The Role of Female Characters in Titus Andronicus and Macbeth

The Irreligious Piety of the Patriarchy:
The role of Female Characters in
Titus Andronicus and Macbeth

Much emphasis has been placed on the male mystique in history. The ideas of what makes something masculine and feminine would appear at first glance to be well ingrained into any culture. However, Shakespeare is capable of challenging those roles to challenge political doctrine. In the tragedies of Shakespeare, women seem to be spawned from one of two basic molds; the ambitious, and the compliant. Shakespeare's plays, Titus Andronicus and Macbeth, display how female characters from either mold become victims of tragedy due to the unforgiving patriarchal society they live in.

Shakespeare was a playwright who wished to challenge political convention by having his audiences witness the victimization of the often-silent plight of female characters. "If the victims are exploited by their societies, they are also, to a greater or lesser extent, exploited by the dramatist for particular functions" (White, 15). There are many instances in Shakespeare's tragedies where, "alongside the tragic protagonist who is proclaimed by himself and others as a suffering center, stands…the figure of pathos who is a lamb of goodness…Lavinia" (White, 6) and Lady Macduff are prime examples of this in Titus Andronicus and Macbeth. Both characters will be dead by the end of their respective plays, and it would appear at first that their only crime would be frailty and femininity. "They are an inevitable consequence of the willful decisions of others who claim to hold in their possession the welfare of ordinary citizens" (White, 10). However, when looking at each character from a political perspective, new revelations pertaining to the use of their deaths as a tool to educate are revealed.

Lady Macduff uses her femininity to contrast with the opposing patriarchal forces that run amok around her. She questions the necessity of her husband's departure:

To leave his wife, to leave his babes,
His mansion, and his titles in a place
From whence himself doth fly? He loves us not,
He wants the natural touch; for the poor wren,
The most diminutive of birds, will fight,
Her young one in her nest, against the owl.
As little is the wisdom, where the flight
So runs against all reason"
(IV.ii.6-14).

The masculine ideal of a warrior's identity fits well with issues of feminine subjugation. Furthermore, through the play there is constant reference to birds, which are mainly predatory. Lady Macbeth seems to liken herself to the harmless wren however, being that she remains with her family. This is confirmed later when Macduff sees the event as "pretty chickens" killed by a "hell kite" (IV.iii.216-218). From this imagery, one can derive political connotations. "On the front line stands…[Macduff and] Macbeth; statesmen, leaders, politicians and men involved with extreme conflict. They choose, or are chosen, to stand on our behalf as individuals against forces that are not so much social as metaphysical, martial, and national" (White, 11). However, judging my Lady Macduff's lines, it would appear that she makes out this masculine life to be cowardly. By establishing her values, which are valid, the livelihood of the children and home, it belittles the issues of honor and revenge. The body politic often abandons issues at home to chase after fictional demons abroad, thus creating a diversion for what ails the country. Therefore, "Lady Macduff and the children, stand apart from this towering struggle, and seek to keep their worlds in a steady keel of quiet love, compassion and familial tenderness" (White, 11). Thus, she is the true hero by not abandoning the issues at hand. However, she is not safe in her convictions alone. For Shakespeare will reveal how those to stand for their philosophies are often destroyed ironically. "Danger for them [the innocent victims] arises when they resist, or get in the way of, the front-line fighters. Just for a few minutes in each tragedy, Shakespeare turns our gaze towards the innocents…to feel shock and a deep sense of injustice" (White, 11).

Lavinia proves to be a prime example of how women are oppressed via the body politic. She, like Lady Macduff, is a woman of supreme femininity and compliance. "It should be recognized that the virtuous characters are not congenitally victims but they are congenitally and uncompromisingly good. They are incapacitated from acting in any other way by the inner demands of their characters" (White, 16). Lavinia's character in Titus Andronicus is used as a pawn for revenge. She is brutally raped and mutilated, her tongue being ripped out and her hands severed. However, the violent actions against her body should not necessarily be taken literally, but in a philosophically political perspective. "Rather than make Lavinia serve as the object of illicit lust, Shakespeare uses her body as the site for political rivalry among various families with competing claims to power over Rome. For one of them to possess Lavinia is for that family to display power over the rest-nothing more nor less than that" (Tennenhouse, 108). This argument seems to be justified in the sense that for the most part, Lavinia has no voice, but is a mere vessel in which battles over her frame take place. "Lavinia's body…interprets [the] gratuitous carnage in a way that must have been clear to an Elizabethan audience, in as much as her body was that of a daughter of the popular candidate for emperor of Rome, the first choice of wife for the emperor of Rome, and the betrothed of the emperor's younger brother" (Tennenhouse, 108). In this light, Lavinia stands for the entire aristocratic body. This image is made clear when Marcus Andronicus, inspired by the pile of bides heaped at the banquet table, addresses the citizens of Rome, "Let me teach you how to knit again/…These broken limbs into one body" (V.iii.70-2). He is referring to the mutilation of all parties, particularly Lavinia, and making a connection between the feuding political boundaries.

The fact that Lavinia is stripped of her voice adds new dimension to viewing her through a political perspective. It is argued that there is a "complex chain of association among the word, the sword, and the phallus, marking off language as the domain of masculine privilege and masculine aggression" (Barker, 386). While Titus Andronicus does not demonstrate not Shakespeare's most effective use of prose writing, the fact that Lavinia does not speak after being dominated by a man, is significant. Her muteness further emphasizes her femininity and subjectivity to male dominance. (Just as in comedies when the female roles cease speech after marriage) However, we as a contemporary Shakespearian audience, must be cautious of trusting the voices of social propriety in these matters, for it will draw us into some fundamental fallacies. "By judging the victims according to the standards of �the world', and according to political expediency, we are falling into the trap of believing those in the plays who would seek to cover up, condone, and justify, every form of injustice" (White, 16).

In stark contrast to the doe-like Lavinia, but with equal political connotations, is the character of Tamora in Titus Andronicus. She is portrayed as the defeated queen of the Goths, who enamors the new emperor of Rome, and is able to manipulate him to work towards her ends. Her use of her sexuality is dramatically different to Lavinia. Whose "rape committed against her is the result of patriarchal social codes that demand chastity and subservience, even when these traits are at odds with one another" (Barker, 386). Tamora seems to know that she cannot abide by the rules of chastity that the dominant society would place on her, and uses her sexuality to influence, as well as be controlled by her lover Aaron. An aggressive use of sexuality could be interpreted as a masculine trait in Elizabethan times. This is further emphasized by Tamora's connection to violence and sexual excitement. She speaks to Aaron while conspiring in the woods:

My lovely Aaron, wherefore look'st thou sad,
When everything doth make a gleeful boast?
Under the sweet shade, Aaron, let us sit…
We may, each wreathed in the other's arms,
Our pastimes done, possess a golden slumber…
(II.iii10-26).

However, sexual aggression and masculinity were not Tamora's original ambitions. "Tamora's objection to her son's destruction…betrays her ignoble lack of self-possession in its passionate excess-an expression of emotional dependence that a noble Roman woman like Lavinia never permits herself, no matter how extreme her suffering" (Cox, 173). This use of her femininity to extract pity, shows how Tamora is decidedly feminine as well, although quite different from Lavinia, and not fitting into the mold of patriarchal society. It is important to realize that "From the opening, Titus is characterized as a man identified with an unquestioning allegiance to Roman �honour', a programmed code which impels him on a course observing ancient social and legal customs based on values of primogeniture set above moral authority, stoicism set above compassion, and revenge set above mercy" (White, 33). These are archetypical masculine qualities. Furthermore, they are still considered masculine by Shakespeare's, as well as contemporary audiences. "Titus is recognizably Elizabethan: a nostalgically idealized warrior aristocrat who is undone by pragmatic, self-serving, and power seeking outsiders and upstarts" (Cox, 173). Therefore, Shakespeare was commenting on the idea of what a man was, even in his first play. It is clear that Tamora and Titus have very different values systems. She begged for her son by the possibility of Titus having independent thought away from the traditionally convention his character was bound for mercy's sake. Titus replied with:

Patience yourself, madam, and pardon me.
These are their brethren, whom your Goths beheld
Alive and dead, and for their brethren slain
Religiously they ask a sacrifice
To this your son is marked, and die he must
T' appease their groaning shadows that are gone
(I.i.121-6).

This stoic response emphasizes that Titus is bound by what he believes is the proper ideal. "Viewing Titus as an Elizabethan aristocratic ideal in Roman dress also helps to explain how his mad revenge against Tamora enhances his admirable nobility" (Cox, 175), that is, if one believes in the current political system. He is transfixed by the tradition his patriarchal warlike society demands, which contrasts to what Tamora was trying to plead. "Shakespeare has cleared the way for a starker perception into such victimization of people who choose to base their lives upon love" (White, 23).
She applicably responds to his icy answer, "O cruel, irreligious piety!" (I.i.130). Tamora, a vibrant woman, is shown no mercy by her environment, as she wouldn't in Elizabethan society. Tamora, like Lavinia, is a victim. Her "basic function is…to awaken our moral sympathies and attune our point of view, if we are not cauterized totally by the general tone of brutality and moral indifference that characterizes a society which is a little better than a �wilderness of tigers' (III.i.54)" (White, 27). To emphasis that the ideals of violence will expand and outlive Roman society and extend into Elizabethan times, the surviving ruler, Lucius, is just as brutal and vindictive as the previous rulers. He states when speaking of the dead Tamora:

As for that ravenous Tiger, Tamora,
No funeral rite, nor man in mourning weed,
No mournful bell shall ring her burial;
But throw her forth to beasts and birds to prey.
Her life was beastly and devoid of pity,
And being dead, let birds on her take pity.
(V.iii.195-200).

Nothing was learned at the beginning, and nothing acknowledged at the end. No other conclusion seems adequate in such a relentlessly revenge-centered society.

Lady Macbeth proves to be the chief example of ambitious gender bending female roles that is punished by the community that governs her. "We may interpret Lady Macbeth's ruthlessness in steeling her husband's purpose as a response to her personal ineffectuality in a masculine world" (White, 8). To claim some sense of power, she exclaims:

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 think my blood;
Stop up th' access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visiting of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
Th' 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 of 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!"
(I.iv.40-54).

Here Lady Macbeth, by stating that cruelty can only be achieved after she is �unsexed' shows that the ideal is fundamentally masculine. "evil can only take full possession of Lady Macbeth after her human nature, her femininity, has been driven out of her." (Clemen, 147). Using an imperative structure, she releases a series of commands that shows she is in complete control and very effectively gives a sense of immediacy. However, Shakespeare allows Lady Macbeth to overrule her husband in order to show that such inversion of sexual relations is also an inversion of the political order. Her possession of illicit desire in its most masculine form-the twisted ambition of the miserable-leads directly to regicide. Shakespeare turns the doubling of Lady Macbeth against her. If she invoked the trope of doubling in order to accomplish her homicidal ambitions, then doubling becomes her punishment too. Nowhere is this clearer than in her madness. Lady Macbeth's language rebels against her, and she speaks as if another person inhabited her body. Where she was �unsexed' and �filled with cruelty' before, now she is obsessed with her pollution. "Out damned spot! out," she cries out in her delirium, "what will these hands ne'er be clean?" (V.i.35, 43). In this manner, she reenacts the details of the murder in a parody of ritual purification. "The theory runs that we are shown causal links between the way a person lives and how he or she is treated by the author at the end of the work, in such a way that each gets his just desserts" (White, 3). However, when Lady Macbeth is dead, the audience feels a sense of outrage at her husbands somewhat benign reaction. "She should have died hereafter/There would have been a time for such a word" (V.v.17-18). We can have a lack of sympathy for Macbeth, because he is, strictly speaking, a cold-blooded and ruthless murderer for political ends. "We may more properly place his psychological make-up as a product of social and political pressures, without going to the extent of condoning his attempted murder" (White, 46). While prophecy makes give some justification for his murderous actions, he is still accountable and culpable for murder. "If we seek to find some ultimate reason for the existence of evil amongst men and if we also do not wish to ignore the fact hat each villain is partially a victim of circumstances himself, then the next step is to look at the society itself which perpetuates myths of moral license given to powerful men" (White, 47).

It is here that the idea of the witches comes into play. While Lady Macbeth tries to claim masculinity, "possession of any of the political feature of the patriarch by a female constitutes the overturning of some primal natural order" (Tennenhouse, 132). Therefore, by the basic rules of irony, such usurpers must be punished. The "technology of punishment be legitimately applied, as it is when Lady Macbeth, having misused this technology in applying it to Duncan, turns it round on herself in her madness" (Tennenhouse, 132). The witches, however, are actually in business of perpetuating the current institutions that hold women in bondage.

Initially, [the witches] speak a subversive prophecy-an anti-patriarchal truth-that seems to authorize Macbeth's treason. But work on the side of patriarchy. In the march of the trees from Birnam wood to Dunsinane castle, for instance, Shakespeare materializes the fantastic representation of Macbeth's downfall. In similar fashion, the fulfills the witches' prophecy that Macbeth can be overcome only by one not of woman born. As the figures of impossibility are realized and each otherworldly prophecy fulfilled, nature and culture both appear to conspire in restoring patriarchal society (Tennenhouse, 130).

Therefore, the ambiguity of the witches still being �out there' in the world is solved. They represent the fears and ambitions within humanity that perpetuate the current establishment for dread of challenge or change.

To conclude, Shakespeare wished to challenge the idea of a patriarchal society through his playwriting. "A dramatist's job is to give voices to opposing moral viewpoints, and Shakespeare above all has been celebrated for his capacity to do just this" (White, 24). Shakespeare accomplished this by having his audience be an active witness to the subjugation of virtually all of his women characters. Whether clawing at masculinity and authority, or following ones own doe-like feminine nature, the female roles in Macbeth and Titus Andronicus prove to show how all women are victims of a male-dominated society.

Works Cited

Barker, Deborah. Shakespeare and Gender: A history of Shakespearan Tragedy and Gender. Theater Journal, 49.3, 1997.

Chemen, Wolfgang. Shakespeare's Sililoquies. Methuen and Co. Ltd. London and New York. 1987

Cox, John D. Shakespeare and the Dramaturgy of Power. Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey. 1989.

Makaryk, Ireana R. Shakespeare Right and Wrong. Theater Journal, 49.3, 1997.

Melchiori, Giorgio. Shakespeare's Garter Plays: Edward III to Merry Wives of Windsor. Associated University Press, University of Delaware Press, Newark. 1994.

Raber, Karen L. Murderous Mothers and the Family/State Analogy in Classical and Renaissance Drama. Comparative Literature Studies, 37.3, 2000.

Tennenhouse, Leonard. Power of Display: The politics of Shakespeare's genres.

Methuen and Co., Ltd, New York & London. 1986.

White, R.S. Innocent Victims: Poetic Justice in Shakespearean Tragedy. The Athlone Press, London. 1986.