A simple thing and beautiful, the three-spiral cluster I wear is the triskele, the symbol of Brigid, the ancient Celtic goddess of conception, childbirth, smithing, and creative endeavors, whom we must call Saint Bridget if we speak of her around priests. The triskele, whose three swirls represent the joyful spinning of the spirit as it creates art, craft, and life, has protective power.
The adornment—the triskele—is a design comprised of a trio of three symmetrical spirals. The story is about—in part—feminine strength. Even with the truncated version of history in Shakespeare, Lady Macbeth is one of literature’s more notoriously strong female characters. Psychopathic, yes, but nevertheless. Here, the history is fuller, the motivation is richer and the psychology runs significantly deeper. Much can be said for the power of ambiguous rationale for acting in a violent and criminal ways and Shakespeare takes full advantage of that, but there is also great power in knowing more about the past and getting glimpses into the spiritual nature of a character. The triskele becomes significant because it enlarges one’s grasp of the story and that enlargement is the result of hearing the story told from her perspective.
Perhaps I will take up my sword again, summon an army, and ride with my son to seek revenge, or weave a spell and undermine the usurper in some secret way. A few know my temperament and my wicked ways, my kindnesses, too: some do.
The Lady writes these words in 1058, not long after the succession (through usurping) of Malcom by killing her husband. Revenge, it must be noted and with no small amount of emphasis, is a primary thematic foundation for the story. It is not stepping too far outside the boundaries of truth to observe that everything which occurs in this story is stimulated to one degree or another as a quest for vengeance or, depending upon perspective, to set things right. The reference to taking up her sword again is quite significant because it will turn out that as a young girl and woman, our narrator bucked tradition and the patriarchy by becoming skilled in the martial art of handling herself with a blade. With her father’s approval, which was no minor matter.
“It is willfulness and old grief, poisoning your womb. You want to be a warrior, and you want to be a mother. A woman keeps to home and family, and tends to matters inside the home. A man keeps to war games and tends to matters outside.”
Maeve is the Lady’s nursemaid who follows her loyally into adulthood, dispensing traditionalist views as advice which Gruadh (Lady Macbeth’s actual name) only occasionally takes and with great reluctance. Nevertheless, they have a close bond. The advice so given here is particularly insightful as Maeve represents the older ways of patriarchal restriction and dominance and the Lady, well, not so much.
A queen tends to both, I wanted to say, but did not. She would not understand.
This is the Lady’s interior response to Maeve’s advice quoted above and completes the connection. Gruadh is from the beginning—long before Macbeth enters her life—a unique expression of femininity within not just a masculine world, but a masculine world that she seems to understand much more intensely than most women. A riff exists between maid and Lady, but it is only ideological, not personal, and the expressions of personality which mark that riff mark the primal essence of the narrative. To a point, Gruadh is almost born to marry a man like Macbeth. She has a first husband whom Macbeth kills and that seems part of the design. Maeve is more representative of her gender not just in bowing to adhering to the rules, but in believing in the rules. Gruadh is not nearly so unquestioningly accepting, but she is also not as representative of femininity. It would be foolish to deny and even more so to ignore the particularities of the portrait of Lady Macbeth not just in this telling, but in Shakespeare’s: she is more a Lady than a Lord, but less a Lady than a woman. Genderfluid seems to be the contemporary term which best describes this complicated and fascinating character and it is probably not only to connect with the Bard’s “Scottish play” that the author specifically chose to title her tale “Lady Macbeth.”
