# Is Lady Macbeth His Wife?



## Waif (Jan 3, 2015)

Was she ever *mentioned* to be his wife? If so, where?


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## Stasis (May 6, 2014)

> Act 2, Scene 2
> 
> *10* *LADY MACBETH*
> Alack, I am afraid they have awaked,
> ...


She calls Macbeth her husband after he kills the king.

Do you believe that she was his mother?


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## Groovy (Jan 4, 2015)

Yep, Lady Macbeth is his crazy ass wife.


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## Cosmic Hobo (Feb 7, 2013)

@EDLC:
_This lady's his ... what?

He says she's his mother!_

Indeed, in this light the work is startlingly Freudian; the usurpation of Duncan's throne is both a straightforward murder for political gain *AND* the archetypal castration myth of the son who murders his father to supplant him in his mother's love. Macbeth's impotence ('Infirm of purpose!') is the cause of his emotional turmoil; he is both driven by and caught between his lust for his mother and his guilt at breaking one of the strongest of all tabus, which can only be sublimated by murdering Duncan, the archetypal father-figure.

This adds new significance to Lady Macbeth's remark that she could not murder Duncan because he reminded her of her own father, and to her lines about seizing the babe that had given suck and dashing its brains against the floor (meant to goad Macbeth into action).

The incest motif runs through Shakespeare's work, notably in Hamlet (who subconsciously lusts for his mother Gertrude and detests his uncle for committing the deed he cannot ), in _Julius Caesar _(Brutus murders his political and actual father Caesar), and in the parent/child tragedies of _King Lear_, _Titus Andronicus_ and _The Winter's Tale_. Shakespeare's plays are the public working out of his private incest complex; remember that he married a much older woman, Anne Hathaway, the same age as his mother. If he left her the second best bed, who did he share the first best bed with? There can only be one answer: his mother. The bed in which she first bore him was the bed in which she bore his adult weight in their nightly couplings.


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## Stasis (May 6, 2014)

Cosmic Hobo said:


> @EDLC:
> _This lady's his ... what?
> 
> He says she's his mother!_
> ...


I remember reading about the Mother theory.

In the first Act (maybe the second/shrug), the King gives Macbeth a diamond to give to his wife, so we know he's married. I suppose it's possible that Lady Macbeth was both mother and wife...


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## Cosmic Hobo (Feb 7, 2013)

It's a genuine theory? Gosh!


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## Waif (Jan 3, 2015)

Thank you for the help! Just checking under stones. I wrote a theory of my own in the Critical Thinking Section. It's not fleshed-out yet, though.


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## maeniac (1 mo ago)

Cosmic Hobo said:


> @EDLC:
> 
> @Cosmic Hobo
> 
> ...


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## 98403942 (Feb 10, 2021)

I think that's what the formula "Lady (last name)" meant at the time.


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