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Kendall Varin
Professor Flores
Shakespeare
10 December 2015
Women in Shakespeare: Naturally and Spiritually
Women in Shakespeare have been a topic of controversy since the production of his
original plays in the sixteenth century. Portrayal of women in Shakespearean theater is a genuine
reflection of European feminine ideals, successfully defining them from a male perspective and
portraying women by male actors. Throughout popular culture, there is a repetitive theme of
connecting women to nature and vice versa. While men are concerned with power plays, ruling
humanity, and conquering the earth, women are associated with nature, the supernatural,
childbirth, and fluidity. Supposedly more in tune with their bodies than men, women have the
ability to create and destroy life, similar to nature. In Shakespeare, the less feminine and pure a
woman is (or is purported to be), the less likely she is to survive the play. This nature versus
power struggle has been portrayed repeatedly throughout history, but is illustrated accurately to
the culture of European and now-American ideals. The fight against nature by men was also a
fight against femininity.
This connection women purportedly have to nature is characterized essentially through
fertility and sexuality, substantial connections to the human body. The stronger connection they
have in the play to their feminine side often leads to their survival, which could even be
considered confidence and comfortability with their own bodies. In Shakespeare’s historical
plays, the only role women seem to have is that of genealogy. The insignia of fertility is shown
successfully through the destruction of Lady Macbeth, whose lack of children and insatiable
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desire for masculinity is her downfall. Sexuality is a capital that women repeatedly have over
men in Shakespeare, not only having the ownership of truth and trust related to the female body,
but also understanding how to masquerade as male to prove such truth. This is exemplified in
Imogen from Cymbeline and Viola from Twelfth Night, as well as many other plays that include
cross-dressing.
Macbeth is a superb example of the decidedly evil sides of women and what can occur
when a woman is consciously disconnected from her natural state of fertility and femininity.
Lady Macbeth has been a character of fascination for centuries, particularly of her drive for
power and success, as well as her influence over her husband. Recognized as one of
Shakespeare’s most masterfully evil characters, Lady Macbeth desires her husband and herself to
be the most powerful couple in Scotland. Her monologues describe her desire for masculinity
and hatred for her designated femininity, which she does not exhibit unless in the company of
other men (excluding her husband). She understands cultural constructs of masculinity and
femininity, working to promote masculinity in her husband while trying to grow it within herself.
Lady Macbeth’s participation in the murder of King Duncan is a hand in masculine evil, utterly
unnatural to women.
The three witches of Macbeth exhibit the wicked alliance between women and nature.
They are masculine in appearance yet call each other “sister.” The three witches use spells (for
unknown reasons) and prophesy the ascension of Macbeth to the throne and Banquo’s royal
descendants. Without the use of manmade equipment or knowledge, the witches are inexplicably
connected to the spiritual and natural world. Their physical appearances also lend reference to
the vile spiritual realm, particularly their beards as recognized by Macbeth and Banquo. “The
beard was a token of a witch forms part of a wider association of monstrosity with diabolism and
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the supernatural. […] The body of the witch was supposed to be physically deformed, as an
outward manifestation of inward, moral aberration, or branded by the Devil” (Hirsch 94-5). With
the titles “sisters” and “witches,” the witches are confirmed females, already influencing the
play’s treatment of women and enforcing the belief of their supernatural connection. “Women’s
experiential knowledge of the secrets of nature played a role in witchcraft accusations in the
period” (Floyd-Wilson 110). The deformation of the witches’ bodies to masculinity is aligned
with their natural spiritual alliance to wickedness.
Lady Macbeth tends to rebel against everyone and everything, from her husband to
nature. While her rebellion is understated in appearance to other characters, it inevitably affects
her survival and success. “Lady Macbeth has to be childless so that nature can be shown getting
its own back on her” (Sinfield 77). Lady Macbeth rebels against nature with the absence of
children and therefore her inability to exercise motherhood. However, having experience nursing
a child is mentioned briefly while she is discussing murder with her husband. “I have given suck
and know / How tender ‘tis to love the babe that milks me” (1.7.54-5). This image of a child
introduces a feminine image of Lady Macbeth, who until this point has seemed power-hungry
and forceful. She has the capacity to love and nurture but for unknown reasons the couple no
longer have a child. Lady Macbeth is now more bitter than ambitious, discarding motherhood for
the power of masculinity.
Not only does she not have children, but declares that she desires power and title more
than offspring. “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” (1.7.56-9).
She only brings up her experience of motherhood with an assumed past child when trying to
convince her husband of murder, reinforcing her lack of innate nurturing. Lady Macbeth finds
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the cowardice and second-thinking of her husband despicable, having to repeatedly convince him
to kill King Duncan.
Lady Macbeth’s desired masculinity is another piercing arrow in her struggling
femininity. “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” (1.5.38-41). Calling upon the spirits of death,
Lady Macbeth cries out in frustration that she cannot go to personal battle herself with Duncan
and fulfill the witches prophesy and must instead rely upon her husband. She has discovered the
prophesy from Macbeth, but does not trust him because his nature “is too full o’th’ milk of
human kindness” (1.5.15). Lady Macbeth already knows that her husband will be hesitant to take
the opportunity to ascend to the throne. She has prophesied her own destruction and fulfills it to
the end.
Lady Macbeth is the antithesis of what a woman was supposed to be. She encouraged her
husband, was more masculine than he was, and had no children to inherit the throne. Macbeth
and Lady Macbeth’s lack of children also leads to the paranoia and destruction of them both.
With no heir, Macbeth is the sole keeper of his power. Lady Macbeth’s lack of fertility and
children leads to the paranoia and death of her husband because his greedily earned throne lacks
an heir. Instead of fulfilling her natural purpose, Lady Macbeth encroaches on her husband’s
masculinity and craves power. Eventually, this disconnection from her designed purpose of
motherhood, nurture, and spirituality leads to her death, which is mentioned with little detail and
reveals Macbeth’s depressed misery.
Motherhood is portrayed in various vessels throughout Shakespeare’s works. From evil
stepmothers to indifferent mothers, older women are nearly never portrayed in a positive setting.
Many mothers are missing, such as in The Tempest, The Taming of the Shrew, and As You Like
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It. There is almost always a present patriarchal figure, with 21 plays displaying father-daughter
relationships. Women portrayed in an affirmative attitude are more likely to be young girls who
are in the position to be married or are engaged to do so. The patriarchal connection is strongly
enforced between fathers and daughters.
These positively portrayed female characters almost always end the play married, within
the realm of supervision by their father. “The daughter’s association of father with husband is so
strong that even when a woman as independent as Rosalind or Viola first thinks of the man she
will eventually marry, her thoughts immediately call to mind her father. […] The lack of
narrative logic in the association emphasizes its subconscious quality” (Boose 327). Conversely,
the lack of maternal association is interestingly emphasized by patriarchal figures. Mother
figures often do not interact with daughters, but sons, daughter-in-laws, and step-daughters, such
as in Hamlet and Cymbeline. Maternal figures who are influential in female characters’ lives are
sometimes not even related to the character, such as the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet, again
emphasizing the lack of nurturing and femininity normally associated with motherhood.
Instead of using actual mothers and examples of nurturing motherhood to exemplify
female fertility, Shakespeare instead used sexuality and language to structure the female body’s
prolificacy. “Women [..] accept their ‘natural inferiority. This position of inferiority required
women to strive for four virtues: obedience, chastity, silence, and piety” (Traub 130). These
virtues connected women to their supposed “natural state” of purity and spirituality. While these
virtues were pressed to be upheld, the existence of independent young women proliferated
Shakespeare’s work. Younger women are seen as independent and audacious while older women
are seen as bitter and overbearing. The younger women are, the closer they are to pure nature and
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the older women become they are increasingly worldly. Youth had its influence on views of
women in Shakespeare’s time.
While the female connection to nature was supposed to be under pure and virtuous
pretenses, the appearance of witches and the supernatural brings attention to the hysterical and
wicked side of nature. Instead of feminine connections to female bodies remaining those of
fertility and chastity, the witches, such as those in Macbeth, reveal a distortion of body and
power of language that is not found elsewhere. “The weird sisters, hand in hand / Posters of the
sea and land / Thus do go, about, about /Thrice to thine, and thrice to mine […] / Peace, the
charm’s wound up” (1.3.33-8). While the openness of female speech is considered a sign of
effeminate rebellion (Traub 130), the witches’ language rebels in the form of the supernatural
and spiritual. Not only do they speak in quantity, but in prophesy and spells. This frightening
female affiliation to nature is unexpectedly respected by Macbeth and Banquo, who desire to
hear more prophesy the witches foretell. Women not only have the ability to have a powerful
supernatural affiliation, but the knowledge and wisdom of prophesy forgoes their physical
attributes and gives them power in the eyes of men. A seemingly female attribute, the men’s
reactions to prophesy are not of jealousy but of curiosity. The witches’ prophesy affects Macbeth
and Lady Macbeth’s actions the rest of the play, eventually confident that they can and will
fulfill it.
In Shakespeare, there are seven women who act upon their curiosity and knowledge of
masculinity through cross-dressing. While men can only successfully inhabit masculinity in
Shakespearean culture, women cross-dress and imitate masculinity to achieve protection of
themselves and success in the realm of men. “The vogue for the cross-dressed heroine on the
Renaissance stage gave birth to some of Shakespeare’s most independent heroines. Viola, Portia,
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and Julia also don a masculine disguise which grants them freedom of movement and authority”
(Traub 141). Women not only have more experience in donning characteristics both physical and
vocal, but have easier and more literal transitions back into their feminine selves. Every female
character who dresses as male in Shakespeare returns to her original gender of female at the end
of the play. However, male characters who exhibit feminine characteristics have a more difficult
time acknowledging it. It is also troublesome for male characters to admit feminine traits in
themselves at all, while female characters embrace in both mind and dress.
In this acknowledgement of women who have success in cross-dressing in Shakespeare
unlike their male counterparts, women have a more harmonious and open ability in the
physicality of gender than men do. The confirmation of masculinity in men was dependent upon
their female counterparts. “The masculinity of Shakespeare’s tragic heroes is paradoxically
vulnerable, dependent on women’s confirmation and approval” (134). This authority women
have is related to their supposed natural tendencies, therefore having a higher understanding of
confirmed gender and sexuality. While they are not listened to as often as men, women are given
authority of gender and the assumed power to manipulate men.
However, female lovers often provoke the most violent and passionate forms of
masculinity. “[Beatrice’s] sense of masculine honour provokes Benedick to challenge Claudio to
a duel. Other women also prod men into acts of violence, such as Lady Macbeth, who goads her
husband into committing regicide” (138). These women have higher understandings of cultural
gender characteristics and use them to their social and political advantage. By both being able to
manipulate themselves to appear male and provoke their male lovers to be more violently
masculine, women have the innate ability to comprehend both masculine and feminine gender
and fluidity in-between.
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Male characters who exhibit female characteristics have various reputations, from being
considered more masterful of gender to being feminized and emasculated. Men who have
experiences with their female lovers in cross-dress often have lasting emotional maturity because
of it, evident in As You Like It. “Her [Rosalind’s] possession of the male costume and of the
power it symbolizes is only temporary. But Orlando does not have to give up the emotional
enlargement he has experienced in the forest” (Erickson 31). Rosalind had the maturity and
ability to imitate and pursue masculinity without the influence of the men surrounding her.
However, Orlando gains emotional understanding only after having experiencing advice and
knowledge from “Ganymede,” Rosalind’s male persona.
While men may dominate masculinity through dress and action, women have the ability
to manipulate masculine and feminine characteristics simultaneously and are not confined to
dress or mind. Men defy femininity by ensuring women return to marriage and female dress at
the end of each play, arguing for the “natural.” Yet women had the ability to achieve masculinity
through not only costume, but speech and brotherhood. “In the romances, then, despite the
portrayal of women as either unruly creatures or merely beautiful […] it can nevertheless be
argued that there is in these plays a powerful undercurrent of ‘female’ qualities that will
ultimately redeem the destructive ‘male’ desire to dominate” (McEvoy 241). Women have the
ability to experiment and exist on the scale of gender and influence the men around them to
exhibit different qualities as well. Whether these qualities are positive or negative is debatable,
yet their influence permeates the gendered performances of Shakespeare’s characters. The nature
in women is of influence, connected not only to their bodies and spirituality but intellect and
wisdom.
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The link between women and nature is their fertility and sexuality, bodily features that
are observed by men. The more active the connection is between women and their femininity,
characteristics such as motherhood, sexuality, wisdom, and fertility are exemplified in creating
the ideal Shakespearean woman. Characters that rebel against such natural characteristics and
pursue masculinity and forget femininity lead to their downfall. In Shakespeare, women have the
ability to physically try different gender perspectives and often have the influences of paternal
figures. Women are given the responsibility of upholding virtues of truth and purity, not because
they are civilized humans, but because they are women. The fight of masculine aggression and
power is exemplified by their female counterparts and continually puts women in a place of
submission. A “natural woman” is designed and defined by men. Nature in women is the
continual fluctuation between the purity of mind and body to the desire of worldly wisdom and
masculine action.
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Works Cited
Boose, Lynda E. “The Father and the Bride in Shakespeare.” PMLA 97.3 (1982): 325-347. Web.
Retrieved 9 December 2015.
Erickson, Peter. “Sexual Politics and Social Structure in As You Like It.” Patriarchal Structures
in Shakespeare’s Drama. University of California Press. Berkley, 1985. Print.
Floyd-Wilson, Mary. Occult Knowledge, Science, and Gender on the Shakespearean Stage. West
Nyack: Cambridge University, 2013. Print.
Hirsch, Brett D. “‘What are these faces?’ Interpreting Bearded Women in Macbeth.”
Renaissance Poetry and Drama for Context: Essays for Christopher Wortham. Ed.
Christopher Wortham. New Castle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008. Print.
McEvoy, Sean. Shakespeare: The Basics. 3rd ed. New York, NY: Routledge, 2012. Print.
Shakespeare, William. Macbeth. London, 1623. Rpt. in The Norton Shakespeare. Ed. Stephen
Greenblatt. 3rd ed. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2015. Print.
Sinfield, Alan. Faultlines: Cultural Materialism and the Politics of Dissident Reading.
University of California Press, 1992. Print.
Traub, Valerie. “Gender and Sexuality in Shakespeare.” The Cambridge Companion to
Shakespeare. Eds. Margreta de Grazia and Stanley Wells. Cambridge University Press.
129-146. May 2006.