A Defining Moment
The book opens with the future Lady Macbeth recalling an incident from her youth that will define her personality and stimulate her motivations for the rest of her life. She is just nine and the victim of an attempted kidnapping in which a warrior simply reached for her and plucked her “up like a poppet.” Her reaction is characteristic of the woman the girl will become:
“Kicking, shrieking, twisting like an eel in the arms of that stranger, I managed to tear his dagger from his belt, slicing my thumb like a sausage. With no idea how to handle the thing, I meant to defend myself. A fierce urge insisted upon it."
Sandstone, Prayer and Metaphor
Following the murder of Duncan, the Macbeths ascend to the heights of Scottish power. During the ceremony in which they are both crowned, and both repeat the same ritualistic prayer, the Lady circles the Stone of Destiny and recites a poem rich and thick and foreboding with metaphor:
“I am a wind, I am a wave, I am a hawk”
The Lady
Lady Macbeth is the portrait of a strong woman, but the “lady” part sometimes seem to be cast in irony. Both the Bard’s and this version of the lady are not really what you would call strong women per se; she seems rather a much more androgynous figure with facets of her innate being that seem peculiarly cast so as to make her appear more masculine. Rather than rioting against the patriarchy, the hardy suggestion is that she is in some ways one of its protectors:
“When I need it, I can call bitterness around me like mail armor, every thought a knot of steel, shielding the tenderness I have learned to hide as daughter, mother, wife, and queen among warriors.”
An Appeal to Stem Revenge
A somewhat more lenient priest than his predecessor, Father Osgar, tries to guide our narrator away from her deep-seated bloodthirsty desire for vengeance, but though she is accepting and gives lip service, even he likely knows his metaphor is not enough:
“Grief is sometimes like a sharp-toothed demon that gets hold of our hearts. But its grip weakens with time, and one day you will be free of it.”
Revenge
But vengeance is everything because it is not restricted to the tightest measurements of definition. Revenge at this level is always lent justification of one sort or another:
“Among Celtic stock, loyalty is all, and many who came to Abernethy offered strength and sword to me and to Macbeth, too. I was darkly pleased: revenge was rife in the air.”
