The Poison of a Corrupt Flower

Women have not always been painted in a pretty picture. They are either saints or devils. Shakespeare chose to cast Lady Macbeth as the latter in the beginning of his play, Macbeth. It is not just her, however. Even today, women are sometimes cast as worse than Satan himself. What caused all of this? The answer can be traced back to Eve in the Bible. She is blamed for the fall of man when she took and ate from the Tree of Good and Evil. Ever since then, women have been the temptress of good men to the Fallen. This feminist view of this essay will show the parallels of Eve and Lady Macbeth.

In Macbeth, there are four main women that pull the strings throughout the whole dark circus: the witches and Lady Macbeth herself. The witches give Macbeth and his best friend, Banquo, their prophecies that start Macbeth’s downfall. Without looking further into the play, the audience could blame the witches for his corruption. They are like the gasoline to his destruction. However, this is only half of the problem. What is a good explosion of the tainted with a good fire? If the witches are the gasoline in Macbeth, then what is the lighter? Shakespeare answers that question with Macbeth’s wife, Lady Macbeth.

In the beginning, Lady Macbeth is the stronger of the two. She is the one who plans everything and has a strong control of her husband. She knows what she wants and knows how to get it. Many men before the twentieth century would have frowned upon her just for that. However, it does not stop there with Lady Macbeth’s own twisted character. Shakespeare makes her worse than the witches in the play. The witches were not the ones that said Macbeth would murder anybody to become king or keep his power. They only said, “All hail, Macbeth! Hail to thee, Thane of Glamis! All hail, Macbeth! Hail to thee, Thane of Cawdor! All hail, Macbeth, that shalt be King hereafter!” (Pgs. 8-9, Lines 46-49) They never gave any details about how or when this would occur and they certainly did not mention any murder. That was all Lady Macbeth’s idea all along. The witches just planted the idea and she pushed for the course of murder to take place. In fact, the audience could compare her to the serpent in the Bible. Both of which tempted the innocent to stray into the darkness of desire. Her whole soliloquy gets the audience a through introduction of who she is in the beginning after she gets the letter from Macbeth about his good fortunate. She says in her first soliloquy, “The raven himself is hoarse, That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan, Under my battlements. Come, you spirits, That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full, Of direst cruelty! Make thick my blood, Stop up the access and passage to remorse, That no compunctious visitings of nature, Shake my fell purpose nor keep peace between, The effect and it! Come to my woman's breasts, And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers, Wherever in your sightless substances, You wait on nature's mischief! Come, thick night, And 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, To cry, “Hold, hold!”” (Pg. 17, Lines 40-54) She is saying that she wants to have everything feminine and gentile about her taken away for ruthlessness and bitterness. This gives the audience a look into her mind. Lady Macbeth is an ambitious woman. Being the Lady of Cawdor is just not satisfying to her. All she wants to do is rule over Scotland. There is a problem with that however. Women in Shakespeare’s time were treated like second-class citizens. The men had more rights than they did. Fair enough to keep that belief in the play of Macbeth. So instead of ruling Scotland herself, Lady Macbeth pushes her husband into killing Duncan for the throne. Macbeth does not want to do this at first because of his loyalty to the old king. To make a long story short, Lady Macbeth questions her husband’s manhood and he falls into her dark trap. Thus, the fire of corruption falls onto the gasoline and a fire break out. The witches and Lady Macbeth push Macbeth down onto a road of murder, guilt, and uncleanliness.

But why is Lady Macbeth more evil than her husband in the beginning? This seems like a slap in the face to all feminists. In the past, women have used their bodies or brains to get what they want. Lady Macbeth uses her cunning manipulation to push her husband to commit murder for the crown. But why are the women more evil than the men? Amanda Kane Rooks says in her essay, Sexualized Evil in Geoffrey Wright's Macbeth, “The tendency to equate personified evil with a demonized and highly sexualized femininity has concerning implications in terms of ideological manifestations of the female character in general.” (Pg. 151-152) She is saying that people have the niche to give the devil breasts, so to speak. This is even turn back in the Renaissance with Michelangelo’s panting of the Sistine Chapel. In the panel of Eve falling into temptation of the forbidden fruit, the serpent’s upper body is painted to be a woman. Even then, women were seen as the enemy of mankind. But how is it so? To answer that question, one has to go all the way back to the Bible.

Eve is mentioned in the book of Genesis, the first book in the Bible. She is the first human woman created by man. She was created from Adam’s rib as a gift from God himself. His last creation should have brought peace to the newly made Earth. However, there is a small problem instead. In chapter three of Genesis, Eve encounters Satan in the form of a serpent. He tempts her to take the fruit from the Tree of Good and Evil. She refuses at first, but after the serpent sways her, the woman goes through with the original sin. Her transformation, according to William N. Wilder, can be described as “It is a change from innocence to sin, from life to death, from blessing to curse.” (Pg. 52) From then on, Eve is heavily labeled as a foul temptress that led Adam into temptation. But yet, Adam took the fruit and ate it as well. So why is he not labeled as evil along with his wife? Society has always seen women as the weaker gender. Deborah Rooke says in her essay, Feminist Criticism of the Old Testament: Why Bother?, “'I'm sure you all know the saying'—her voice climbed and turned saccharin—'that woman was made from man's rib so she might stand beside him and under his arm for protection.' She made a face as if she'd tasted something disgusting. 'Have you ever heard such sentimental, condescending rot?’” (Pg. 160) She also adds, “One part of the Old Testament that has been enormously influential within the Western world's Christian-based culture, and which even now in post-Christian society has a disproportionate amount of currency among the biblically literate and illiterate alike, is the narrative of Adam and Eve in Genesis 2-3, a narrative which is widely understood to show women as being intrinsically inferior to men, weak, susceptible to temptation, a bad influence, and therefore both by right and by necessity under male authority.” (Pg. 160) However, this is not completely true. Rooke also adds onto this by saying, “'If you want to be logical about it, don't tell me that the woman was given to Adam as a servant, a sort of glorified packhorse that could carry on a conversation.” (Pg. 160) Eve tries to fight against the serpent at first, but she loses in the end. In an odd sense, Lady Macbeth and Eve can be closely compared to each other.

Both Eve and Lady Macbeth led their husbands astray. Eve gave Adam the forbidden fruit. Lady Macbeth led her husband to commit murder to rule over Scotland. Why did they do this? One answer can be traced back one word: desire. Both Eve and Lady Macbeth desired some of great value. Eve wanted to possess the knowledge of good and evil. Lady Macbeth wanted to rule over Scotland. Both women had high-risk goals in their sights. However, there stood one little obstacle: they were both women. Before the twentieth century, many countries frowned upon women being in power. Shakespeare knew this rather well. He cleverly makes Lady Macbeth the puppet master in the whole play. Women usually manipulate men into doing their dirty work. Rooks points out a well-known fact about women and schemes, “Wright's blatant contrasting of the sexual behaviors of Lady Macbeth and the three schoolgirl witches exposes a fascination with this alleged female "power" to either withhold sex or bestow it willingly as a means of manipulation.” (Pg. 153) Even though she is talking about a modern movie version of the play, the message is rather blunt. Women will use their bodies to get what they want. While Lady Macbeth and Eve did not necessarily use sex to accomplish their goals, they used other methods to persuade their husbands. Eve used her blind innocence to get Adam to eat the fruit after her. Lady Macbeth on the other hand, questioned her husband’s manhood to get him along with her murderous ambitions. She tells Macbeth in Act I, scene VII, “Was the hope drunk, Wherein you dressed 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 valor, As thou art in desire? Wouldst thou have that, Which thou esteem’st the ornament of life, And live a coward in thine own esteem, Letting “I dare not” wait upon “I would, ” Like the poor cat i' th' adage?” (Pg. 22, Lines 36-44) Then, she says, “What beast was ’t, then, That made you break this enterprise to me? When you durst do it, then you were a man; And to be more than what you were, you would, Be so much more the man. Nor time nor place, Did then adhere, and yet you would make both. They have made themselves, and that their fitness now, Does unmake you. I have given suck, and know, How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me. I would, while it was smiling in my face, Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums, And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn as you, Have done to this.” (Pgs. 22-23, Lines 48-58) She is taunting her husband by saying he is not a man, but an animal. She even says that she would kill her own baby if needed. No man wants to have his manhood questioned. Macbeth is no exception to this little fact and goes to prove to his wife that he is as tough as she is. As a result, both men fell into subtly-laid traps set out for them. Yet, this is not the end of both stories.

One key thing to notice in Macbeth is that Lady Macbeth gets downplayed until close to the end of the whole play. Macbeth is the one that steals all of the attention with his bloodlust. This is quite common in stories involving a femme fatale. The man starts out innocent, then the sexy woman comes along and seduces him into doing wrong, the man acts out the deed, and the lady of darkness is pushed into the background. It is not just in the noir genre. This concept of men being in the spotlight while women work in the background is played out over and over again in daily life. Men get promoted over women in the workplace. If a woman works mainly on a project, who takes most of the credit? The men do. Why does this happen so frequently? The old notion of the public and private spheres still seems to be hanging on by the fingernails in society. The spheres are broken down like this: the public sphere is the workplace place and business world with the private sphere is home and family. Men were in the public while women were in the private. Today that notion is dying, but it is not dying fast enough, unfortunately. Discrimination in the workplace is still present to this day. It is all just like in Shakespeare’s day and the Bible times.

Are these women really evil, however? Lady Macbeth is shown that way in the very beginning. She says that she would kill her own baby by smashing his head against the wall if she had to in order to obtain her goals. That is evil in itself. But what about Eve? Everyone just labeled her that way because of what she did. But it the reader takes a moment to think hard about the story of Genesis, the first woman is not really as bad as people make her out to be. She and Adam were both made innocent. They are like new born babes in God’s newly made world. The newlywed couple does not really know much about the darkness that hides in their garden paradise. God keeps them blissfully blind to their surroundings under one condition: that they do not eat from the Tree of Good and Evil. If they did, death would be the consequence. This type of agreement just set up a good corruption plot. As the story goes, it is Eve that is tempted to take the fruit from the tree and eat it. But, the reader needs to back up and look at the basic facts of the story. Eve and her husband lived in a sheltered world of innocence. They did not know why they were not to ear the forbidden fruit. God did not tell them why they should not eat it or why they would die from doing so. The serpent knows this and uses it to pander Eve into committing the original sin. Her doing so was not an act of malice, but out of curiosity and misinformation. If Adam had done this, he would have just received a slap on the wrist and be forgiven later. Naivety cannot be blamed for evil. Eve did not really know any better. But yet, she is still seen as evil. This is the gender inequality that would send a feminist into a blaze of anger.

Aside from Lady Macbeth, there are the witches to take into account Macbeth’s downfall. They hide in the background for most of the play. But to a lesser degree, they too pull the strings in this blood-soaked theatre. They too have a parallel in the story of Genesis. If Lady Macbeth mirrors Eve, then the witches mirror the serpent. Even though Lady Macbeth and the witches do not interact in the play, they still act out their role down to a tee. The victim in question is Macbeth. He takes the place of Eve and the serpent when he and Banquo first meet the witches. At first, the noblemen push the prophecies off as rubbish. When Macbeth becomes Thane of Cawdor and Lady Macbeth pushes him to kill King Duncan, the witches have a stronger influence on the fallen king. It just all keeps adding up to the grim ending drawing near.

Corruption only leads to ruin and downfall in the end. Both Eve and Lady Macbeth learn this in the cruelest way possible. Once Adam and Eve eat from the forbidden fruit, their eyes are opened. Not in a good way, either. When the couple opened their eyes, they lost their innocence. To some, this seems to take on a rather sexual meaning. It is pretty much to see why with the forbidden fruit being seen as a metaphor for sex at times. Adam and Eve are no longer virgins in that sense and now see the world in a harsher light starting with themselves. They see that are naked and cover themselves with sewn fig leaves. That is not the worst of it, however. They have now become fearful of God and hide from him when he walks into Eden. Even though Eve blames the serpent for her acts, her punishment is much harder than Adam’s. They are thrown out of Eden forever and Adam has to work for his food. But what does Eve get for eating from the tree of Good and Evil? Rooke says, “As it turns out, she is the one who becomes most like God, in that she is given the ability to bear children (cf. Gen. 3.15), that is, to produce new life; and although this godlike ability is marred by the punishment (Gen. 3.16), it is not removed.” (Pg. 167) There is a footnote that accompanies it, “Note that the declaration about the woman's lot in childbearing follows on from the declaration that 'her seed' (zar'ah. Gen. 3.15) shall be at enmity with the snake's seed. This is the first explicit reference in the narrative to human powers of reproduction, and unusually, it attributes the seed-producing potential to the woman rather than to the man. As van Wolde points out, this is one of only two occasions where the term 'seed' is linked with a woman rather than with a man, and as such it emphasizes the life-giving function of the woman (the other instance is in Gen. 16.10) (van Wolde 1989: 169). Since the woman's seed is male, this also reverses the unnatural birthing order in Gen. 2.21-23, showing that in future the existence of men will be dependent on and derivative from that of women. However, almost as soon as this remarkable, god-like ability is acknowledged, it is circumscribed in Gen. 3.16 with unpleasant side effects; Bledstein (1993:142-43) suggests that in the light of Sumerian myths in which goddesses give birth painlessly after nine days, this may be understood as a way of reminding the woman that she is not a goddess, even though she aspired to be one when she ate the fruit (cf. Gen. 3.5-6).” (Pgs. 167-168) This quote and footnote describes the pregnancy and labor pains of children birth. That sounds pretty harsh, but Lady Macbeth still has it worse than Eve.

Lady Macbeth’s sins and crimes were out of malice. She pushes her husband to murder Duncan so that she could rule over Scotland along side of him. She is clearly the puppet master of the whole blood-soaked show known as Macbeth. However, her power is short-lived. The monster called corruption passes itself on from her and to her husband, leaving her weak and trapped in insanity. Her guilt has eaten away at her sanity. I find this part rather ironic and interesting at the same time. The serpent that pushed Macbeth down his blood-soaked path of murder is caught up in her own web of misery and guilt. Her mental state is so diminished that she is sleepwalking and trying to wash the blood off of her hands. She is given another soliloquy in this act. Only this time, the whole speech is different from the first act. Lady Macbeth was stronger, ambitious, and immoral in act I. In Act V, however, she is pushed down to being weak, mournful, and full of remorse. She says in her second soliloquy, “Out, damned spot! Out, I say! One–two— why then ’tis time to do't. Hell is murky. Fie, my lord, fie! A soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account? Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?” (Pg. 82, Lines 38-43) Then she says, “The Thane of Fife had a wife; where is she now? What, will these hands ne'er be clean? No more o’ that, my lord, no more o’ that. You mar all with this starting.” (Pg. 82, Lines 45-48) Next, she adds, “Here's the smell of the blood still. All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh, oh, oh!” (Pg. 83, Lines 53-55) After that, she says, “Wash your hands, put on your nightgown; look not so pale. I tell you yet again, Banquo's buried; he cannot come out on's grave.” (Pg. 83, Lines 65-67) With that she finishes, “To bed, to bed; there's knocking at the gate. Come, come, come, come, give me your hand. What's done cannot be undone. To bed, to bed, to bed”. (Pg. 83, Lines 69-72) All of this even though in her sleep, purposes that in the end, Lady Macbeth still had some human in her after all. Little monster called guilt has caught up with her and feasted on her sanity. Her tenants do not know what to do with her. Her guilt becomes so overwhelming, that the weakened queen takes her own life. Shakespeare has Macbeth killed as well, but Lady Macbeth’s death evoke a sense of justice and pity from the audience once looked at closely. After all, she still seemed to have some bit of human left in her in the end.

Women have been the subject of the “Madonna-Whore Complex” trap. They are either one or the other. Society never has them as both. Lady Macbeth and Eve have always been put into the whore category and punished greatly because of their gender. But in the end, is this really right for them? Or they truly evil or are they just the scapegoats when the male half of mankind falls from grace?

Works Cited

Rooke, Deborah W. "Feminist Criticism of the Old Testament: Why Bother?." Feminist Theology: The Journal of the Britain & Ireland School of Feminist Theology 15.2 (2007): 160-174. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 30 Apr. 2010.

Rooks, Amanda Kane. "Macbeth's Wicked Women: Sexualized Evil in Geoffrey Wright's "Macbeth." Literature Film Quarterly 37.2 (2009): 151-160. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 30 Apr. 2010.

Shakespeare, William. Macbeth. First Signet Classic Printing (Second Revised Edition), April 1998.

Wilder, William N. "ILLUMINATION AND INVESTITURE: THE ROYAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE TREE OF WISDOM IN GENESIS 3." Westminster Theological Journal 68.1 (2006): 51-69. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 30 Apr. 2010.