Macbeth (Vol. 57) | Janet Adelman (essay date 1985)
Janet Adelman (essay date 1985)
SOURCE: “‘Born of Woman’: Fantasies of Maternal Power in Macbeth,” in Cannibals, Witches, and Divorce: Estranging the Renaissance, edited by Marjorie Garber, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987, pp. 90-121.
[In the following essay, originally presented in 1985, Adelman suggests that Macbeth represents a powerful fantasy of escape from an absolute and destructive maternal power.]
In the last moments of any production of Macbeth, as Macbeth feels himself increasingly hemmed in by enemies, the stage will resonate hauntingly with variants of his repeated question, “What’s he / That was not born of woman?” (5.7.2-3; for variants, see 5.3.4, 6; 5.7.11, 13; 5.8.13, 31).1 Repeated seven times, Macbeth's allusion to the witches' prophecy—“none of woman born / Shall harm Macbeth” (4.1.80-81)—becomes virtually a talisman to ward off danger; even after he has...
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