Supernatural in Shakespeares Macbeth - Witches as Heroines :: GCSE English Literature Coursework

The Witches as the Heroines of Macbeth   Traditionally, the witches of Shakespe ares Macbeth suck in been treated as exemplary manifestations of the potential for evil. Many students and critics of Macbeth enjoy blaming the witches, along with Lady Macbeth, for Macbeths d take infall.  Regardless, it may be argued that the witches are the heroines of the feed.   One eminent modern literary critic, Terry Eagleton, has communicate the issue of the witches as heroines runly   To any unprejudiced reader--which would seem to splay Shakespeare himself, his contemporary audiences and almost all literary critics--it is surely clear that imperative value in Macbeth lies with the three witches. The witches are the heroines of the piece, however little the play itself marks the fact, and however much the critics may have set out to misemploy them. (William Shakespeare, p. 2)               For Eagleton, the social realit y of the witches matters. They are outcasts, much like feminists they live on the fringe of society in a womanly community, at betting odds with the male world of civilization, which values soldiery butchery. The fact that they are female and associated with the natural world beyond the aristocratic oppression in the castles indicates that they are excluded others. Their equality in a female community declares their opposition to the manlike power of the militaristic society. They have no direct power, but they have become expert at manipulating or appealing to the self-destructive contradictions of their military oppressors. They can see Macbeths destruction as a victory of a sort one more viciously individualistic, aggressive male oppressor has gone under.               This suggestion is not entirely serious (Eagleton observes that the play does not recognize the issue he is calling attention to), but it underscores a rouge po int in the tragic experience of Macbeth, its connection to a willed forswearing of the deep mysterious heart of life, the place where sexuality and the unconscious tame sway. This aspect of life is commonly associated with and hence symbolized by women, for complex reasons which in that location is not time to go into here (but which would seem to be advantageously bound up with womens sexuality and fertility, contacts with the irrational centres of life which men do not understand and commonly fear). In seeking to stamp his own willed vision of the future onto life, the tragic hero rejects a more direct acquaintance with or acceptance of lifes mystery.