Gretta Komperda
The Oxford English Dictionary cites agency as the “ability or capacity to act or exert power.” Contemporary audiences and feminist scholars are drawn to powerful literary female characters. Figures such Euripides’ Medea from Medea (431 B.C.E) and William Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth (Lady) from Macbeth (c. 1606) are seen as agentive through their ability to perform outside of perceived societal expectations for women of their time periods. However, the scope of female agency is limited. Martha Howell suggests that the capacity of women’s agency “is in fact produced by a feature of the patriarchal structure itself’ (22). Defining feminine expectations in both Ancient Greece and the early modern period in England will demonstrate how each society informs a woman’s role and how agency manifests. Euripides’ audience would be familiar with ideas expressed in Xenophon’s Oeconomicus (c. 360 B.C.E.), such as “the[ir] god directly prepared the woman’s nature for indoor works and indoor concerns” (32). Similarly, an early modern audience would recognize Alexandra Shepard’s assertion that male “duties are characterized as active and acquisitive […]. Men’s business is outside the household, in the world of exchange, while women are firmly located within doors” (75-76). In Ancient Greece and the early modern period, social expectations remained relatively static regarding women’s autonomy and in the societal expectations of a woman’s role.
While it was certainly possible for women to possess agency in Ancient Greece and early modern England, a woman’s supposed power and agency were often relegated to stereotypes; women were sexually domineering and only capable of possessing power over men by capitalizing on men’s sexual desires. Elyse Kelly Douma contextualizes such a characterization of female roles by asserting that for many women, sexual and reproductive capacity was frequently their sole purpose and source of power. She then asserts that outside of sexual prowess, a woman’s role culminated in her effectiveness as wife and ability to drive the success of her husband and family (2). What, then, enables our formidable female characters to act against the social expectations of femininity perpetuated from Ancient Greece to the early modern period? Though some contemporary scholars believe Medea and Lady become agentive as a reaction to their husbands’ actions, their true agency lies in an untraditional embodiment of masculine traits. Also, correlating untraditional femininity to reactive agency rather than the embodiment of masculinity would minimize the depth of Lady and Medea’s influence on the men and the societies around them, defining them as only being loving or hating wives instead of autonomous bodies with power. Despite the drastic difference between Lady’s seemingly loving relationship with Macbeth and Medea’s (eventually) volatile one with Jason, both share masculine traits that inform their personalities and drive their actions.
Medea becomes agentive because she exacts revenge on Jason after he falls in love with Glauce, the princess of Corinth. In the wake of Jason’s betrayal of Medea, she laments to her Corinthian chorus of women, “If we work hard at all these things, / and our husbands don’t chafe at the yoke, / that’s an enviable life. If not, we’re better off dead” (ll. 241-3). Medea has entrusted Jason with her love for him within a marriage that demanded great sacrifice in the way of total ostracization from her family. Leonard Moss cites Medea’s state of mind as irrational following the collapse of her marriage, causing her to doggedly focus on obtaining revenge. Further, Moss notes that Medea acts in accordance with female stereotypes at the time, resulting in her behaving overly emotionally and playing into expected feminine roles (517). He specifies that it is Jason who sends Medea into a rage where she must avenge her misplaced love and compassion. Conversely, Moss’s assertion fails to acknowledge Medea’s foreign identity as Corinthian, which enables her to conduct herself beyond the confines of the household. Helene Foley acknowledges the state of the typical Greek woman, that she “had no accessible model of full social and ethical autonomy available to herself” (Female 5). However, Foley makes a distinction with Medea because for her to carry out her revenge, she must “imitate a heroic brand of masculinity,” only turning to this male model because heroic femininity means self-sacrifice (“Medea’s” 79). She highlights the atypical reality of Medea’s female condition, one of a foreign and therefore, barbaric, identity and a divine lineage, both of which work to strengthen the untraditional nature of her masculine qualities. Medea warns herself against Jason, “Do you see what is being done to you? / Do not be mocked this Sisyphean wedding; / You spring from a noble father and Helios the sun” (ll. 404-6). Medea’s detachment from her suffocating marriage illustrates the strength of her identity—she simply possesses the ability to liberate herself from her mortal, emotional, marriage bonds by utilizing her “heroic, masculine side” (Foley, Female 257). This borrowing furthers the distance between Medea and typical female expectations, cementing her agency as a product of her masculinity and heroic lineage.
Comparably, Lady may also be viewed as becoming agentive to aid Macbeth’s fated ascent to the throne. Mary Balestraci discusses devotion in relation to early modern expectations, that it was an admirable “trait in wives and mothers [that was] the driving force behind Lady Macbeth’s actions” (168). Her concern for her husband and his success is shown through Lady’s fear of his malleable identity. She laments,
Yet do I fear thy nature,
It is too full o’ th’ milk of human kindness
To catch the nearest way. Thou wouldst be great,
Art not without ambition, but without
The illness should attend it (1.5.16-20).
Lady considers that Macbeth may not possess the vile nature necessary to usurp King Duncan’s throne.
While critics like Balestraci read Lady’s devotion to Macbeth sympathetically, that she works to put her husband’s latent ambitions into action (succession to the throne), Balestraci neglects that Lady’s true motivations originate from her own masculine sense of ambition. Velma Bourgeois Richmond discusses Lady’s misplaced guidance of Macbeth by noting that losing her womanly qualities to further his success is “not helpful to her husband but destructive of what is ultimately necessary both to his kingship and to their own self-realization as man and woman” (22). If Lady aligns with stereotypical feminine expectations, why does she not leave Macbeth with the most valuable asset, a son? Not only does she destroy what might have been kingship but complicates his future role as a noble or king. No doubt she would agree with Macbeth, when he says to “Bring forth men-children only; / For thy undaunted mettle should compose / Nothing but males.” (1.7.72-74) Richmond further argues that Lady “has betrayed her own sexuality by renouncing offspring, yet her husband credits her with the potential productivity not only of children but also of the strong male heirs so crucial to the continuity of kingship” (21). Accordingly, Lady takes on masculine roles that work against being merely a supportive wife.
Medea and Lady are established as agents through their masculinity and not through the actions of their husbands. Each is ambitious to complete their personal conquests of reigning power over a country or their estranged lover. In reference to Medea’s assertion of imminent victory over her enemies, P. E. Easterling informs that those “are all words that belong to the traditional code, in which the laughter of enemies is the ultimate disgrace and harming enemies and helping friends is the duty of a hero” (62). Medea’s heroism belongs to a different expectation, one that elicits a much more violent perception of heroes than one may expect. For example, Ariadne Konstantinou notes that Achilles was renowned for his brutal fighting abilities during the Trojan war (128). And though Lady does not physically kill, but she does so through infecting Macbeth’s inner thoughts, each of these thoughts ventriloquizing Lady’s desires. Irving Ribner describes the function of Lady’s rhetoric, which is “to mitigate against those forces within [Macbeth] which are in opposition to evil […]. [T]he imagery of her speeches draws upon the corruptions of nature and reversal of normal life impulses” (153). Lady and Medea, like the heroes before them, have a clear goal in mind: to usurp the throne or to exact revenge by any means necessary. Both similarly embody this bloodier form of heroism in their masculinity, as they stop at nothing to acquire their individual goals. Though gruesome, these classic heroic ideals are perpetuated despite their departure from Ancient Greek and early modern period standards of morality.
In their expertise of the historically masculine skill, rhetoric, Lady and Medea prove their capacity to engage in a more active, male-dominated society. Lady strategically uses language to pinpoint the insecurities of Macbeth, convincing him to commit regicide. “When you durst do it, then you were a man; / And to be more than what you were, you would / Be so much more the man. Nor time nor place / Did then adhere, and yet you would make both” (1.7.49-52). She targets Macbeth’s inner turmoil about murdering Duncan, his beloved king, and frames that turmoil as effeminacy. Manhood is defined through the capacity to commit heinous deeds, something she knows Macbeth is not capable of without her intervention (Richmond 20). Therefore, Lady’s perception of manliness requires forgoing any obstacles in the way of kingship, and she uses this knowledge to think agentively and implement her ideas effectively, akin to Medea. Medea’s mastery of rhetoric is attributed to her cleverness, a more masculine quality in Ancient Greek culture. With plans to exact her revenge on Jason, Medea plays along with Jason’s expectation of her obeying her “reasonable husband.” While Medea poses as being at the whims of men and their sensibility, Medea exploits these cultural cliches as “she pretends to accept and conform to his notions of what woman is like and what she should be” (Foley, “Medea’s” 78). Medea and Lady utilize rhetoric dissimilarly but ultimately arrive at the same goal, convincing an unaware husband to buy into the woman’s ploy. Skillful rhetoric allows these women to further their agency by allowing them to participate on the same plane as their male peers, even while having an advantage unbeknownst to them.
Albeit dissimilar from masculinity, both women acquire newfound agency through their rejection of the female role, which allows them to break free from the social confines of womanhood and motherhood. Lady’s famous pleas to apparitions and demons demonstrate a ruthlessness engendered by her sexual transformation. She pleads, “Come you spirits / That tend on mortal thoughts, / unsex me here; […] / Make thick my blood, / Stop up th’ access and passage to remorse” (1.5.40-44). While Lady had possessed masculine qualities, her transformation becomes complete with spiritual intervention—effectively transmuting her from woman to man, becoming a vessel capable of such cruelty. She yearns to cleave the heart’s vasculature, for she must desecrate any trace of biological, feminine, inhibition.
Lady is often cited by scholars as being most similar to Seneca’s Medea due to their witch-like transformations and hysteric qualities. Lady becomes transgressive through her pleas to demons to forgo her rationality so she can go forth with plotting Duncan’s demise. Nadia Fusini notes that this “Medea invokes Hecate, the goddess of night, of Hell, she calls upon the chaos of eternal night, the spirits of evil, the Furies, Pluto, Proserpine—to help her achieve revenge against Jason” (52). Many scholars view Seneca’s Medea as foundational to the construction of Lady because each character invokes a demonic spirit to aid them in their conquest for power or revenge. It is important to note that their collation suggests a visceral femininity is present. As Medea becomes hysterical in her witch-like state, it is assumed that Lady would do the same. Conversely, Euripides’ Medea creates a more compelling comparison because her feminine and masculine qualities have been ever present in her being. Medea desperately laments to her female Corinthian peers, where she appears fully defined by the role of an unloved mother and wife. Despite her grief and seeming alignment with the sphere of womanhood, she possesses the ability to transgress such domains through her violent behavior. After all, a Greek woman’s value lies in her status as feminine, which Medea overcomes without difficulty (Foley, “Medea’s” 70). While Lady may share similarities with Seneca’s Medea, to only compare the two would strip Lady of the nuance that Euripides’ Medea holds for her complex relationship with motherhood and place in a male-dominant society. Euripides’ Medea resembles Lady in the rejection of female identity and entrapment in womanly and maternal roles. By renouncing femininity, Medea and Lady acquire their long-awaited power.
Medea’s filicide and Lady’s imagined infanticide are the ultimate shedding of female identity, as these acts sever them from the sole purpose of womanhood in an Ancient Greek and early modern society. In such societies, women’s essence was reproductive because maternity came with god giving “her a greater affection for the newborn infants than he gave to the man (Xenophon 33). Medea and Lady feel entrapped in their feminine identity, so much so that they must steel themselves against their maternal and feminine inclinations to proceed with their vile actions. They are depicted as two mothers grappling with their loving, maternal instinct against their irrevocable murderousness, culminating in a real and imagined motherhood that is lethal to the self. Medea must clot the blood beating from her motherly heart; she permits no “weakening, no thoughts of the boys— / how sweet they are, how you gave them birth. / Forget your children for this one day; / grieve afterwards” (ll. 1246-49). Comparably, Lady must purge herself of her maternal memories of breastfeeding to replace them with her newfound atrocity. She exclaims, “I would, […] / Have plucked the nipple from his boneless gums, / And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn / As you have done to this” (1.7.56-59). By making the very traditionally female act of breastfeeding monstrous, Lady encapsulates her masculine ambition for power as she would go so far as to murder her own child. She no longer cares to play the role of wife, as she lusts for complete dominion over Macbeth and Scotland. Medea is also ruthless; she murders her own children in her masculine pursuit of justice. By violently killing her children, she not only eradicates her status as a mother, but she effectively destroys her household, erasing her status as wife. They both shed the confines of femininity by unshackling themselves from the most brutal reality of womanhood, the expectation to bear and nurture children. Lady and Medea both understand murder, imagined and real, as cultivating their futures, the former by elevating the status of her family, whereas the latter would protect her children from harm by being the only justified perpetrator in their deaths.
But why does Lady die while Medea does not? Lady’s sorrowful wanderings during her final scenes mimic those of Medea in the beginning of Euripides’ work. Her last lines are, “What’s done / cannot be undone. To bed, to bed, to bed” (5.1.678). The guilt of her actions culminated in her taking her own life because her grief was more than a mere human could manage. Her guilt and shame outweigh that of her “unsexed” (1.5.41) strengths, stripping her masculine identity away and revealing a feminine underbelly. Joanna Levin examines the still-possessed aspect of Lady, that “the demonic woman and the hysteric are metonymically linked” (39). While her femininity was thought to be obscured or removed, the hysterics of her female identity remain. Lady’s tale ends here, but for Medea, it is her beginning. The first time Medea speaks she says, “It’s too much, too much to bear! / I can’t take it anymore” (ll. 9697). Here we see Medea at her most feminine and emotional, described as “a suicidal, a helpless, feminine victim of her husband’s desertion” (Foley, “Medea’s” 73). As stated earlier, Medea already possesses embodied masculine traits when she exacts her revenge. She receives no punishment but is rewarded. Unlike Lady, Medea does not succumb to a femininely heroic fate, a death of self-sacrifice that emerged from the guilt of her actions.
After Lady ends her life, we are left with the eerie words of Macbeth’s soliloquy:
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, […]
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury Signifying nothing (5.5.19; 23-27).
To be left with only Macbeth’s words imparts an irrevocable sense of doubt and the consumptive capacities of power. Lady succumbs to power’s consumption and “leaves the play in an hystericized trance, still commanding but entirely absent to herself” (Levin 45). However, our masculine Medea emerges triumphantly on a chariot, where she ascends into the sky with the corpses of her sons. Edith Hall describes her as “not exactly a goddess, but neither is she susceptible to most of the constraints of mortality —she can physically escape what, for a mortal woman, would now be certain death at the hands of Jason” (90). Hall also emphasizes Medea’s transcendent nature and perseverance by noting that in each iteration of Medea, there is “no known ancient tradition, in any Greek or Roman author, that she ever died” (90). Was Medea able to embody the idea that the patriarchy offers no limitations to her or the sheer force of her will? Easterling suggests that “these passages draw attention to the ambivalence of human intelligence and creativity, which is potentially a source of beauty and harmony, but liable too, to break out in destructive violence under the influence of passion” (67). While these ideas relate to Medea’s tragedy, they apply universally to each great tragedy. Medea has differentiated herself and has proven her ability to successfully unravel herself of feminine confines, in every rendition of her story. Both Medea and Lady exhibit untraditional masculinities that grant them agency to act outside their perceived feminine societal roles.