Femininity in 'Macbeth' and 'King Lear'

by Dawn Sands

Traditional portryal of
Goneril and Regan

It was 1606 when Shakespeare wrote the famous ‘come, you spirits’ speech, one which would mark Lady Macbeth as one of the strongest female figures in Western literature, and which is by many regarded as a bold declaration of female empowerment. ‘Unsex me here’, she declares, ‘and fill me from the crown to the toe top full / Of direst cruelty’. A royal woman, known only in the play by relation to her husband, announces to the audience that no longer will she succumb to the restrictions of gender expectations inflicted by men — it is time for her true self, her hidden instincts and desires (however unethical these may be) to be unleashed. Earlier in the same year, Shakespeare had written another famous tragedy, King Lear, in which a speech can be found that is in many ways similar: Lear’s outburst towards his daughter Goneril in Act 1, Scene 4, in which he calls upon the ‘dear goddess’ of Nature to ‘suspend thy purpose if thou didst intend / To make this creature fruitful [...] dry up in her the organs of increase’. Both speeches call upon supernatural powers to strip away the femininity of a woman — but while Lady Macbeth does this of her own volition, when Lear casts his violent curse, it is an act of ruthless violence spurred by anger.

The similarity between these two monologues, and the vastly different circumstances in which they are given, has a lot to say about societal expectations of women in these plays and, by extension, throughout history, given that Macbeth and King Lear are set over a thousand years apart from each other. Both of these speeches associate loss of femininity (or perhaps more significantly, feminine sexuality) with the characteristic of evil: through demanding that Goneril’s reproductive organs cease to function, Lear casts Goneril as evil, as something repulsive and inhuman; meanwhile, Lady Macbeth condemns herself in the same way, the assumption being that in order to fulfil her evil desires, she must strip away her female form. For Goneril, this curse is a punishment inflicted by an external, male force, whereas for Lady Macbeth, it is a means by which she perceives she can break down social barriers. Despite these attempts at changing gender presentation, in both plays, it is only by deformity that the women can embody this evil state — both Lear and Lady Macbeth feel they must call upon spirits in order to inflict their damage, implying that femininity is the natural state for both women.

There are many who would perceive Lady Macbeth’s ‘unsex me here’ speech to signify a transgender identity. In Pallabi Baruah’s 2016 essay ‘Subverting Heteronormativity — A Reading of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth’, she states that ‘Lady Macbeth, though her sex is female and gender feminine, her sexuality is masculine. Her self-perceived gender assignment is that of the male, and so are her traits of personality.’ However, though there are many Shakespearean characters who can certainly be read as genderqueer if modern descriptors of gender and sexuality are applied, it is arguably more likely that for Lady Macbeth, her desire to assume masculinity is not a genuine wish but an an act of desperation forced upon her by the boundaries of society. Evidence of this can be found in the fact that she believes it can only be accomplished by calling on spirits (unlike the transition of, for example, Viola in Twelfth Night, who becomes the male servant Cesario without the aid of the supernatural, and whom many queer readings have interpreted as genderfluid). If Lady Macbeth was genuinely transgender, or would have identified as such had she lived in the modern day, it is more likely that her attempt at transitioning would have been far less impulsive, and not triggered simply by the desire to commit evil deeds. The only motive Lady Macbeth has for assuming masculinity is the fact that in her society, this is the only way in which she is capable of achieving what she wishes to achieve. Her incantation does not work, it seems: by Act Two we see her having to drink alcohol in order to be ‘bold’, implying that the vulnerability which she believes is caused by her femininity has not, in fact, been removed as a result of her appeal to the heavens. On the contrary, this vulnerability may have been intensified, and Lady Macbeth’s confidence grows ever more frail over the duration of the play — power corrupts in Shakespeare’s world, and as Macbeth’s destructive deeds cause him to grow more and more dominant in his relationship with his wife, she is driven out of the picture entirely, and the image of fearlessness she strove so hard so curate is tossed aside. Leading up to the infamous banquet scene, Macbeth conceals his plans from his wife, telling her to ‘be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck’, infantilising and diminishing her to such an extent that, arguably, it destroys her. Despite her attempts to become more independent as a woman, it can be argued that this has the ironic effect of removing, rather than increasing, any agency that society allows her: she has exerted so much of herself into twisting her identity into something she is not, and when this facade is rejected, all her efforts are nullified.  She is able to retain her dignity throughout the banquet scene, but soon after that she is mad, incriminating herself in her sleep, utterly unravelled by her guilt. Ultimately, Lady Macbeth kills herself, having warped her identity to such an extent that she can think of nothing else but what she has done. Her desire to be masculine was influenced only by the expectations society had inflicted upon her, rather than any genuine wish to change her gender identity. Loss of femininity was merely the means by which she felt society would deem her able to voice her opinions.

Similarly, when King Lear calls upon the supernatural to ‘dry up in [Goneril] the organs of increase’, he does so almost so that Goneril is recompensed for expressing her opinions: she is allowed to criticise Lear, but only at the cost of having her sexuality removed, for how can someone be so weak and feminine yet at the same time have confidence enough to hold opinions of her own? This is an attitude that has prevailed through history, and was also the mindset behind witch hunts in the Early Modern era: that any woman who was not submissive and mild automatically had the mark of evil upon them. Interestingly, in both Macbeth and King Lear, women achieve positions of great power and influence, a trend which went strongly against the norm of the time, and yet Lady Macbeth, Goneril and Regan, the women in power, all have pointedly evil characteristics. Whether this is satirical or not is a separate discussion, but in either case, this evil trait serves to ascertain societal perceptions of women at the time.

It is motherhood specifically, as well as the general concept of feminine sexuality, which is seen as intrinsic to the identities of both Lady Macbeth and Goneril. In the same speech from Act 1, Scene 4, Lear curses his daughter further, demanding of the spirits that ‘if she must teem, create her child of spleen’. This is similar, and yet largely antithetical, to Macbeth’s line in Act 1, Scene 7 of Macbeth: ‘Bring forth men-children only, / For thy undaunted mettle should compose / Nothing but males’. Lear is condemning his daughter; Macbeth is praising his wife — yet for both, this comes in the form of commenting on the nature of their children, on the product of their wombs, as if it was the female sexual organs only that are involved in the creation of a child. Macbeth’s comment is particularly ironic: Lady Macbeth herself is a woman, yet Macbeth implies that she would be incapable of bearing a female child, as it is impossible for women to be as bold and assertive as she is. Macbeth simultaneously validates and undermines his wife’s efforts — he recognises her actions as ‘masculine’ (which was her intention), yet can only express this by claiming that it is impossible for women to be this way. King Lear does not comment on the gender of Goneril’s child, but states that it should be ‘of spleen’, in other words violent and cruel, a ‘thwart disnatur’d torment to her’, ‘that she may feel / How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is / To have a thankless child’. Considering that Goneril’s only offence has been criticising his choice of companions, this reaction seems extreme. Lear undergoes multiple outbursts of anger during the play, many of which result in him using his power to drastically alter the lives of others for the worse (such as when he sends Cordelia and Kent into exile in the first scene of the play). By Act 1, Scene 4, however, Goneril is queen, and therefore has official authority over Lear — and so, as he cannot banish her, it appears to him that the worst he can do is this. Given the extent of the punishment he inflicts in outbursts of anger elsewhere in the play, it is likely that through this curse, too, he intends to ruin Goneril’s life. Her worth, in his eyes, lies in her womanhood as much as it lies in the fact that she is a human with the right to remain in her homeland.

While Lear intends his speech to cause destruction to Goneril’s prospects, it can be argued that in Act 1, Scene 5 of Macbeth, Lady Macbeth believes that her prospects have already been destroyed, and that her attempted enchantment may be a means by which she can revitalise it. We are told very little about Lady Macbeth’s background, other than that she has ‘given suck’ — at some point, she has had a child — and that she has a father who is potentially deceased, admitting (privately, to herself and to the audience) that ‘Had he not resembled / My father as he slept, I had done’t [killed King Duncan]’. Lady Macbeth’s life has been traumatic, and the cry to ‘unsex me here’ may serve as proof that she is willing to undergo self-destruction in order to reach what is possibly the only opportunity for happiness which remains for her — a position of greater power. In both King Lear and Macbeth, motherhood is used to signal change in women; when Lear condemns Goneril and Lady Macbeth condemns herself, imagery of child-bearing demonstrates that their identities are to be altered.

There is a definite degree of violence, too, surrounding the presentation of children in these plays, ascertaining both the power of femininity and the ways in which it can be warped by masculine force into a quality that breeds anger and fear. Lear wishes Goneril’s child to be vicious towards her, intending that her womanhood will become her destruction; Lady Macbeth boasts viciousness towards her own child (‘I would, while it was smiling in my face, / Have pluck’d my nipple from his boneless gums / And dash’d the brains out’), demonstrating attempted destruction of her own womanhood. Both of these expressions of violence comment on the relationship between parents and children, both hypothetical relationships, although Lady Macbeth does base it on her own experience as a mother. In Lear’s speech, he asks of the goddess of Nature first that she prevent his daughter from bearing children; but if this cannot be achieved, to cause any children she does have to be relentlessly violent and ‘thankless’. While this speech did remove the expectation for Goneril to have children, by presenting this binary of either no children or ‘thankless’ children, there is a sense in which he removes her autonomy, perhaps ironically highlighting her womanhood rather than stripping it away through his impulsive assertion of dominance over the female form. This curse acts as a defence for Lear, as well as an attack; there is something about Goneril’s womanhood which causes Lear to respond with spontaneous violence. Lady Macbeth also condemns herself impulsively, though in a burst of opportunistic passion rather than anger. In both cases, stripping away of gender is the first impulse that both come to when experiencing sudden onset of emotion.

For Lady Macbeth, it may be slightly easier to understand why her instinctive reaction is the removal of gender: as a woman, she is directly affected by the injustices of a patriarchal society. Meanwhile, Lear benefits from the patriarchy. Therefore, it can be argued that Lear fears feminine control, perceiving it to undermine his own power: to surrender to a woman — a person who is, supposedly, weak and fragile — is to endanger his authority. The graphic imagery used by Lear conveys a certain revulsion towards the female body, rather than the female mind: his society has separated the masculine from the feminine to such an extent that the body of his own daughter is foul and repulsive to him. A similar trend can be seen in Macbeth, in which both Macbeth and his wife feel the need to prove their lack of femininity — Lady Macbeth for reasons already explored, so that she may attain power in an environment that permits her none; Macbeth for reasons that originate on the opposite side of the same misogynistic construct. As soon as Lady Macbeth questions his masculinity, he is on the defensive, quickly validating his wife’s boldness with ‘bring forth men-children only’, before coming to the conclusion that he will indeed assassinate King Duncan. Similarly to Lear, Macbeth cannot let a woman have more power than he does, and so abandons all indecisiveness and — again, impulsively — assumes the role of the archetypal male. Femininity acts as a fear for Macbeth, Lady Macbeth and Lear, and it may be that for all three of them, the fear of womanhood is derived from the power (or lack thereof) which gender roles allow them.

Outside of the speeches already explored, gender roles are explored through Goneril and Lady Macbeth elsewhere in their respective plays. In Act 4, Scene 2 of King Lear, Goneril is confronted by her husband, Albany, who condemns her for the tyranny she and Regan have extended while sharing the throne. He accuses Goneril of having ‘madded’ her father (it is arguable that when she denied Lear the presence of his one hundred knights, she triggered his descent into madness by having him realise what little power remained for him — despite Lear’s flaws, since Goneril claimed to ‘love [Lear] more than words can wield the matter’, she has offered him very little sympathy). Albany is shocked by the fact that no divine punishment has been inflicted upon them yet, and claims that it is time for humans to step forward — ‘humanity must perforce prey upon itself’, he says, ‘like monsters of the deep’. In response to this, Goneril simply reprimands him with the phrase ‘milk-liver’d man’, avoiding his argument and instead turning the attack upon him. ‘Where’s thy drum?’ she asks him. How dare he chastise her for her wickedness when the country is at war, and he is not fighting in the centre of it? At this point in the scene, Goneril is the only one to have raised the concept of gender — but it seems that, in the same way as Lady Macbeth’s questioning of her husband’s masculinity causes him to become defensive, Goneril’s chastisement provokes something similar in Albany. ‘Proper deformity seems not in the fiend / So horrid as in woman’, he retaliates, likening her to something worse than the devil, marking her with a quality of evil which it seems is accentuated by the fact that she is a woman. Albany then goes on to say that ‘Howe’er thou art a fiend, / A woman’s shape doth shield thee’. He believes that Goneril can get away with her evil deeds because she is a woman, whereas in reality this is probably due to her power and the protection afforded her by the country’s belief in divine right. When Lear (who saw his power as greater than hers, as her father and an ex-king) first perceived her as evil, her sex was the first thing he jumped to condemn, meaning that it is unlikely that Albany’s claim is true. Instead, like Macbeth, attacking her femininity is the only thing he can conceive of doing when his own masculinity is threatened. Albany is correct in identifying that Goneril and Regan have committed evil and tyrannical deeds, but is wrong in attributing this to their gender, and the fact that he does so reflects the gender roles that were so ingrained into society at the time of the play (particularly among nobility, due to primogeniture and the fixation upon the reputation of the family line). It may be that Albany is not entirely to blame for this, rather society’s expectations as a whole, of both men and women — after all, it is Goneril who first introduced gender to this interaction. Through calling Albany ‘milk-liver’d’, she expresses her frustration and resent that her gender is viewed as the prime example of weakness when there are men (her own husband, no less) who will refuse to do what is expected of them by going into war. While Albany does not mention gender in his original condemnation of her, his admonishment acts as a reminder for Goneril of the injustices of gender roles in society. Why should Albany be freely permitted the traits for which the female sex is so unjustly made an example of?

The first time Lady Macbeth criticises Macbeth’s masculinity, on the other hand, is before they have even interacted on stage: having read her husband’s letter, and decided that the witches’ prophecy could only be achieved through murder, she reflects that his nature is ‘too full of the milk of human kindness’ to carry out this deed himself. This is before her ‘unsex me here’ soliloquy; already, she is identifying Macbeth’s lack of masculine strength as a limiting factor, and already she is thinking of ways to overcome this. Therefore, it can be argued that in both Macbeth and King Lear, female spite can originate from men defying patriarchal norms and voluntarily embodying the position of weakness that women are forced to assume. Society’s double standards regarding gender, for Lady Macbeth and Goneril, force gender into conversations where it does not necessarily belong, and the defensive reactions of Macbeth and Albany reinforce how ingrained in society these expectations are.

Both Lady Macbeth and Goneril are highly complex characters: undoubtedly evil, yet at the same time constantly wrestling with the expectations forced onto them by society, especially regarding the power they are able to attain. While Lady Macbeth's speech is often read as a declaration of female empowerment, given the immense psychological consequences this causes her, perhaps the soliloquy should instead be reframed as one of tragedy. It can be argued that Lady Macbeth’s cry to be ‘unsexed’ is equivalent in nature to Lear’s condemnatory and misogynistic outburst towards Goneril; in Lady Macbeth’s case, this misogyny has been internalised as a result of living in a society in which her womanhood is always suppressed and viewed as inferior. Whether it is through a woman desperately crying out to spirits to remove her female organs from her body, and in doing so strip away her weaknesses, or through a father brutally attempting to remove all bodily autonomy from his daughter in a fit of selfish malice, Shakespeare demonstrates the potential the subversion of gender roles has to change lives — often, ironically, for the worse. These stereotypes and expectations have been so ingrained into the environments of both women — despite the fact that their plays take place over a thousand years from each other — that it is impossible, it seems, for either of them to defy the expectations of gender without repercussions. This is perhaps even more significant in Goneril’s case, given that what is done to her is not done of her own volition, but by a man in power, determined to cause her permanent damage through his impulsive and invasive actions. Finally, the passion with which gender is discussed in these two plays, either in speeches or in dialogue, demonstrates how visceral and integral it is as a concept — for better or for worse — and lends insight into the deeply personal effect assumptions on gender at a personal or societal level can have on a life.

References:

https://www.arcjournals.org/pdfs/ijsell/v4-i6/9.pdf