Lady Macbeth is a strong character, no doubt. In fact, she's even stronger than Macbeth in some ways in the first two acts. But is she mostly just mouthing off?
In recent weeks, a video clip from the Dr. Phil show has become immensely popular online. It features a 13-year-old by the name of Danielle whose mother wants to hand her over to the authorities for being absolutely out of control. Danielle hits her mother and steals cars, and is unashamed and loudmouthed when it comes to how "bad" she is. This sort of delinquent behaviour is unfortunately a staple of talk shows nowadays, but the distinguishing feature of this particular Dr. Phil episode is when Danielle turns to the audience at large and screams to them what sounds like, "cash me ousside, howbow dah?!?!?" which roughly translates to the English threat, "catch me outside, how about that". She invites a fight with any one of the grown audience and show crew members, and even 'squares up' to her mother at one point. Right then though, her mother says to Dr. Phil, "but this is all mouth, do you see? She's all mouth." When Danielle gets up to argue, she is silenced by Dr. Phil and told to sit down. When asked what her thoughts are on the very likely situation that she will be caught stealing a car and will be tried before a court, she responds that she is too shrewd, too "street-wise" to ever be caught. She'll find her way out of such a situation in no time.
Now, it may seem like a long shot to try and compare Lady Macbeth to Danielle. However, there are some similarities between them if you REALLY think about it. One of their basic characteristics is how gosh darn pushy they are. Lady Macbeth pushes her husband to the point of murder with words of toughness, manlihood, and obligation. In the Dr. Phil clip, Danielle has fiery threats and challenges, no, dares, anyone to come cross her. However, in a follow-up video (not on Dr. Phil, but one that some person recorded then posted on social media), Danielle is leaving the Dr. Phil show after her episode and another girl comes up to her, drags Danielle from the car, and proceeds to fight her. Danielle is "snatched" and gets "dragged", aka she loses very badly. It seems, then, that all her car-stealing history and street wisdom don't count for much when faced with an actual opponent of sorts. Similarly, for all of Lady Macbeth's nipple-plucking, baby-head-smashing fantasies, all she does on the morning of the discovery of Duncan's body is swoon. While Danielle and Lady Macbeth certainly have a wild history and lots o' mouth, neither of them display these traits in real time. So much for cashing ousside, huh.
Strictly Research:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEj8v1hb3Ws
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQGF4DUc86s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNpsink2xDw
Wow 10/10 analysis. This is an interesting idea to think about because when we were analyzing Lady Macbeth, we characterized her as being more brave and headstrong than Macbeth, breaking gender stereotypes. But when you actually think about it, she could've been the one to murder Duncan instead of calling her husband a coward, or do more than just faint to try to alleviate the predicament Macbeth talked himself into. Then, her tough demeanor obviously fades away as she is consumed by grief and fear and ultimately takes her own life. So, I guess she really does just do a lot of mouthing off instead of taking action.
ReplyDeleteThis is hilarious, however as someone who as seen the video multiple times I think it is interesting to note that Dr. Phil and Danielle's mom were able to silence her and make her sit down after she was making threats to fight her mom. Her mom also said that she was making a threat that she wan't going to go through with, which is something that Lady Macbeth never does. She says she's going to get Macbeth to kill Duncan and she does. Also there is no one that can control her like Danielle's mom and Dr. Phil are kinda able to tell her what to do when they get her to sit down.
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