The Prison of Marriage
Each morning that we wake up, life presents us with many choices. Some people are conscious of these choices, others are not. Whether one is a college student in search of a major or the man in line at a deli, the opportunity for decision seems solely one’s own. However, the surrounding factors of that person’s life will inevitably affect the decision at hand. Often, without knowing it, we are placed in a role that life, in general, expects us to fulfill. Once we find ourselves in a role, it is difficult to displace ourselves from it, and as a result, we rely on this role to aid us in our decisions. Professor of psychology Philip K. Zimbardo finds that people are obedient in accepting roles assigned by others. Zimbardo’s “Stanford Prison Experiment” discusses male college students placed in a prison experiment and assigned the role of either “prisoner” of “guard.” Zimbardo claims to have “sought to understand more about the process by which people called ‘prisoners’ lose their liberty, civil rights, independence and privacy, while those called ‘guards’ gain social power by accepting the responsibility for controlling and managing the lives of their dependent charges” (365).
Zimbardo concludes that the roles of guard and prisoner can be seen in many realms of life. Zimbardo suggests that sexism, racism, and shyness are, for many people, prisons of the mind. Furthermore, Zimbardo feels that marriage can be described as a prison:
The physical institution of prison is but a concrete and steel metaphor for the existence of more pervasive, albeit less obvious, prisons of the mind that all of us daily create, populate and perpetuate ... The social convention of marriage ... becomes for many a state of imprisonment in which one partner agrees to be prisoner or guard, forcing or allowing the other to play the reciprocal role—invariably without making the contract explicit (375).
A prisoner-guard relationship in marriage is demonstrated by such literary pieces as William Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Macbeth, a tragedy set in Scotland, discusses one nobleman’s ambitious quest for the crown, ultimately resulting in his own loss of morals and honor by murdering King Duncan, who is his kinsman. However, Macbeth’s eventual ruin is a consequence of choices affected by his role in life and the decisions that correlate with this position. More precisely, the play traces how Macbeth and Lady Macbeth each experience and, in a way, become both prisoner and guard, according to Zimbardo’s characterization of the roles of prisoner and guard within a prison environment.
During the Renaissance in England, marriage customs provided that the male would assume dominance, making major decisions and controlling the direction of the relationship. Contrary to this stereotype, William Shakespeare introduces Lady Macbeth as a superior female who is comfortable with her capacity for control. At the start of the play, Lady Macbeth is guard to her prisoner husband, Macbeth. Upon learning that Macbeth has been appointed Thane of Cawdor, Lady Macbeth’s dangerous ambition consumes her: “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”(1.6.41-44). Lady Macbeth demonstrates her strength with these words, along with her willingness to control her husband’s fate. Parallel to and, in a way, explaining Lady Macbeth’s sadistic manner, Zimbardo’s guards possessed a desire to control those prisoners under their authority. One guard boasts, “‘I made sure I was one of the guards on the yard, because this was my first chance for the type of manipulative power that I really like—being a very noticed figure with almost complete control over what is said or not’”(Zimbardo 373). Perhaps Lady Macbeth does not achieve the level of satisfaction found in Zimbardo’s guard; nonetheless, she does not hesitate to act as guard within the realms of marriage.
During the “Stanford Prison Experiment,” Zimbardo considers a prevailing characteristic among all prisoners: “Over time, the prisoners began to react passively … they stopped resisting, questioning”(371). Lady Macbeth is also aware of her husband’s passive tendencies, acknowledging, “I fear thy nature/ … Thou woulds’t be great/ Art not without ambition, but without/ The illness should attend it”(1.5.17- 21). Though Lady Macbeth doubts her husband within these lines, she also finds his submissive nature to be beneficial to her intentions. Pardoxically, if Macbeth’s compliance might prevent him from carrying out murder, then his same submission will ultimately guarantee obedience to Lady Macbeth’s orders. With this insight, Lady Macbeth suggests to her husband, “You shall put/ This night’s great business into my dispatch”(1.5.68-69).
Later, knowing that Macbeth lacks enthusiasm at the opportunity to kill his king and steal the crown, Lady Macbeth, acting as guard, taunts Macbeth, who is prisoner, arousing a fear of unmanliness:
“Was the hope drunk
Wherein you dressed yourself? Hath it slept since?
And wakes it now, to look so green and pale
At what it did so freely? From this time
Such I account they love. Art thou afeard
To be the same in thine own act and valor
As thou art in desire? (1.7.35-41)”
Attempting to avoid the possibility that he may look like a coward, Macbeth unknowingly displays his beaten spirit: “I am settled, and bend up/ Each corporal agent to this terrible feat”(1.7.79-80). Just as Lady Macbeth causes Macbeth to question himself, a guard in Zimbardo’s experiment creates a similar scenario in which a prisoner feels the need to please his guard. When Prisoner 819 was to be prematurely released, a guard arranged for the other prisoners to chant, “‘819 is a bad prisoner. Because of what 819 did to prison property we all must suffer’”(Zimbardo 372). Sadly, the prisoner was prepared to return to prison. Zimbardo remarks that the prisoner “could not leave as long as the others thought he was a ‘bad prisoner’ … he had to prove to them he was not a ‘bad’ prisoner”(372). Clearly, Macbeth and Prisoner 819 had to prove to their guards that they were worthy prisoners. For Prisoner 819, this meant returning to prison, but for Macbeth, pleasing his guard entailed the act of murder.
Due to this desire to fulfill Lady Macbeth’s demands, Macbeth follows through with the murder of the king. Yet, in doing so, Macbeth loses his own personal liberty, which Zimbardo describes as part of the process of becoming a prisoner. However, Macbeth makes an interesting transition at this point in the play. Rather than fall further into his role as prisoner, Macbeth draws upon his inner strength and changes his marital role. Killing another human being can have tremendous effect on one’s psychological well-being; for Macbeth, it means he knows that the man he once was he can no longer be. He says, “To know my deed, ‘twere best not know myself”(2.2.72). With these words, Macbeth leaves his role as a prisoner behind and assumes the role of guard. A guard, who was a previously decent person, given the opportunity for control, violence, and the encouragement of the role itself, experiences a similar transition in Zimbardo’s experiment:
“It’s almost like a prison that you create yourself – you get into it, and it becomes almost the definition you make of yourself, it almost becomes the walls, and you want to break out …. To tell everyone that ‘this isn’t me at all and I’m not the person that’s confined in there – I’m a person who wants to get out and show you that I am free”’ (371).
Luckily, for this guard, his role was only temporary. Upon the experiment’s end, he could reclaim his previous attitude and carry on with his life.
When Macbeth becomes the guard, Lady Macbeth, is assigned the role of prisoner and loses the role of guard. As the play progresses, she becomes consumed with guilt, and her conscience finally acknowledges the seriousness of murder: “Here’s the smell of blood still. All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. O, O, O!”(5.1.53-55). Still, Lady Macbeth does not know that she has been removed from her role as guard; instead, she can focus only upon her inner fears, which build the walls of her prison of marriage. Macbeth, who once closely adhered to the advice of his wife, no longer cares what Lady Macbeth thinks and feels. When Lady Macbeth’s doctor informs Macbeth of his wife’s disturbing sleepwalking, Macbeth responds, “Cure her of that./ Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased …”(5.3.39- 40). Here, Macbeth orders the doctor, better displaying his new authority than being troubled by his wife’s loss of sanity. He continues, “Throw physic to the dogs! I’ll none of it./ Come, put mine armor on. Give me my staff/ … If thou couldst, doctor, cast/ The water of my land, find her disease …” (5.3.47-51). Having assumed the role as king, Macbeth has also become Lady Macbeth’s guard. In contrast to Lady Macbeth’s performance as guard, Macbeth, as guard, chooses not to tend to the circumstances of his wife in a loving, husbandly way. Rather, when speaking to her doctor, he is distracted and can only focus upon putting his armor on to prepare for battle. Zimbardo would describe Macbeth as “accepting the responsibility for controlling and managing the lives of (his) dependent charges”(365), here subjects such as Seyton and, more importantly, Lady Macbeth.
Both Zimbardo and Shakespeare prompt us to examine and consider what role life has assigned us, either by our own will or at the hand of someone else. Zimbardo makes a reflective connection between the relationship of husband and wife and that of prisoner and guard. His comparison of two presumably unrelated areas of life, marriage and prison, arouses questions in the minds of all who consider such an association. Although working in an imaginative genre, Macbeth suggests that Zimbardo’s theory can be applied to some marriages. Roles do help in determining our actions and behavior in life. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, as husband and wife, eventually develop and play the roles of prisoner and guard.

Works Cited

Shakespeare, William. Macbeth. Ed. Sylvan Barnet. New York:
Signet Classic, 1998.

Zimbardo, Phillip K. “The Stanford Prison Experiment.” Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum. Ed. Laurence
Behrens and Leonard J. Rosen. New York: Addison
Wesley Longman, Inc., 2000. 363-375.