Mutuality and Patriarchy in Macbeth Since the beginning of recorded time, the fundamental human distinction in the human social order has revolved around gender; our sex at birth determines the role we will play in our society, the status we will achieve in our culture, and even the structure of our daily lives. The biological reality that women can give birth and men cannot has led to a habitual consciousness of two sexual classes, and in the past, these two classes coexisted with equality in cooperative communities; however, Marilyn French argues in The War on Women that as men began to construct what would become patriarchy, or "forcibly constructed male supremacy," the female class became powerless, marginalized, and subservient to the will of the male class (9 ). . Furthermore, our Western creation myth not only celebrates male domination over the natural world and those associated with nature, namely women, but also justifies "a male attack" on women by declaring that God *made* women subordinate to men by endowing men with reason. , logic and intellect, giving women traits that subvert proper order and rationality: chaotic emotionality, passion and weakness (17). These arbitrary “gender principles,” as French calls them, supported by religion and the state, have transformed the dichotomy of the sexes into a battle between two opposing spheres rather than a harmonization of the masculine and the feminine into an organic whole. The male/female dichotomy is evident in every category of social existence, there is an exceptional awareness of the split and its implications expressed in the Shakespearean canon. For many feminist critics, including Juliet Dusinberre, Shakespeare's plays are particularly compelling because he "saw t... middle of the paper... h, Marilyn. The Division of Shakespeare's Experience. New York: Summit Books, 1981 . ------. The War on Women. New York: Summit Books, 1992. Gohlke, Madelon "'I Wooed You with My Sword': Shakespeare's Tragic Paradigms." Eds al. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1980. 154-167, Marianne L. Love's Argument: Gender Relations in Shakespeare Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984 "Christian Economics." Joan Larsen Klein: University of Illinois Press, 151-173 -----. Ed. Sylvan Barnet, New York: Signet, 1963. Stone, Lawrence, 1977.