Women Characters as the Manifestation of the ‘OTHER’ of Macbeth: A Psychological Reading of Shakespeare’s Macbeth

G. Petricia Alphine Nirmala
Asst. Professor of English
Jayarraj Annapackiam College for Women (Autonomous)
Periyakulam,
Theni, Dt.

In modern times, the term ‘archetype’ has been used to refer to fundamental structures in human’s psyche which can be applied to the dynamic structures of the unconscious that determine individual patterns of experience and behavior. A psychoanalytic reading of Shakespeare’s Macbeth arrives at a central or nuclear fantasy in which all the separate elements of the text play a role. The greatest of the universal archetypal theme ‘anima and animus’ embodied in the character of Shakespeare’s Macbeth is unveiled. It brings us to the specific dimension of Lacanian ‘Other’ the invisible order that structures Macbeth’s experience of reality in this paper which changes the very basic mode of how we relate to reality.

“Actualities seem to float in a wider sea of possibilities out of which they were chosen; and somewhere, indeterminism says, such possibilities exist, and form part of the truth.” -William James

The conception of thought and experience manifests an account of perception, imagination, intellect and ideas in the mind. The history of the world is nothing but the progress of the consciousness of freedom. From archaic period, only one person –the ruler— is a free individual and others are totally lacking in freedom (cf. Singer 15). Many suspect that their lives are insufficiently joyful; the zest for utopia has been a recurrent and powerful ingredient of countless theories of life. Since, it is people who are the substance of legends, it is important to scrutinize their lives with a special and strategic focus on the role played by race, gender, economic status, social status, and various other aspects in the scenario of the particular legend. For, the psyche of human being is primarily responsible for all the historical changes wrought by the hand of man on the face of the planet remains an insoluble puzzle and an incomprehensible wonder, an object of abiding perplexity –a feature it shares with all Nature’s secrets (cf. Jung 1957: 46).

The difference of degree within one’s own species is of little significance compared with the possibilities of self-knowledge. Moreover, this simply depends on the operation of sense organs and records the data exactly as it is and it cannot become knowledge since it is purely subjective without being brought into public. A genuine knowledge is impossible without universal concepts and it is said to have ‘objective reality’. Outside oneself, self-consciousness requires an object, which is something foreign and opposition to oneself. This love-hate relationship between self-consciousness and the external object comes to the surface in the form of desire (cf. Singer 75-76). In the social phenomenon, the subject desires from the view of other for the subject becomes subjugated by the other’s desire. Desire is a social product constituted in a dialectical relationship with the perceived desires of others. The interdependence of demand and desire is illustrated by Lacan as “the interior of whose outside continues its inside” for demand is an appeal for love and recognition from the other (cf. Khare Stuti 81-83).

The desire of the subject comes to be governed by the stipulations of its society, which argues about gender roles, equality and environmental conditioning. The psyche is inherently an androgynous entity regardless of the gender. According to Carl Jung “The anima is a personification of all feminine psychological tendencies in a man's psyche ..." (186). Basic qualities, which can be shared by both men and women, should not be labelled as “male” or “female”. However, Jung describes the concept of the anima/us as the archetypes of Eros that is associated with human relationships, earthiness, receptivity, creativity, and passivity and Logos, which is identified with power, abstraction, and action. These can be applied to the dynamic structures of the unconscious that determine individual patterns of experience and behaviour. The consistent findings about male-female differences in various areas such as verbal skills, spatial skills, aggressive behaviors help to solve objective rather than subjective problems though they begin at the moment of conception and emerge later in life as radical and significant divergences. The importance of underlying an evolutionary focus on sex difference employs an analytic perspective to comprehend the individual psychological factors. C. G. Jung states:

Every man carries within him the eternal image of woman, not the image of this or that particular woman, but a definite feminine image. This image is fundamentally unconscious, Even if no women existed, it would still be possible, at any given time, to deduce from this unconscious image exactly how a woman would have to be constituted psychically. The same is true of the woman: she too has her inborn image of man.-

Since the literature is the expression of the archetypes of the collective unconscious, a psychoanalytic reading will arrive at a nuclear fantasy in which all the separate elements of the text play a role. Unravelling the truth imbibed in the psyche of the constructed or fantasized literary characters of Shakespeare in Macbeth is the chief idea of this paper. The transition of Macbeth from a hero to a villain can be comprehended through the unconscious explored by Lacan in the ‘mirror stage’ in which the individuation of Macbeth (the subject) fantasies the Witches (the Other) as one and the same; and lacks a sense of self and imagines himself to exist in the Weird Sisters in the persisting background. Although initially prepared to wait for Fate to take its course, Macbeth is triggered by ambition and confusion when King Duncan nominates his son Malcolm as his heir. Unconscious desire of Macbeth emerges in relation to the big other. In the discourse of the other, the desires which are condemned to speak, come out of the language and desires of the Witches. Returning to his castle, Macbeth allows himself to be persuaded and directed by his ambitious wife, Lady Macbeth who suggests that regicide is the quickest way to achieve the destiny that her husband has been promised. She is exemplified as the archetype anima where the negative traits are deformed in Macbeth. Though he is refusing the input from his anima (Lady Macbeth), his gender identification becomes a criminal hero: following an evening of revelry, Lady Macbeth drugs the guards of the king's bed chamber; Macbeth ascends to the king's room and murders him coarsely and brutally as a macho, power-hungry, overly ruthless brute. Through this process, he creates his ego through the enhancement of particular qualities while putting the opposite qualities into his shadow, Lady Macbeth whose inner strength seems only to have been increased by the treacherous killing. Her passionate courage sweeps him off his feet; his admiration for her is aroused,

“Bring forth men-children only; For thy undaunted mettle should compose,
Nothing but males”

And the deed is done. His repressed qualities become more persistent in their demands for expression. Ideally, his ego has been developed and defined, and so the ego's antitheses has emerged through the shadow and anima Lady Macbeth. As Jung believes, she is the personification of the anima ‘Eve’, who deals with the emergence of a man's object of desire.

By occasional meetings with the Weird Sisters or the Three Witches, the members of the mysterious world tend to leave some kind of stain on the Macbeth’s psyche, which makes him suffer and deprives him of sleep, calmness, prudence, caution and self-control. They take possession of both Macbeth’s soul. The projection of Other’s Desire constitutes the part of the subject without his awareness of it. In the process of the (mis)identification of self, the imaginary self is constructed and when the notion of the self is embedded in three Witches’ prophecy, the self is constructed and placed as subject in the language of culture. According to Lacan, there is no unconscious without language. In fulfilling the second prophecy, a literary quibble takes place when Macbeth boasts that he has no reason to fear Macduff, for he cannot be killed by any man born of woman, his sworn enemy reveals that he came into the world by cesarean section thus he is not "of woman born" which is composed more of signifiers than of stable meanings. Macbeth realizes too late that he has misinterpreted the witches' words. Though he realizes that he is doomed, he continues to fight. Macduff kills and beheads him, thus fulfilling the remaining prophecy. The desires other than natural desires are formed by the Weird Sisters come from the Elizabethan period in which they were considered to be devils dwelling on earth. Macbeth does not simply exist as a free and self-determining agent but socially constituted by the symbolic order. The personifications of Macbeth’s Other in Lady Macbeth and the Witches, are “the products of a ceaseless dialectical interaction between the phenomenal body and the pre-objective worlds” (“Khare Stuti: 93). Macbeth’s gender identity is emerged in an enriched developmental perspective of the subject detailing in the critical periods.

Works Cited

Homer, Sean. Jacques Lacan. London and New York, Routledge, 2005. 55. Print.
Jung, Carl Gustav, The Undiscovered Self. 1957. Trans. R. F. C. Hull. New York: Signet, 2006. 46. Print.
Jung, Carl Gustav. Man and His Symbols. New York, Dell, 1968. 186. Print.
Khare Stuti. Self in Poststructuralist Theory: Jacques Lacan’s Perspective. New Delhi: Adhyayan, 2009. 81-83. Print.
Singer, Peter. Hegel: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford Press, 1983. 15. Print.
----------- Hegel: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford Press, 1983. 75-76. Print.

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