Witches as Macbeth's heroines Traditionally, the witches in Shakespeare's Macbeth have been treated as symbolic manifestations of the potential for evil. Many students and critics of Macbeth enjoy blaming the witches, along with Lady Macbeth, for Macbeth's downfall. Regardless, it can be argued that the witches are the heroines of the play. An eminent modern literary critic, Terry Eagleton, directly addressed the question of witches as heroines: To any unprejudiced reader, which would seem to exclude Shakespeare himself, to his contemporary audience and to almost all literary critics: it is surely clear that the value Macbeth's positive lies in the three witches. The witches are the heroines of the play, however little the play itself acknowledges the fact, and however much the critics may have chosen to vilify them. (William Shakespeare, p. 2) For Eagleton, the social reality of witches is important. They are marginalized, just like feminists, living on the fringes of society in a female community, in contrast to the male world of “civilization,” which valorizes military carnage. The fact that they are women and are associated with the natural world beyond aristocratic oppression in castles indicates that others are excluded from it. Their equality in a female community declares their opposition to the male power of militaristic society. They have no direct power, but have become adept at manipulating or appealing to the self-destructive contradictions of their military oppressors. They may see Macbeth's destruction as a kind of victory: another fiercely individualistic and aggressive male oppressor has fallen. This suggestion isn't entirely serious (Eagleton notes that the work doesn't acknowledge the issue it's calling attention to), but it is. underlines a key point of Macbeth's tragic experience, its connection with a voluntary repudiation of the profound and mysterious heart of life, the place where sexuality and the unconscious dominate. This aspect of life is commonly associated and therefore symbolized by women, for complex reasons that I do not have time to delve into here (but which would seem intimately linked to female sexuality and fertility, to contacts with the irrational centers of life that men do not understand and commonly fear). In attempting to impress upon life his own desired vision of the future, the tragic hero refuses more direct knowledge or acceptance of the mystery of life..