Lady Macbeth

Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses misogyny and xenophobia, physical and sexual violence (including rape), and ableist language.

Ava Reid presents a world in which myths and magic have literal truth but are not totally objective. Rather, Reid frames magic as culturally and socially subjective, suggesting that beliefs have real power but blurring the line between the literal and symbolic truth of myth and magic.

The implied differences in the way magic functions between cultures offer a particularly dramatic example of this phenomenon. Roscille notes that different laws of nature apply in different cultural environments: In Scotland, practices like the blood ritual, cruentation, have real power and produce material results, though back in Brittany these would have been dismissed as superstition. Nor is this the only supernatural force to be proven physically real and have a quantifiable impact on the narrative. For example, a unicorn that Macbeth is hunting gores two dogs. Having doubted his ability to find a real unicorn, Roscille sees its pelt and horn, her uncertainty annihilated in the face of Macbeth’s belief. In Reid’s fictionalized Scotland, myths have literal reality for those who believe in them completely.