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Jenny Brown
ENGL 472-01
Scholarly Essay
5/3/01
“Blood will have blood”: Female Deviance and Male Violence in Macbeth
William Shakespeare’s Macbeth is often interpreted as a tragic tale of a fallen
hero destroyed by the power of feminine evil. An analysis of the play’s frequent concern
with “manhood,” however, suggests that Macbeth interrogates cultural definitions of
masculinity that associate it with aggression, violence, and bloodshed. In much of the
earlier criticism of the play, the female characters in Macbeth are portrayed as the
motivators of evil and are therefore defined as deviant. However, they are labeled as such
when they exhibit male characteristics. They are blamed for the men’s perils, and seen as
witches, who obstruct all that is right and good in patriarchal society. Yet the male
characters in Macbeth are extremely violent, and they achieve their ambitions and their
fullest definitions of themselves as men through acts of bloody aggression. Shakespeare’s
Macbeth criticizes the cultural norm that describes masculinity as violent, ambitious, and
aggressive by having the most “evil” characteristics among the females be decidedly
male, and by showing the devastating consequences when a society embraces a concept
of manhood grounded in violence.
Macbeth’s extreme ambition accepts the “supernatural soliciting” in the three
Weird Sisters’ prophecies (1.3.130). He has already thought of murdering Duncan in his
violent ambition before they tell what “cannot be ill, cannot be good” (1.3.131). When
he says “nothing is but what is not,” Macbeth shows how only “unreal imaginings” have
any reality for him (1.3.143, footnote). Thus, the thought of killing his king is actually
quite feasible to him. Macbeth states, “Time and hour runs throughout the roughest day,”
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expressing his determination to become king of Scotland and his belief that his plans will
know fruition no matter what should transpire (1.3.149). This is an indication of his
obsessive desire to gain the throne; he will wear the crown through any means possible,
as “the greatest is behind” (1.3.118).
Many critics focus on the psychological aspects of this play, claiming that
Macbeth is weak, insecure, and overpowered by the females’ vexing nature. He is,
indeed, morally weak in his hunger to wear the borrowed robes. Macbeth thinks Lady
Macbeth and the Weird Sisters validate his secret thoughts of murdering Duncan simply
by voicing them. Macbeth does not question the evil of killing beforehand because
society has mentally shaped his adeptness in justifying his actions. Therefore, Macbeth is
“ready to receive [the Weird Sisters] when they come to him” (Williams 154). His violent
nature confirms his manhood in society, but his ambition overpowers his camaraderie
with other men.
Male violence rules the culture and blood lust begets tyranny in Macbeth. Howard
Felperin assesses that Macbeth has in fact “long since internalized his society’s way of
seeing and thinking” (171). In Act five, scene eight, Macbeth spouts violent epithets and
exhibits his ingrained violence: “But swords I will smile at, weapons laugh to scorn”
(5.7.13). He proclaims the necessity for his violence in stating, “While I see lives, the
gashes/Do better upon them” (5.8.2-3). Macbeth displays his courage in fierce battle
(5.8.34). His ambition causes him to believe he is valiant—“What man dare, I dare”
(3.4.100). In this daring, he tries to prove his masculinity through blood lust. He believes
violence proves his bravery and fullest masculinity. He has skillfully and wholeheartedly
adopted the violent norms of his culture, but to a self-destructive extreme.
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For the society represented in Macbeth, “murder is what makes you feel like a
man” (Orgel 146). The blood lust in the play is visible during Duncan’s rule, which was
“utterly chaotic, and maintaining it depends on constant warfare [; . . .] the primary
characteristics of his rule, perhaps of any rule in the world of the play, is not order but
rebellion” (Orgel 146). The play’s blood lust thrives on ambition and desire, and “to act
on desire [and kill] is what it means in the play to be a man” (Orgel 151).
Macbeth’s attempts to establish a firm sense of his manhood by killing Duncan
and anyone else who might bar his way to the throne are destined to self-destruction.
Since “nothing is but what is not,” Macbeth abandons his fear of murdering King Duncan
(1.3.143). Nevertheless, his mind becomes weaker and his fear grows after killing
Duncan because “by defying God’s natural order, Macbeth forfeits his own claim to
manhood” (Ribner 157). His manhood does not deserve reward because his blood lust
was so extreme. Macbeth is destined to be slain for his bloody violence because “evil
inevitably must breed its own destruction” (Ribner 162), and “the wages of ambition
always must be death” (Felperin 171). He shows that he knows he will be caught in the
cycle of violence he unleashes when he acknowledges “that we but teach/Bloody
instructions, which, being taught, return/To plague the inventor” (1.7.7-10). Macbeth
recognizes that his acts of bloody violence, though they establish his sense of
masculinity, will also destroy him.
Banquo is perhaps the only visibly positive male character in the play; he refuses
acts of violence to seize his own fate after he hears the prophecy about that his heirs will
be kings of Scotland. The Weird Sisters prophesy in act one, scene three that he shall be
“lesser than Macbeth, and greater./Not so happy, yet much happier./Thou shalt get kings,
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though thou be none” (1.3.65-67). Banquo’s admirable qualities, yet his inability to
become king, signify how tyrannical actions like those of Macbeth rule the society,
gaining all the prestige. Throughout the play, Banquo keeps his “bosom franchised, and
allegiance clear” (2.1.28-39), displaying a rare rejection of the blood lust norm in the play
that establishes a sense of masculinity for many of the other male characters, including
Macbeth, Macduff, Duncan, Malcolm, Siward, Ross, and the other thanes.
Standing on the margins of society and looking in to make comments as does a
Greek chorus, the three Weird Sisters know the values and desires of the play’s
characters, and are able to identify them because these same values of a violent society
make them outcasts and persecute them. They identify “high-placed Macbeth[‘s]”
corrupted soul, and proclaim, “Something wicked this way comes,” when he approaches
(4.1.98, 4.1.45). The Weird Sisters know the characters’ thoughts and vocally reiterate
their desires, but the characters’ speech develops of its own accord. When he meets the
Weird Sisters, Macbeth “seems rapt withal,” overwhelmed to find his desires appear
before him in such an “uncanny guise” as they render their prophecy (1.3.57). They do
not pave the path of the characters’ destruction, nor force them to a downfall. Rather, as
outsiders who understand the male violence of the culture because they are targets of it
themselves, they look in and predict this “tragedy of damnation” (Felperin 157). The
Weird Sisters do not suggest that Macbeth murder to Duncan, but can see that a violent
ambition poisons him and an ease in committing the most aggressive and bloody killings
characterizes the “bravery” that Duncan and the thanes praise in Macbeth. In the “hurly
burly” of battle, which the Weird Sisters comment upon in the first scene of the play,
Macbeth “unseemed” Macdonwald “from nave to chops” and hung his head on the
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battlements. The Weird Sisters’ prophecies do not tempt or compel Macbeth to do
something he does not desire. Rather, they merely make plausible inferences from their
observations of Macbeth’s unbounded violence and aggression—for which he is praised
by the King and thanes—and from his obvious longstanding ambition, which he and
Lady Macbeth discuss once Macbeth shares with her the prophecy. The Weird Sisters
are shrewd readers or interpreters of his character and of the bloody, aggressive, and
masculinist culture in the world of the play.
The three Weird Sisters never refer to themselves as witches though the males of
the play refer to them as such, and they are usually automatically discussed as “the
witches” far more often than as the three “Weird Sisters.” A footnote in William C.
Carroll’s edition of Macbeth: Texts and Contexts defines the Weird Sisters as women
connected with fate or destiny. Associating them with this power is a significant
statement on the flaws of Macbeth’s violent nature, which destines him for acts of bloody
aggression; blood lust will have tragic consequences. The Weird Sisters are an integral
addition to the play, but critics frequently refute their importance. As “witches,” they are
scapegoats for this society’s evil wishes and targets of the violence perpetuated by
aggressive men.
These “imperfect strangers” are made to look like what Helms calls “withered
crones” when Banquo says, “What are these/So wither’d and so wild in their attire?/That
look not like th’ inhabitants o’th’earth,/And yet are on’t?” (1.3.70, 1.3.39-42). The play
suggests their deformity, but witches were also thought to seduce men and be insatiable,
in keeping with patriarchal society’s definition of deviance and its fear of powerful
women. Furthermore, the Weird Sisters are “the opposite of people who occupy rigid
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position in the hierarchies of rank and gender” and are easy targets for the blame in
eliminating political rivals, as James VI of Scotland used accusations of witchcraft to deal
with some of his opponents (Helms 174).
The Weird Sisters are on the outside looking in, “telling the truth about the world
of the play—that there really are no ethical standards in it, no right and wrong sides”
(Orgel 146). Indeed, they “are only capable of seeing what is likely to happen and have
no way of defining the course of events” (Dimatteo, par. 1). Some critics even go so far
as to suggest that any positive value in the play lies with the three Weird Sisters, for they
are “radical separatists, who scorn male power and lay bare the hollow sound and fury at
its heart” (Helms 167).
The Weird Sisters and Lady Macbeth are shunned and made out to be evil villains
because they deviate from the norm. They are women with power, but unlike the men,
they do not “use supremacy by the route of violence” (Meyer 90). Shakespeare “locates
the source of his culture’s fear of witchcraft” when he presents the women as having
“maternal malevolence” (Helms 168). The androgyny of the Weird Sisters correlates to
their assumed propensity toward evil, as they have beards, a typically male physical trait.
Schiffer points out, “according to popular belief” witches were always bearded, but in
reality, they were just different (205).
As outcasts, they are able to recognize the corruption and brutality of nobility and
predict the downfall of its hubris, yet they have no power to make things occur. Macbeth
says, “Were they not forc’d with those that should be ours,/We might have met them
direful, beard to beard,/And beat them backward home” (5.5.5-7). This relates to the
witches because one use of the word “beard” in Shakespeare’s time was the phrase, “to
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make (a man’s) beard,” which meant “to outwit or out trick him” (Schiffer 208). Yet the
witches do not trick Macbeth, they only show him his future based on their understanding
of his violent character and boundless ambitions. The play debunks the belief by some,
but not all, commentators in the Renaissance, that women accused of witchcraft
possessed supernatural powers. The Three Weird sisters only appear masculine because
of their beards, but they do not act in the violent, bloody, and aggressive ways that define
masculinity in the world of the play. Nevertheless, the male characters condemn them as
deviant females because they do not emulate the culturally accepted norms of femininity.
Unlike the Three Weird sisters, Lady Macbeth “wants to become a man, not play
at being one” (Schiffer 208). Macbeths’ urging that “false heart must hide what the false
heart doth know” (1.7.82-83) conveys how the face that Lady Macbeth puts on “not only
hides her evil thoughts and deeds from others, but also conceals her womanhood from her
husband and herself” (Schiffer 208). One might say Lady Macbeth has a narrow idea of
manhood, but it is the one expressed in her society. Critics often deem Lady Macbeth a
manipulator, who persuades Macbeth to murder the king, and who pushes him to do that
which he never would have done on his own. But the text makes it clear that she is
merely reminding him of his previously stated ambitions and lust for power, which she
wholeheartedly shares with him. Lady Macbeth only “give[s] voice to Macbeth’s inner
life, [and] release[s] in him the same forbidden desire that the witches have called forth.”
She “surely is not the culprit, any more than Eve is—or than the witches are” (Orgel
151).
Lady Macbeth has been shaped to believe in the superiority of male traits. Both
she and Macbeth “equate femininity with cowardice, fear, weakness, passivity, and
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vulnerability” (212). Schiffer adequately describes their close-minded attitudes in this
statement: for the Macbeths, “to be strong and valorous and quick to act, regardless of the
action, is to be manly [; . . .] to be womanly, by their definition, is to be daunted and
fearful, powerless and unfulfilled” (207). They despise weakness and see it as feminine,
just as the dominant culture elevated masculinity and debased femininity. Consequently,
Lady Macbeth aspires to “unsex” herself and become just as aggressive and violent as her
husband. While one could argue that her aspiration to unsex herself reveals her deviance,
it also throws the culture’s definitions of masculinity into high relief so that we can see
them more clearly. Her appropriation of masculinist attitudes and behaviors helps us see
them more clearly for what they are: deviant and inhumane in themselves. The ideal of
masculinity extolled in the world of the play is itself unnatural and destructive, and it
appears most clearly so when it is role-played by a female character, Lady Macbeth.
The play’s conclusion suggests the endless cycle of violence and bloodshed in a
world in which masculinity is defined by aggression, dominance, and lust for power. No
women or children survive the tragic actions of the play. Lady Macbeth kills herself and
Lady Macduff is slaughtered along with her children, while her husband Macduff has
absented himself to protect Malcolm, Duncan’s successor as King. Male bonding and
bloody warfare take precedence over relationships with women and children in the world
of the play. Once Macbeth’s ambitions are fulfilled—to his downfall—the three Weird
Sisters disappear. As Macduff kills Macbeth and Malcolm is proclaimed King of
Scotland, order is apparently restored, but the absence of all female characters suggests
that this is a social order that is hostile to domestic life, hostile to women and children.
The order restored at the end of the play is one that must sacrifice women and children to
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ensure the fruition of male ambitions. The destructiveness of masculinity itself, as the
world of the play defines it, still exists, yet the culture is blind to it. The need to define
one’s masculinity by acts of violence and bloody aggression remains the central test of
one’s manhood in this society, as Macduff’s reappearance onstage with Macbeth’s
decapitated head suggests.
The ending of the play is entirely male-centered and stresses males’ physical and
psychological strength in being violent. After all, Macbeth is the one who kills Duncan
and all his potential rivals after gaining the throne, not Lady Macbeth. Macbeth’s
confidence encourages his bloody tyranny and he “cannot taint with fear” once he allows
his own masculine violence to shape his destiny (5.3.3). He will stop at nothing to know
glory and lashes out against those who could hinder his succession.
Macbeth’s bloody rule makes Inverness into a kind of hell on Earth. As the comic
Porter’s scene suggests, Macbeth’s castle is the entrance to Hell where true wickedness
reigns. And that wickedness is masculinity itself, as Macbeth and the other characters
understand it. The witches dwell outside of this realm, proving they are not evil as are
Inverness’s inhabitants. Macbeth’s kingdom is a place where revenge is second nature
and “where to do harm/Is often laudable, to do good sometimes/Accounted dangerous
folly” (4.2.73-75). Grief is converted to anger and it is best to “blunt not the heart, enrage
it” (4.3.230-31).
In act three, scene six, Hecate foreshadows the dire consequences awaiting
Macbeth’s ambition when she reveals that “thither he/Will come to know his destiny”
because “[s]ecurity/Is mortals’ chiefest enemy” (16-17, 32-33). Macbeth is convinced of
his need and justification for becoming King. This is evident in his belief that “[he] has
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bought/Golden opinions from all sorts of people,/Which would be worn now in their
newest gloss,/Not cast aside so soon” (1.7.33-36)—that “the strength of [the witches’]
illusion/Shall draw him to his confusion” (3.6.28-29) and he will suffer for his crimes by
going mad and losing his life. He overextends the norms of masculinity and disregards
the fault of his actions. His violent ambition is the poison that kills him, for he has “no
spur/To prick the sides of [his] intent, but only/Vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps
itself/And falls on th’ other” (1.7.25-28).
Shakespeare’s Macbeth comments negatively on cultural norms that define
females as deviant in their strength and males as heroic in their violence and blood lust.
He suggests that in a society where violence is laudable, there is no place for women and
children, family life and domesticity. Further, all men suffer because they are constantly
called upon to demonstrate their manhood through acts of aggression and bloodshed, as
in the case of Macduff or young Siward. At the opening of the play, Macbeth’s violence
demonstrates his manly bravery when he decapitates Macdonwald: “For brave
Macbeth—well he deserves that name—/Disdaining Fortune, with his brandished
steel,/Which smoked with bloody execution” (1.2.16-18). Macbeth, however, loses all he
violently gains as he engages in further acts of bloodshed to prove his masculinity to
himself and his wife. Macbeth’s regicide begins his downfall, and he comes to know that
“hell is murky” when he must continue killing to wear borrowed robes and to maintain
his masculinity in a world of men arrayed against him, who also define their masculinity
in terms of violent action (5.1.29). “Blood will have blood,” when a culture’s definition
of manhood is grounded in violence, aggression, and bloodshed.
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Works Cited
Carroll, William C. Macbeth: Texts and Contexts. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s. 1999.
Dimatteo, Anthony. “‘Antiqui Dicunt’: Classical Aspects of the Witches in Macbeth.”
Notes and Queries 41 (1994): 12. par. Online.
Felperin, Howard. “A Painted Devil: Macbeth.” Shakespeare Tragedies. Ed. Harold
Bloom. New York: Chelsea House, 1985. 157-76.
Helms, Lorraine. “The Weyward Sisters” Towards a Feminist Staging of Macbeth.” New
Theatre Quarterly 8 (1992): 167-77.
Huggett, Richard. Supernatural on Stage. New York: Taplinger, 1975.
Meyer, Rosalind S. “‘The Serpent Under ‘T’: Additional Reflections on Macbeth.” Notes
and Queries 47 (2000): 86-90.
Orgel, Stephen. “Macbeth and the Antic Round.” Shakespeare Survey 52 (1999): 143-53.
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Ribner, Irving. Patterns in Shakespearian Tragedy. Totowa: Roman and Littlefield, 1960.
Smidt, Kristen. “Spirits, Ghosts, and Gods in Shakespeare.” ES 77 (1996): 422-38.
Williams, George Walton. “‘Time For Such a Word’: Verbal Echoing in Macbeth.”
Shakespeare Survey 47 (1994): 153-59.