Lady Macbeth

Agency in a Violent World is central in this section. Reid opens by exploring the tragedy of Roscille and Fléance’s doomed attempt at an alliance, through which they both unsuccessfully sought agency. Instead, they have been sucked into a vicious cycle: The sexual violence Roscille experiences fuels her desire to enact violence on Banquho and Fléance, while Fléance channels his feelings at his father’s death into sexual violence, as the world has taught him to. Rather than regretting that their alliance didn’t work, he regrets not raping Roscille when he had the chance. Trapped in a dungeon, he tries to reassert his agency through threats, but the misogyny of his response merely underscores the rottenness of the entire system in which he is operating.

Indeed, Fléance’s reaction is a microcosm of the society depicted in the book: Everyone is stuck in a cycle of violence. The entrapment becomes literal as the English army approaches; Macbeth and everyone in the castle are penned up inside, the violence they’ve initiated closing in. Reid creates tension as Roscille hears the sounds of battle getting closer, her senses limited by her blindfold in a way that emphasizes both her vulnerability and that of the castle. The danger of this unchecked male violence for bystander women is emphasized as Senga and Roscille wonder what their fate will be and ultimately try to flee. 

The choice to do so marks an important moment in Roscille’s character development. In part, Roscille wants to atone for Hawise’s death by protecting Senga. This shows her renewed sense of agency and purpose: Where she was forced to accept Hawise’s disappearance after the fact, she now fully sees the danger and decides to act. However, the memory of Hawise’s death also creates a sense of unease by highlighting their possible fate. 

As the novel continues to follow a five-act structure, this suspense moves the narrative toward a resolution or denouement. In a traditional Shakespearean tragedy like Macbeth, the main characters die; Reid reimagines this convention. Macbeth dies, and Roscille ceases to be Lady Macbeth, so the figure of Lady Macbeth also dies. However, this represents rebirth for Roscille, who emerges to rule alongside Lisander. She cannot change the structure of society, so her route to agency is still as a king’s wife. However, Roscille enters this new relationship willingly, with a foundation of mutual acceptance between her and Lisander. He does not seek to control her, instead complying with her leadership as she acts to bring about the denouement by staging a final showdown with Macbeth alone.

To do this, Roscille must fully overcome her main mental hurdles. When Macbeth locks her in the basement with the witches, she is threatened with an erasure of her identity and humanity, as she will become one of them. Two of the witches are nameless, and they have all become less human and more “monstrous.” They have physically morphed, losing their human eyesight as it is replaced with prophecy alone, and surviving by eating raw eels. They are trapped doing laundry eternally. Reid thus links their “monstrosity” to a society that traps women in roles that dehumanize them through the grind of domestic labor and erase their identity through the imposition of an archetype, whether witch or wife. However, the women find strength in their shared experiences and combine their power to defeat Macbeth, freeing all of them and implying that The Origins of Individual Identity and Humanity are not wholly societal. Reid highlights this by writing the Coda from the first-person perspective of the witches, showing their power to break out of the expected narrative. This also emphasizes that although they retain their monolithic identity as “witch,” they have a voice to express their opinions and feelings.

The Truth of Myth and Magic is crucial to this exploration. At moments in both the basement and her showdown with Macbeth, Roscille doubts the power or value of her magic. She wonders if it has been created by men’s narratives about her, mostly her father’s or Macbeth’s. The final struggle comes down to her and Macbeth’s competing ideas about her magic and the witches’ prophecies. In his presumption of his own dominance, he assumes that they all serve him and that the women have no will of their own to assert. He thinks he can defeat Roscille through disbelieving in her power, just as he thinks that the witches do not have their own motivation and that their prophecies protect him. Ultimately, Roscille takes control of her magic and therefore her fate by meeting his eyes, forcing him to truly see her and so recognize her humanity and her identity. Reid emphasizes the power of her magic in this moment as she does not just bend Macbeth to her will but disintegrates him, leaving his skull. Symbolically, the suggestion is that recognition of women’s humanity and agency would “kill” patriarchal power once and for all. Reid thus creates a resolution built around her major themes, subverts the tragedy of her source material, and gives her protagonist a happy ending.