Hello my friends! How are you? I am doing great! I’m recording this on a Monday and this week I have 6 more episodes I'm recording - we’ve got a lot cooking for you!
I want to take a minute and do 2 things with you all. First, I want to thank everyone who left a rating and review for the show. And I want to read one of the reviews. This one is from Sassafras2016-
Thought-provoking and Empowering. Tracy takes you on a thought-provoking journey that makes you examine your status quo as a woman. The guests she brings in are experts and provide really informative insights into the context of Lady Macbeth, but also women and their place in history. Breezy and light enough to listen to at any time but also so full of insight.
Wow, thank you Sassafras2016! If you are enjoying the show and can take a minute out of your day to leave a rating and a review, it really does help more people find and enjoy the show. ANd I will read your review in one of our upcoming episodes, I promise!
Also, if you want to connect with me to talk about the show, if you have an idea for an episode or a suggestion for a guest, please connect with my on LinkedIn Tracy Oswald - that’s where I hang out and also Instagram - I’m getting better - tracy.oswald. Would love to hear from you!
The genesis for this episode came from a LinkedIn Live I did last Friday with Maribel Perez Wadsworth, the President of News at Gannett and Publisher of USA Today. We talked about using the power of your voice as women, and we touched a little bit on the concept of masculine and feminine energy.
Adopting Male Characteristics, male energy, Lady Macbeth. How this has shown up for me.
In order to be taken seriously, and actually be able to do the job, I needed to not only act more male, but also look more male.
In Lady M’s most powerful soliloquy - she begs for this.
Come you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts,
Unsex me here
And fill me from the crown to the toe, top full
Of direst cruelty. Make thick my blood and stop up the access
Passage to remorse.
That no compunctious visitings of nature Shake fell my purpose,
Nor keep peace between the effect and it. Come to my woman’s breasts and take my milk for gall; you murthering ministers
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature’s mischief
Come thick night and pall thee in dunnest smoke of hell
That my keen knife not see not see the wound it makes
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark
To cry “hold, hold”
Scholarly article that appeared in Shakespeare Quarterly in autumn of 1980 by Jenijoy La Belle
So let's take a look at what our Lady is really asking - and to do that we have to look at both the physiological and psychological aspects of her request.
What our Lady is asking is to be relieved from the so-called “limits” of her sex, to literally stop getting her period, to give her gall in her breast instead of the ability to make milk, to stop having the bodily functions of a woman, she believes that if that can happen, if she can stop being a woman physically, she will also stop being a woman Psychologically.
And in order to do what she thought needed to be done, she believed she had to stop thinking like a woman, to stop being a woman. VEry much like witches were accused of doing, she invokes the spirits to change her body and mind in order to
Side note - it was believed during this time that menstrual blood turned INTO milk after the baby was born - The Complete Midwives’ practice written by John Peshey
While the birth remains in the womb, it is cherished up with blood attracted through the navel….and goes on to say..Now this blood, presently, after conception is distinguished into parts. The purest part drawn by the child for the nourishment of self, the second is less pure and thin, the womb forces upward to the breast...