Maternity and Masculinity in Macbeth and Coriolanus

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Maternity and Masculinity in Macbeth and Coriolanus

The power of womanhood is linked with both maternity and masculinity in Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Coriolanus; one might say that they are interchangeable. Lady Macbeth becomes the psychologically masculine force over her husband, essentially assuming a maternal role, in order to inspire the aggression needed to fulfill their ambitions. Similarly, in Coriolanus, Volumnia maintains a clear, overtly maternal position over Coriolanus, molding him to be the ideal of heroic masculinity that both separates him from the rest of the characters and inescapably binds him to his mother.

These two plays, more than any other in the Shakespearean canon, throw into doubt the notion of a completely autonomous masculine identity by revealing the maternal nature of manhood.

Macbeth is a play of contradictions. From the opening scene, the witches declare to the audience that they live in a world that you cannot trust; nothing is all that it seems, and everything has at least one hidden aspect. The witches’ speech is riddled with contradictory ideas: “When shall we meet again? […] When the battle’s lost and won” (1.1.1-4), and “Fair is foul and foul is fair” (1.1.11-12). It is almost as though being in the presence of the witches repeals accepted standards of belief. When Macbeth and Banquo meet the Weird Sisters, Macbeth is drawn into their web of contradiction. “So foul and fair a day I have not seen” (1.3.38). As this repetition of incongruous speech hints at the play’s dissolution of traditional norms, we should not be surprised to discover the confusion and ambiguity of gender roles later in the play. When the witches reappear in Scene 3, their sexual ambiguity terrifies Banquo: “Yo...

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...delman, Janet. Sufocating Mothers: Fantasies of Maternal Origin in Shakespeare’s Plays, Hamlet to the Tempest. New York: Routledge. 1992. 131-164.

Alfar, Cristina. “’Blood Will Have Blood:’ Power, Performance, and Lady Macbeth’s Gender Trouble.” Journal x. 2:2. 1998. 179-207.

Asp, Carolyn. “'Be bloody, bold and resolute': Tragic Action and Sexual Stereotyping in Macbeth.” Studies in Philology. 78:2 (1981 Spring). 153-169.

Kahn, Coppelia. “Mother of Battles: Volumnia and Her Son in Shakespeare’s Coriolanus.” Diferences: A journal of Feminist Cultural Studies. 4:2 (1992). 154-171.

Shakespeare, William. Coriolanus. The Complete Works of Shakespeare, Fifth Edition. ed. David Bevington. New York: Pearson Longman. 2004. 1384-1438.

----. Macbeth. The Complete Works of Shakespeare, Fifth Edition. ed. David Bevington. New York: Pearson Longman. 2004. 1255-1293

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