The purpose of this essay is to examine the role that gender plays in shaping man in Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Merry Wives of Windsor. I've always been fascinated by the question of identity - the way in which an outward appearance expresses and shapes the identity of the wearer, but I had never before considered what it means to identify as a person. Although subject to criticism since its proposal, the Great Chain of Being was a concept of the universe widely accepted in early modern Europe that ranked all types of living things from largest to smallest.
While humanity was capable of operating both above and below the natural station of its species, the category of humanity itself acted as a microcosm of the Chain and contained its own gradations of intelligence. While the order of beings was fixed, by their actions beings could cause the identity of the being to shift so that it would move to another space on the Chain. This crossover occurs at the most minute level as "The lowest member of the higher genus is always found to adjoin (contingere) the highest member of the lower genus." 4.
It consisted of the physical adornment of the body as well as the external embodiment of gender roles, both of which were considered to be external manifestations of internal identity. The ultimate failure of sumptuary codes throughout England's history speaks to the failure of the Great Chain of Being as a construct of the universe.
MACBETH
Lady Macbeth is not only responsible for shaping our understanding of who Macbeth is and the role he plays in his life, but she also transforms the way he sees himself and his relationships with the outside world. The main way she distances him from these things is by externalizing defining aspects of his identity so that he is stripped of everything he is and dependent on the things he is. Although Macbeth has the agency to 'clothe' himself with ambition, it is the garment of ambition he wears that is actually capable of taking action.
Not only does Lady Macbeth tell him that he has no masculine ambitions, but she actually begins to displace his role of authority in their home. This temptation is not just a passing thought in Macbeth, but is one that he thinks about several times before he makes contact with Lady Macbeth. Believing that Macbeth's sense of morality, which she believes must exist in a sexual, rational man, will prevent him from taking the necessary actions that would result in her social elevation, Lady Macbeth intends to fundamentally change his understanding of relationship . between masculinity and humanity.
Lady Macbeth creates a world for Macbeth in which he has lost control of his own body, a world in which his rational soul has allowed his body to become wild and overrun by his own desires so that he is powerless to impose his own will over it. She claims that it is not the act of becoming king that will restore Macbeth's manhood, but the act of colonizing his body so that he can command it to behave in a manly manner. By directing the actions of his body, Macbeth believes he can change the state of his mind.
However, by creating a gap between his body and soul, Macbeth inadvertently replicates the same gap between the previously coexisting masculinity and humanity that he is trying to achieve. By grasping for his masculinity and undermining his morality, Macbeth begins to lose the grasp on the humanity he is also trying to gain. It is clear that Macbeth has effectively separated his body and mind from working together because he can see in his mind something that he cannot grasp with his hands. But even though the separation is complete, Macbeth cannot control his lack. of morality solely within the sphere of his body.
Macbeth here admitted that once again he needed something to clothe him that would make him look like a man. Perhaps it is because the return of Macbeth's morality preceded – or rather provoked – his own loss of self-control that he once again begins to desire this beastly masculinity. At this point, Macbeth has enough sense of reason that he is able to understand that the artifice he is presenting to the watching world will not last if his wife cannot do the same.
But this new kind of fear he is trying to overcome is far more powerful than the emotionless instincts of an animal. He orders his men that he will hear no more announcements of Fleance's progress, and says,. It is at this point that he has almost no understanding of what is not.
Ultimately, Macbeth possesses some semblance of the manhood he fought for; however, it is a naked masculinity that he can only externally identify with and cannot really claim as his own.
THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR
While the desire for revenge is certainly one of the reasons why the wives decide to shame Falstaff's body, much of what drives them to act is their sense of self-preservation. Falstaff's inability to rein in his lustful desires poses a persistent threat to the maintenance of each of the wives' externalized chastity, which is why they ultimately choose to help restore Falstaff's humanity. The regular washing of linen underwear helped preserve the distinction between man's physical and spiritual nature.
But the secondary layer, starched and bleached, represented the part of man capable of transcending the physical realm. However, while the wives regard this interaction as nothing more than a joke, they fail to realize how their preoccupation with preserving and even tarnishing certain external evidences of sexual probity actually begins to attack any claims humanity might otherwise make to its own property, backed by those external evidences. Mrs. Ford uses her own clothes to shame Falstaff by proving that although clothes are meant to hide the physiological functions of the body, by revealing their deceptive nature she can condemn him for hiding his dishonest spirit behind bleached linen.
When in the company of someone outside the family, an honest woman was expected to cover her head with a scarf to symbolize the respect she had for her husband's authority. One of the primary things that early moderns believed separated humanity from the beasts was the gender roles they filled. Although she has removed the animal nature from Falstaff, she is again reminded of the slippage between man and animal.
Within the first chapter, my argument is not so much about whether gender roles are really an innate trait of humanity, but how an individual in trying to externalize one of the traits of humanity can actually lose what separates them from the animals . From the beginning of the play to the time of his death, Macbeth has carved out what should have been an inner quality inherent in all humanity and has instead applied it to his outer persona so that he could feel himself in possession of it. When Macbeth dies wearing the armor he believes to be his masculinity, he once again reminds the reader of his total separation from the immaterial.
In my second chapter on The Merry Wives of Windsor, I expand on the argument of the first by proving that in externalizing those traits that are. Therefore, to get rid of the threat Falstaff poses to their chastity, they defile and shame his body in order to get him to change his behavior. However, this is because they determine the quality of one's inorganic soul by judging the appearance of one's outward identity in the process.
While the merry women leave the play satisfied that they have removed the threat posed to their outward appearance of chastity which in turn affirms their internal identity as chaste women, in the process they have demonstrated the failure of humanity to truly be themselves. , to prove inherently different from the animals. Of Bonnets and Breeches: Sumptuary Codes in Elizabethan Popular Literature. Proceedings of the PMR Conference: Annual Publication of the International Patristic, Medieval and Renaissance Conference.
