Examples Of Hysteria In Lady Macbeth

In 1912, American psychiatrist and neurologist Isador H. Coriat wrote “The hysteria of Lady Macbeth”. He was one of the first American psychoanalysts and this book was also one of his first works. He analysed Lady Macbeth’s character using the modern psychopathology’s point of view and he determined that the woman is “an accurate example of hysteria” (2). The sleep-walking scene, under his perspective, has nothing to do with remorse. Lady Macbeth’s apparent bravery is in reality, but she is an unconscious cowardice. Her sleep walk is related to somnambulism which is, according to Coriat, “the most important form of splitting of consciousness” (17) caused by “the resistance offered by the memory of a harrowing emotional experience” (16). Somnambulistic

During the English Renaissance, it was commonly known as “the suffocation of the mother”. In Lady Macbeth’s case, the desiring womb seems to be the cause of her hysterical reactions, but this disease was also linked to sexual dissatisfaction. According to Joanna Levin (Lady Macbeth and the daemonologie of hysteria), the hysteric, along with the witch and the bewitched were categories “attached to women who were relatively free from patriarchal controls; these labels sought to explain inappropriate behaviors and expressions of sexual desire” (31). “Like most witches, the hysteric represented the threat of what could happen to women outside the bounds of the patriarchal family, only validating the status quo as a negative example” (33). Lady Macbeh never received the title of witch or mother, as a result she stands as an intermediary figure. Therefore, following Coriat, she develops two personalities, which appear and disappear according to the oscillations of her mental level. “In her normal, waking state, repression and an assumed bravery are marked. In the sleeping or somnambulistic state, the repressions give way to free expression and her innate cowardice becomes dominant. In her waking condition, no fear of blood, she shrinks from it when in a state of somnambulism (75). The death of her child unleashed