The Medicalization of 'Midnight Hags': Macbeth and Witchcraft in Early Modern England
Written shortly after the death of a post-menopausal queen, Elizabeth I, and during the reign of James I, Shakespeare’s Macbeth attempts to destabilize the representation Elizabeth used during her elderly years, as the virgin queen and a nurturing mother to England. In order to clear the representational canvas for the insertion of James’ patriarchal power, the play depicts maternal power and nurture from an aging woman as malevolent and horrific. For instance, Lady Macbeth’s reference to dashing a baby’s brain after nursing it, recalls the “finger of a birth-strangled babe”(IV.i.30) in the witches’ cauldron, as well as the common accusation of infanticide against witches during the early modern period. Furthermore, Lady Macbeth’s desire for a premature menopause, to no longer experience “the compunctious visitings of nature”(I.v.41) in order to take the seat of Queen, adds to the complex early modern associations made between post-menopausal bodies and the bodies of witches. This paper aims to reveal the patriarchal constructions behind each of the above mentioned categories, and more importantly, their function as modes of masculinist control.
When read alongside the popular medical texts from the period, such as Jane Sharp’s The Midwives Book and Lazare Riviere’s The Practice of Physick, the play appears to align the physical bodily markings of the three bearded witches, or “hags,” with medical descriptions of symptoms that occur when a woman ceases to menstruate. For example, according to the Renaissance bio-physical understanding of the female body, which was highly influenced by ancient humoral theory, women were believed to rid their excess residues through menstruation and lactation. Since post-menopausal women no longer menstruate or lactate, they would need a new form of disposal, thereby producing beards. Thus, the play conflates the bodies of witches with post-menopausal bodies, and offers a possible explanation for why elderly women were vulnerable to accusations of witchcraft.
In addition, this presentation looks at recorded accounts of witch trials, focusing on the accusations made and the possible reasons for such fears among those who accused. Since those tried and executed were found guilty of deeds that to our modern judgment would seem impossible, this study analyzes cases of witchcraft not as products of realism, but as revealing in terms of early modern ideology. An examination of witch trials recorded during the period uncovers a plentitude of witchcraft cases that carry the motifs of decay, illness, death, and infertility. Furthermore, a study of the trials involving infanticide reveals a trend of new mothers accusing their lying-in-maids of using witchcraft to harm or kill the infant in their care. These lying-in-maids tended to be elderly widows or spinsters, and therefore post-menopausal. My contention is that these witchcraft accusations – and the fear of witches – stemmed from the language of medicalization used during the early modern period, a discourse which expressed confusion and discomfort about the bodies of aging women. While Lady Macbeth’s determination to be Queen recalls Elizabeth’s successful defense as England’s monarch, Lady Macbeth’s desire for a premature menopause, and her similarities with the witches of play, suggest that Shakespeare had written a play devoted to the dark side of Elizabeth’s reign; the play becomes an expression about the disjunctions between Elizabeth’s aged body and the maternal power she articulated during her final, post-menopausal years.
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