Lady Macbeth and the fear of powerful women

9th December 2015

Power-seeking women are a nightmare with a long history – the oldest story in the world. In Jewish folklore, God created a woman for Adam named Lilith – his first wife – but they quarrelled in Eden without the assistance of either snake or apple – Lilith’s mistake was that she wanted to be Adam’s equal: in sexual intercourse she wanted to go on top.

Adam’s refusal to cede the top spot caused Lilith to consort with devils, and bring evil to the new world. The legend, and Eve’s subsequent disobedience, warned women ever since that to be a good woman is to be subservient to men. Powerlessness was identified with womanhood – frailty is first identified as meaning morally weak in 1548, and it is Shakespeare again who identifies frailty with women in Hamlet in about 1601. Commentators and even dramatists as great as Shakespeare cannot, or will not, describe a woman comfortable with her power.

In order to act powerfully, Lady Macbeth has to be ‘unsexed’ – she has to become like a man:

Come, you spirits

That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,

And fill me from the crown to the toe topful

Of direst cruelty[i]

And Lady Macbeth is not the only unsexed Shakespearean female villain. A queen like Margaret of Anjou who fought with desperate courage for her kingdom, her husband and her son in the Wars of the Roses is described as something even worse than an unsexed woman – she becomes a beast:

She-wolf of France, but worse than wolves of France...

Women are soft, mild, pitiful, and flexible;

Thou stern, obdurate, flinty, rough, remorseless[ii]

The only power that women can have and hold without attracting abuse is that of a half-hidden counsellor and advisor who has influence but no power. But even then – a woman advising in private is accused of secret arts.

A wife and mother like Elizabeth Woodville – the ‘White Queen’ of my novel and TV series – was accused of seducing the king by witchcraft, marrying him bigamously, and corrupting him against his brothers. There is scant proof of any of this; her only solidly-evidenced crime is that she probably stole the Lord Mayor of London’s carpets. This is bad, but it is hardly Lilith.

Margaret Beaufort, the ‘Red Queen’ of my novel, was another power behind the throne. In the Tudor palaces built by her son the triumphant usurper Henry VII, she ensured that their rooms interconnected so that she, and not his wife the queen, could advise him. She wrote The King’s Book which ruled on all aspects of courtly behaviour and laid down that the queen, her daughter-in-law, should retire for a total of 12 weeks to give birth. As an older infertile woman, this gave the king’s mother a head start of a quarter of the year over his childbearing wife. She even invented her own title – My Lady the King’s Mother – and signed herself ambiguously as Margaret R – maybe Margaret Richmond her title; or perhaps she meant Margaret Regina, as if she were queen.

A country ruled by male heirs of the 1066 land-grabbing invaders, whose history was written in the monasteries by men sworn to celibacy, was always unlikely to be an equal opportunity employer. The first ever queen of England, Matilda, could not even persuade her subjects to crown her, though she inherited the throne and was nominated as the true heir by her father Henry I.

Subsequent queens could not marry without casting doubt over their royal power since English common law ruled that all a woman’s properties and titles belonged to her husband. Mary I triggered four rebellions and countrywide unease when she chose to marry Philip of Spain. Elizabeth I kept all her power and declared herself to be a sexual hybrid:

I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too^{^[iii]}

It’s no accident that Elizabeth spoke of herself as a king and referred to ‘princely power’. Queenly power was a contradiction. All the queens of England, and their successors: Mary, Anne, Victoria and Elizabeth II, illustrate the Lady Macbeth dilemma: if a good wife is subservient to her husband, how can she be powerful? How can she be a ruler if she has promised in her wedding vows to obey?

And here is the Lady Macbeth answer. She has to be ‘unsexed’ to plot a murder but she also uses the acceptable route to power. Later in the play Shakespeare shows her manipulating and directing her hesitant husband. This is whores’ politics, wives’ politics, womanly wiles:

LADY MACBETH

Was the hope drunk

Wherein you dress'd yourself? hath it slept since?

And wakes it now, to look so green and pale

At what it did so freely? From this time

Such I account thy love. Art thou afeard

To be the same in thine own act and valour

As thou art in desire?[iv]

But the downside is that passive power leads to passive punishment. Macbeth dies in battle, fighting his enemies, like the soldier he always was. Lady Macbeth goes off her head and kills herself, off stage, to zero interest from her husband, and little grief for the playwright.

MACBETH Wherefore was that cry?

SEYTON The queen, my lord, is dead.

MACBETH She should have died hereafter[v]

Lovers of irony may enjoy this note from the 1873 editor:

It is one of the finest thoughts in the whole drama, that Lady Macbeth should die before her husband; for not only does this exhibit him in a new light, equally interesting morally and psychologically, but it prepares a gradual softening of the horror of the catastrophe.[vi]

Am I the only reader to find it gloriously funny that according to this commentator the death of Lady Macbeth, perhaps in delusional, guilty sleepwalking suicide, is not another layer of tragedy but should be read as a ‘softening of the horror of the catastrophe’?

Alas, five centuries of pillow talk and gentle persuasion don’t seem to have got women very far forward. Only 9% of the British army are women[vii] – and one general;[viii] women comprised 38% of licensed Church of England ministers in 2012[ix] but still comprise only seven bishops.[x] Nearly a hundred years of straight talking have not caused a dazzling advance either. Women over 21 years got the vote in 1928 but still only 29% of MPs are female[xi] and there are only seven female cabinet ministers.[xii] 19.6% of FTSE 250 board members are women,[xiii] and the pay gap between average male and female wages is 19.2%.[xiv]

This is far from a triumphant march to equality from Lilith to Angela Merkel, and I don’t think we can blame it on women, (though that is the traditional route). If women take power then they are pushy, if they work from behind the throne then they are sneaky; and either way they’re not getting far.

In the last presidential election people blamed Hilary Clinton for being, like Lady Macbeth, unfeminine.

The coverage of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, for example, has been notable for its emphasis on her appearance, with endless scathing comments on her unwomanly ambition and her coldly tenacious style.[xv]

Earlier, Margaret Thatcher was condemned for trying to be on top:

In criticizing Mrs. Thatcher as a surrogate man, feminists mean she has betrayed women--not only politically but spiritually. Anti-feminists mutter the same thing. She is abhorrent, anathema, unfeminine. She is herself destroying what is most precious and treasured about womanhood in pursuit of mere manly power.[xvi]

The knee-jerk suspicion against Prince William’s hapless mother-in-law, an interfering commoner,[xvii] Eva Peron, feminine beauty and guile,[xviii] Imelda Marcos the steel butterfly,[xix] Kris Kardashian, who single-handedly destroyed the Kardashian & Jenner families in her pursuit of fame and wealth[xx] suggest that we still fear women who live close to power. Like Lilith, like Eve, if a woman exerts herself to gain power she is condemned for being unwomanly, if a woman lives her life on the sidelines she is condemned for plotting in secret. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t: this is the spot that should be outed. Out, damn spot!

Originally published by The Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/film/macbeth/fear_of_powerful_women/

Image: Marion Cotillard as Lady Macbeth

[i] Shakespeare, W. Macbeth: Act I, Scene v, 38-43

[ii] Shakespeare, W. Henry VI: Part III, 1.4.111, 141-142

[iii] http://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/item102878.html

[iv] Macbeth Act 1, sc 6

[v] Macbeth Act 5, sc 5

[vi] Furness, H. H. ed. Variorum Macbeth, 1873, p 261

[vii] https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/426880/QPR_Apr2015.pdf

[viii] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/11721295/British-Army-appoints-first-female-general.html http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jul/06/british-army-first-female-general-susan-ridge

[ix] https://www.churchofengland.org/media/1868964/ministry%20statistics%20final.pdf

[x] http://www.exeter.anglican.org/new-bishop-crediton-dame-sarah-mullally/ http://www.cruxnow.com/life/2015/03/26/church-of-england-loses-no-time-appoints-3rd-female-bishop-1st-to-oversee-a-diocese/ http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/25/church-of-england-second-female-bishop-alison-white http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-30974547 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bishops_in_the_Church_of_England http://www.bathandwells.org.uk/2015/06/next-bishop-of-taunton-announced/ http://www.cofebirmingham.com/news/2015/07/02/revd-anne-hollinghurst-announced-next-bishop-aston/