Stephanie Chamberlain’s work on Lady Macbeth and the connected gender issue

Inhaltsangabe oder Einleitung

The passage in Macbeth, one of William Shakespeare’s most famous plays, where Lady Macbeth, the wife of the main protagonist, is fantasizing about motherhood and infanticide, can be interpreted differently. In traditional interpretations, most of the scholars ascribe her expressions about the topic, to the main “unsex me here”-theme. Because this is the quote, which is the best proof to show how Lady Macbeth tries to mobilize her masculine powers to support the political goal of her husband. But these expressions are more than that.
Stephanie Chamberlain, who is a associate professor for English at Southeast Missouri State University, Cape Girardeau argues in her work “Fantasizing Infanticide: Lady Macbeth and the Murdering Mother in Early Modern England” ,which was published in 2002, that there can be seen a lot more in Lady Macbeth’s utterances. According to her, the lines including Lady Macbeth’s act one fantasy about motherhood and infanticide express the power mothers have in general, on the one hand because of their ability to break the patrilineal and through that have more political influence than they should have by this act, on the other hand because of their influence on their child in education and the connected communication of values. The following essay will figure out the main themes and thesis of Chamberlain, will give arguments to support it, and tries to give background information and explanations why this discussion nowadays loses importance.