56 pages • 1 hour read
Ava ReidLady Macbeth
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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BetaPart 4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 4: “Act IV: Les Deux Amanz, Les Deux Amants”
Part 4, Chapter 10 Summary
Lisander tells Roscille that his father was once a brilliant king who loved his queen. Hunting in the forest, he saw a beautiful doe that, strangely, had horns. When he shot it, the arrow wounded it but also circled back and wounded him. The doe turned into a woman, whom he raped. She cursed all the firstborn sons of his line and then died. As a consequence, Lisander turns into a monster when he sleeps and has to be locked in a stone room. Evander was born fully human, but their mother died in childbirth, and with this loss, Duncane became sick. He hunted down all the witches in the kingdom, but they all agreed only the witch who cast the curse could undo it, and she was dead.
Roscille says that all men are monstrous; she prefers that Lisander’s physical form is honest. However, Lisander can no longer stay awake, and he turns into a serpentine dragon, ripping open the cell bars. He lands on her for a moment, exciting her, but then flies out of the castle.
Banquho sends Senga rather than a physician to treat Roscille’s wounds because Roscille’s enchantment does not work on women. Macbeth returns having seized the throne but limping from a wound. The Thanes have capitulated; he believes they will fight the English alongside him instead of honoring Duncane’s treaty. He does not care about Roscille and Banquho’s squabbles over honor or that Lisander escaped as a dragon: This merely serves as proof that Duncane’s line should not rule. He puts a bounty on the dragon’s head.
Macbeth produces the white cloak Roscille requested, made of six animals, including an ermine. She thought this would be impossible, as there are only six white animals in Scotland, and one is the unicorn. The hood is the unicorn’s head, its horn still attached. Macbeth says he foolishly hunted with other men’s dogs and men: The unicorn managed to gore two dogs, and one of the men accidentally injured his leg. He inspects Roscille’s wounded thighs, angry that she has “allowed” her precious physical form to be tainted. He kisses her tenderly through the veil and then rapes her, refusing to fulfill her third wish first.
Part 4, Chapter 11 Summary
Roscille is bloodied and in pain from the whipping and rape. Wearing the cloak, she sneaks out to a still, otherworldly pool in a copse, which she found when she and Fléance injured each other. She submerges herself, intending to drown, but then the dragon appears. She moves toward it, inviting it to consume her in whatever way it wants. It leaps on her but then transforms back into Lisander. She reveals that Macbeth raped her and instigates sex as a way to reclaim her body.
Lisander tells her about Macbeth’s first wife. Macbeth was the second son, not in line to inherit Glammis. He made the strange choice to marry a plain young widow without much status, saying it was for love. Her eyes looked like water. She hosted a banquet for all Macbeth’s family and seemingly poisoned them all, allowing Macbeth to inherit without taking the blame. She was locked up awaiting trial but then vanished from her cell. Her dress was found floating on the waves. Roscille asks about Macbeth’s mother. Lisander doesn’t know about her but does mention a rumor that the Macbeth women all meet strange fates. He tells her the first wife’s name.
Roscille entreats him to flee, but he says he cannot leave her. She says they can never truly be apart, as he will always haunt her. She cannot flee, though, as they would be found too fast. She returns to the castle, deciding that if she cannot have safety or love, she will have revenge.
She goes to the basement to see the witches and finds she can psychically see some of their memories. She realizes they are previous Lady Macbeths. The center one is her husband’s first wife, and Roscille addresses her by name, Gruoch, thinking about the mystic power of names. She realizes that trying to exert power the way mortal men do through political games was a mistake; she should instead embrace her otherworldly power. She asks them to speak a prophecy on her behalf.
Part 4, Chapter 12 Summary
Roscille sneaks back into bed, where Macbeth still sleeps. When he wakes, he says she will sleep in his room now. He says Senga may stay and have Roscille’s old room: His status means that he can allow his wife to break small customs.
Macbeth brings Roscille to his war council to show the men that he may do as he pleases and that she is subservient to him. She sits in the corner in the cloak, which symbolizes his conquest of Scotland. Macbeth recounts slaughtering Duncane’s people, including Macduff and his family. He resolves to return to Moray, Duncane’s castle, to fight the English forces from there. He will leave Banquho in charge of the castle, returning him to his place as right-hand man.
He leads Banquho and Roscille to the basement to show him the witches. Banquho is horrified by the sorcery and the darkness. The witches prophesy that Banquho may be lesser than Macbeth but also greater, and though he will not be king, his children will be. Banquho flees and Macbeth gives chase, furious. He corners Banquho in the courtyard, accusing him of treachery. The other lords and Macbeth’s Druide priest emerge. Banquho tells them about the witches, but Macbeth says he has lost touch with reality. He has Banquho tied up, and the Druide priest performs trepanning on him, boring a hole into his head to release his “madness” or demons. Instead, it kills him. Fléance cries over his body, and Roscille knows she has doomed him too through the prophecy.
Part 4 Analysis
This section centers The Truth of Myth and Magic. Thus far, the setting has been closer to the low fantasy genre, in which magic intervenes in a largely non-magic world—in this case, a fictitious historical Scotland in which lines are blurred between superstition and the supernatural. Now, Reid plunges the narrative into a fantastical world, opening with Lisander turning into a dragon, showing Roscille immersing herself in a magical pool, and then depicting Roscille’s alliance with the witches. The impact of magic on the political, military machinations of the plot increases as Roscille realizes that she can impose her supernatural realm onto the men’s world. This fits the traditional five-act structure Reid references, in which the fourth act is “falling action” that begins to indicate how the conclusion will unfold while retaining suspense.
Roscille’s relationship to her magic remains complex even as she increasingly embraces it. She sees it as violent and dangerous but also as a source of power and escape. After being raped, she flees into the magic pool, which recalls the witches’ watery basement, highlighting their connection. Roscille chooses to surround herself with this magic but still struggles to reconcile it with the norms and strictures of human society, considering drowning herself to escape a world where she sees no place for herself. However, when she sees Lisander in his serpent form, she chooses not to drown in the pool but to have sex with him in it. This marks a turning point in the plot, as a sense of inevitable destruction gives way to the possibility of pleasure and love, showing that Roscille has fully embraced her magic. Her ability to do so stems in no small part from her recognition of herself in Lisander. Thus, when she accepts Lisander’s monstrous form alongside his human self, she implicitly accepts her own duality.
That acceptance is extreme and unconditional, as Roscille signals that she is willing for the dragon to do what it wants with her. Lisander implies that as a dragon, he has violent sexual urges toward her, underlining the gender politics of Reid’s narrative, in which all men are potential rapists. It is significant in this respect that Lisander turns into a monster when he falls asleep, suggesting that these instincts exist deep down, beneath his kind manner. However his desire to protect Roscille overrides this: He tries to stay awake, is open about his fears of hurting her, and ultimately, the dragon refrains from harming her. Compared to the other men in the narrative, Roscille views him as loving and virtuous.
This scene also explores Agency in a Violent World. In this section Reid uses another major plot development, a secondary climax, to place Roscille at a physical and mental low point as her greatest fear is realized: She is raped by Macbeth. Reid details her physical injuries from this act alongside those from the whipping to emphasize the gendered violence enacted on Roscille’s body. However, Roscille survives her worst fear and proactively pursues her own aims. She sees sex with Lisander as a reclamation of her body, expressing her independence from the ongoing sexual violence of her environment.
Though both her relationship with Lisander and her friendship with Senga allow Roscille to reconnect to her humanity, this does not preclude her from pursuing violence. Rather, she now does so for her own ends, showing that she now exercises agency but also that her violent world has shaped what agency means for her: She acknowledges that she is enacting brutal revenge rather than justice. This suggests another reading of Roscille’s “surrender” of control in the pool scene—one in which she symbolically relinquishes the illusion that she can fully contain her powers, which even she does not fully understand. Through this nuanced depiction of the ways in which power and powerlessness shade into one another, Reid also shows the complexity of The Origins of Individual Identity and Humanity. Roscille’s different qualities and impulses all coexist, just as she has many different identities at once: lover, witch, friend, and the nemesis of Banquho. This recognition of the complexity of a person’s true self, key to Roscille’s character arc, moves the plot toward its final act.
