. If much you note him, You shall offend him, and extend his passion; Feed and regard him not. . . (52-57) Lady Macbeth excuses Macbeth with the guests, once again, performing the function of a humiliated mother that has to apologize for her spoiled childs manners. To make that point stronger, she ends up addressing Macbeth Are you a

man(57)?. But, as it has been stated before, Macbeth has not enough seasons to be a man, he is yet too full o th milk of human kindness (I. v. 17) even when he has been

breastfed, by the ear (Hie thee hither, / That I may pour my spirits in thine ear [I.v.25-26]) with gall by Lady Macbeth. Macbeth is a fearful man-child and yet he thinks himself man enough to dare look on that / Which might appal the Devil (III. iv. 58-59). To that manliness Lady Macbeth

states that what he is seeing is not the devil and that his fear is not real This is the very painting of your fear: This is the air-drawn dagger, which you said, Led you to Duncan. O! these flaws and starts (Impostors to true fear), would well become A womans story at a winters fire, Authorisd by her grandma. Shame itself! Why do you make such faces? When alls done, You look but on a stool. (III. iv. 60-67)

Herrera 9 Lady Macbeth is once again challenging the function of

Macbeth as a man. He is not a woman, but his story sounds like one that a woman would tell. In the closing lines of act III scene iv Macbeth accepts that he is young Come, well to sleep. My strange and self-abuse Is the initiate fear, that wants hard use: We are yet but young in deed. (141-143) Although Macbeth recognizes that he is too young to deal with the strange things [he] ha[s] in head (III.iv.138) he does not acknowledge that Lady Macbeth is in a superior position. He is saying that he and his wife are young. The relationship between the Macbeth and his wife seems to be completely vertical and asymmetrical. It looks like in this marriage Lady Macbeth has totally as overpowered Alfredo and

overshadowed

her

husband;

nevertheless,

Michel

notes, their relationship is complementary. In the dialogues when they are not talking to each other they are having a conversation, or rather they similar sentences Macb. . . . Stars, hide your fires! Let not light see my black and deep desires; The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be, Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see. (I.iv.50-53) Lady M. . . . Come, thick Night, An pall thee in the dunnest smoke of Hell, That my keen knife see not the wound it makes, Nor Heaven peep through the blanket of the dark, have become one and produce

Herrera 10 To cry Hold, hold! (I.v.50-54) Macb. . . . Come, seeling Night, Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful Day, And, with thy bloody and invisible hand, Cancel, and tear to pieces, that great bond Which keeps me pale! . . . (III.ii.46-50) Not only is telling the fact that is almost the same

dialogue, but also that it does not belong to the same act or scene. It is as if past, present and future had mingled. That, of course, resonates with the Weird Sisters dialogue in the opening scene of the play 1 Witch. When shall we three meet again? In thunder, lightning, or in rain? 2 Witch. When the hurlyburlys done, When the battles lost and won. 3 Witch. That will be ere the set of sun. (I.i.1-6) Time is presented not as a linear constant, but as a set of non-related events that point towards a reality that is not reachable neither by the human characters in the play nor by the audience, the witnesses of the performance. Macbeth is an elusive play. Any attempt to state beyond any doubt that Macbeth or his wife are something would miss the general premise While I that have nothing attempted is to but what is not Lady

(I.iii.142).

state

that

Macbeth is actually Macbeths mother it does not mean that she is only performing that function. Macbeth is a character under construction, a construction that seems to be dependent on Lady Macbeth; but his construction lies upon the fact that he depends on the diegetic space of representation. Lady

Herrera 11 Macbeth and Macbeth are the original and the representation of the original in a mirror; and we have been denied the key to identify which is the real and which the copy by means of the Weird Sisters fog and filthy air in which we hover.

Works Cited

Goldberg, Jonathan. The Transvestite Stage: More on the Case of Christopher Marlowe. Sodometries. Fordham University Press: 2010. Edelman, Lee. No Future: Queer Theory and The Death Drive.

Duke University Press: 2004. (Kindle Edition) Lagarde y de los Ros, Marcela. monjas, de Los cautiverios presas y de las

mujeres:

madresposas, General

putas, de

locas. UNAM.

Coordinacin

Estudios

Posgrado,

Mxico (2 Edicin): 1993 Love, Heather. Milk. Madhavi Menon (Ed.) Shakesqueer. Duke University Press: 2011. (201-208) Michel Modenessi, Alfredo. When the Battles Lost and Won: Los lmites y la confusion del mundo. Una interpretacin de Macbeth (Tesis). UNAM: Mxico; 1989.

Herrera 12 Shakespeare, William. Macbeth. Kenneth Muir (ed.) Arden

Shakespeare (2nd ed.): 1997.