BE-WITCHED - THE FUNCTION OF THE FEMALE SUPERNATURAL

IN 'MACBETH'
Zuha Moideen, HS13H043
INTRODUCTION

Of all the Shakespearian tragedies, Macbeth is the most concise and compressed.
There's a 'husbandry'[ CITATION Wil051 \l 1033 ] in the theatre, to put it in Banquo's
terms. Though spanning across years, the play is designed for continuous action and
contains elements of supernatural origin that must have been quite original, literal and
realistic for the superstitious Jacobean England. The very structure of the play, hence,
seems to suggest a validation of Christian doctrines, with the presence of an
overwhelming martial life divorced from rhetoric bombast. This lends credence to early
critical thought which saw 'The Tragedy of Macbeth' as an offspring of medieval morality
plays, stressing the eternal tug between the forces of good and evil, with goodness
guaranteed triumph in the end. But the wicked in 'Macbeth' has an objective existence,
over and apart from any divine purposes, both in the landscape and in the conceptions
of individuals, in a profoundly un-Christian sense. Macbeth, thus, is not concerned about
the metaphysical consequences of his deeds, but with social and imaginative judgement
here, in this world. Hence, imagining ‘Macbeth’ requires, as Wilson Knight argues, ‘a
new logic’,[ CITATION Wil86 \l 1033 ] beyond the rational orders of causality or choice,
necessitating a mapping of its irrational dreamscape, of which the supernatural forms an
essential part.

The witches of Shakespeare, much like the play itself, were derived from Holinshed’s
Chronicles. However, Shakespeare has adopted them to the taste and purposes of the
English theatre. The Scandinavian goddesses of Destiny, thus become old crones
meddling in the affairs of men. This has particular significance in light of James I’s book,
Daemonologie, published in 1597, which affirmed the existence of supernatural
elements beyond doubt (The king, in his capacity, royally burned down all materials of
opposing discourse). The witches, hence became impoverished old hags who, in spite
and greed, bartered their souls to the devil for realizing their wishes. Yet, in Shakespeare
the supernatural assumes a multifaceted dimension. The sisters equivocate between
hags of random malevolence and the Demon incarnate. Schlegel felt acutely the
incommensurability of the witches’ two styles of speech: that of the women of the very
lowest class and that of the Delphic Oracle and even Coleridge who advocated to
denature and dignify the weird sisters, was conscious of their divided nature – part
Gothic, part Greek-tragic, part silly and ugly, part will towards annihilation. [ CITATION
Dan05 \l 1033 ] Even in private the witches never cease to be showmen and their
practices of brewing potions, make them more earthly, if malicious, and cartoonish. In
fact, if one looks at the tragedy from their viewpoint, it seems a gross comedy based on
a foundation of sand. Macbeth seems to lack a fixed identity, submitting himself to the
whims of the sisters. They, thus, represent the perversity of fate itself. The first part of
this essay, hence, attempts to explore the phantasmagoric world of ‘Macbeth’, treating
the witches as vital poetic symbols, manifestations of the moral atmosphere of the play.

However, we must also remember that the weird sisters represent outcasts, living in the
margins of a male ‘civilization’ which values military butchery. Their equality in the
natural world beyond aristocratic oppression, thus declares their opposition to
masculine authority. The second part of this essay deals with the nature of sexuality in
the play stressing the function of the supernatural as experts at manipulating or
appealing to self-destructive contradictions in the masculine world.

THE WITCHES AS ELEMENTS OF MORAL IMAGINATION

Imagination or ‘fantasy’ in Renaissance era could have meant both a replacement of

divine inspiration with personal belief and a loss in reality, probably as a consequence of
this displacement of the sacred by the secular. The witches perform this vital function in
‘Macbeth’, both acting as a replacement for his social morality and as a repudiating
interim which nudges on his imagination and his deeds in favour of immediacy.

Though the sisters have no actual control of events, they seem to act as a ‘get-between’
and a ‘go-between’[ CITATION Jam10 \l 1033 ] in ‘Macbeth’. As the former, they act as
interim which ‘spurs’ on ‘his intents’ and sure enough, after their prophecy, the image of
the accomplished deed already haunts him, making his ‘seated heart knock’ [ CITATION
Wil051 \l 1033 ] at his ribs. Lady Macbeth too, after having declared herself as
submitting to evil ‘spirits that tend on mortal thoughts’ [ CITATION Wil051 \l 1033 ]
performs this crucial function of acting as ‘get-between’ his thoughts and his deeds.
Inspired by the witches, Macbeth thus declares that the ‘very firstlings of his heart shall
become the firstlings of his hand’[ CITATION Wil051 \l 1033 ] thus extending himself
across time by eliminating the in-between. The witches, here, act as ‘go-
between’[ CITATION Jam10 \l 1033 ] quite literally transporting Macbeth to his actions.

It is perhaps the contradiction between the timeless nature of his stimulus and his time-
obsessed existence that informs Macbeth’s horror of time. He thus resolves to resist
against becoming the object of his own play, by putting on the role of the Gnostic
‘Demiurge’[ CITATION Har07 \l 1033 ] destroying all meaning. Since, time reveals that
one is just an actor who ‘struts and frets his hour upon the stage’ of life and then ‘is
heard no more’,[ CITATION Wil051 \l 1033 ] he disturbs the very frame of his moral
universe and throws himself into cosmological emptiness. ‘His is an inversion of that
biblical dualism set forth by Jeremiah the prophet, in which we are taught the injustice
of outwardness and the potential morality of our inwardness, which demands justice
against the outside world’.[ CITATION Har07 \l 1033 ] Macbeth empties out his inward
moral realm, and by murdering all sense cannot fail in any sense. Thus after his first
assassination, Macbeth pronounces that the world has changed and that “from this
instant/ There’s nothing serious in mortality/ All is but toys. . .” [ CITATION Wil051 \l
1033 ]
The role of the supernatural in aiding Macbeth to trick himself into murdering Duncan
can also be inferred when A C Bradley observes that ‘the deed is done in horror and
without the faintest desire or sense of glory,—done, one may almost say, as if it were an
appalling duty’[ CITATION Sus10 \l 1033 ]. Kierkegaard’s notion of dread becomes
prominent here, as Macbeth finds himself in ‘the alarming possibility of being
able’[ CITATION Kin84 \l 1033 ] to do that which one fears, thus translating panic into
desire. The witches are hence, just character-clouds, merely opening up empty spaces in
which vagrant ugly cravings can manifest themselves. They belong to the realm of
human psychology, the unconscious mind, which with its capacity for vertigo generates
more meaning than normal operations of reason. Thus, Macbeth goes on murdering to
achieve psychological peace, not political stability, as having defiled his inner social and
moral realm with desire, ‘dread’ is the only passion that generates meaning in his life.

AS THE SUBVERTING FEMALE OUTCASTS

The three witches and the ‘Il demonio dominatore’ (the dominating demon), [ CITATION
Dan05 \l 1033 ] the fourth witch, Lady Macbeth function as subverting female power
which threatens male identity, especially through Macbeth’s relationship to them. The
play, thus becomes an embodiment of the primitive fears of the looming female spirit
which threatens to control one’ actions and mind. Macbeth’s very first words, ‘so foul
and fair a day I have not seen’, [ CITATION Wil051 \l 1033 ] echoes the witches inverted
logic, ‘foul is fair and fair is foul’ and establishes their power to constitute one’s very
self.

Renaissance England was defined by its notions of performative nature of masculinity,

which need to be proven through martial qualities. We observe this ideology when
young Siward’s death is described as ‘he only lived but till he was a man’ [ CITATION
Wil051 \l 1033 ] and when his father accepts this as supreme honour, ‘he’s worth no
more’.[ CITATION Wil051 \l 1033 ] ‘The frightening part of this theology’ was, as
Stephen Orgel remarks, ‘precisely the fantasy of its reversal, the conviction that men
can turn into—or be turned into—women; or perhaps more exactly, can be turned back
into women, losing the strength that enabled the male potential to be realized in the
first place.’[ CITATION How05 \l 1033 ] Any ‘merger with a female’, thus, ‘would mean
the end of hard won masculine selfhood’ [ CITATION How05 \l 1033 ]. Hence, when
Macbeth confides to his Lady ‘the greatness that is promised thee’ [ CITATION Wil051 \l
1033 ], he unconsciously relocates the locus of his masculine identity in her, who then
affirms it through her determination to ‘unsex’[ CITATION Wil051 \l 1033 ] herself, with
the help of evil spirits, to take charge of their fortunes, subverting her position of
submission as opposed to Macbeth’s trepidation. Man’s seed was also seen as the
source of all life, while woman’s seed was seen as corrupted. The womb, thus, became
an inverted phallus (imagined quite literally), a malevolent power divorced from the
powerless women supposed to contain it, reinforcing the patriarchal anxieties of female
sexuality and desire. Thus, Lady Macbeth becomes the destabilizing force, ‘female
evil’[ CITATION How05 \l 1033 ], who with her conviction threatens to undo Macbeth’s
masculinity, suggesting that it was not innate to him. She localizes the fear of maternal
danger and bodily disturbance, which is resolved only through Macduff, a man free from
maternal and familial care.

In contrast to the female outcasts, Duncan serves as a symbolic politico-religious

composite parent, ‘the spring, the head’, the fountain of’ ‘blood’, [ CITATION Wil051 \l
1033 ] dismissing any notion of maternal power. The witches’ androgyny, their beards,
as well as Lady Macbeth’s evoked masculinity through the symbolic murder of her child,
encompasses a shadowy-side to the King’s assumed androgyny. Thus, when Lady
Macbeth chastises Macbeth’s inferior manhood, he, in turn imagines himself as the
invulnerable male child of her dauntless ‘mettle’ [ CITATION Wil051 \l 1033 ] by invoking
her to ’bring forth male children only’. [ CITATION Wil051 \l 1033 ] This imagery is
further reinforced by the fact that Duncan’s murder, is conceived by the Macbeths as a
phallic act, a ‘deed’, for which Macbeth had ‘bend up’ every ‘corporeal agent’ in his
body. The King is perceived as the feminine trusting infant, ravished by ‘Tarquin’, to
whom Lady Macbeth feeds her ‘gall’.[ CITATION Wil051 \l 1033 ] Thus, the ‘complete
parricide’[ CITATION Wil86 \l 1033 ] becomes a ‘gorgon’ [ CITATION Wil051 \l 1033 ],
blinding his subjects and threatening their masculinity.

Their manhood can only be regained through Macbeth’s barrenness, viewed as a result
of spiritual sterility, contrasting with the symbolic healing hands of the gardener-kings,
Malcolm, Duncan and Edward, who can ‘plant’ [ CITATION Wil051 \l 1033 ] people in
their hearts and make them ’full of growing’. The idea that Duncan’s murder has defiled
Inverness which becomes the image of female genitalia, the epitome of sin, as
evidenced by ‘knocking’ at ‘hell-gate’,[ CITATION Wil051 \l 1033 ] further evokes the
idea that ‘female evil’[ CITATION How05 \l 1033 ] can arouse projections of male desire,
to ultimately cause its fall into nothingness. Macbeth’s inability to ‘start’ [ CITATION
Wil051 \l 1033 ] at the end of the play, justifies this impression.

The scourging of this dominating female power can only be attained, ironically, through
the realization of the witches’ augury. The coming of ‘Birnam wood’ to ‘Dunsinaine’,
[ CITATION Wil051 \l 1033 ] while signifying spring’s onslaught of winter, also becomes
a perfect emblem of nature without generative possibility. When Malcom commands his
men to obscure themselves by carrying the branches, they also obfuscate themselves as
natural order, though predominantly male. Macbeth’s defeat at the hands of Macduff,
who had been carved out, rather than born, of a woman, also exemplifies the fantasy of
excision of the female principle.

The fact that the charge laid on Macbeth is tyranny, and not usurpation also connotes
the vision that his liaison with the weird sisters has forsook his supreme masculine
characteristic of reason. As a result Macbeth’s actions which are chaotic belongs to the
realm of the witches. Though, at first glance the script seems a hailing of a singular
masculine world, the fact that the witches have not been routed out, implants the
notion of a defying and perverse female sexuality. In fact, Polanski’s adaptation of
Macbeth further reinforces the manipulating nature of the sisters’ logic by depicting
Donalbain, Duncan’s son, as approaching them.

CONCLUSION

Representations of the witches as figments of moral imagination as well as subverting

female agents, serve as a composite picture of the function of the female supernatural
in ‘Macbeth’. Shakespeare emphasizes, the notion that, men might probably be nearer
to truth and meaning in superstition, than in science, thus suggesting the essential
randomness of our ordered world. Through, depicting Scotland as subjected to
unrestrained female domination without the help of the English forces, he also strikes a
dual chord with his patriarchal spectators, relegating maternal authority as destructive
and pacifying the subjects to Scottish James’s reign of England.

REFERENCES

Albright, Daniel. 2005. "The Witches and the Witch: Verdi's Macbeth." Cambridge Opera
Journal 225-252.
Bloom, Harold. 2007. "Introduction." In Bloom’s Modern Critical Interpretations:
Macbeth - New Edition, by Harold Bloom, 1-6. New York: Infobase Publishing.
Calderwood, James L. 2010. "Counter-Hamlet." In Bloom’s Modern Critical
Interpretations: Macbeth - New Edition, by Harold Bloom, 7-32. New York:
Infobase Publishing.
Cheung, King-Kok. 1984. "Shakespeare and Kierkegaard: "Dread" in Macbeth ."
Shakespeare Quarterly 430-439.
Howell, Maria L. 2005. Manhood and Masculine Identity in William Shakespeare’s The
Tragedy of Macbeth. Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America.
Shakespeare, William. 1605. Macbeth. London.
Snyder, Susan. 2010. "Theology as Tragedy in Macbeth." In Bloom's Modern Critical
Interpretations: Macbeth- New Edition , by Harold Bloom, 61-85. New York:
Infobase Publishing.
Willbern, David. 1986. "Phantasmagoric "Macbeth"." New Perspectives on Shakespeare
520-549.