The Oakland Review Blog

Introducing a new literary blog from the editorial staff of The Oakland Review, specializing in book/poetry reviews, personal essays, and cultural commentary.

January 18, 2025

TRAGEDY AND BEING AN AMBITIOUS WOMAN

By Allison Blair

For the longest time, my favorite Shakespeare play has been Macbeth. Underlying my decision to study English is my love of this play — which I first read in my sophomore year of high school. It has been four years since then, but I still am not sure exactly what it is about Macbeth that has had such a profound impact on me. 

Perhaps it is Lady Macbeth, a character that feels stuck to my soul. She is a girlboss who was so ambitious that Shakespeare had no choice but to kill her off. Her rapid descent from a woman with clarity in her desire to be something greater than herself to a confused, mad queen has never totally sat right with me. 

When I write, I find myself returning over and over again to Lady Macbeth’s arc. Maybe it’s out of concern for my own ambition which I sometimes fear will be my downfall; I push myself to be the best at everything I do, even if it’s to my detriment. Maybe my fixation comes from my desire to be something beyond myself, something more. Or maybe, it’s the imaginary blood staining her hands the way my unsaid and unwritten words stain mine. I don’t know, and I’ll probably never know. I’m haunted by words I have not yet written, and I’ll just keep writing to get all the words out as Lady Macbeth scrubs the blood away, both futile attempts, but attempts nonetheless. There will always be something else to write, always something to improve on.  

From the time I learned to write, I was always completely terrified of showing anyone else what I’d written. Half the time I still cannot bring myself to write, even when I desperately want to get the words out of my head. I find myself filled with perfectionist pressures and anxiety to be the best writer I can. What if my writing isn’t good enough? What if I’m not good enough? I itch whenever I see a submission comment on one of my papers. I vehemently refuse to look at written feedback on my assignments unless I have to. 

Like Lady Macbeth, I let my ambition get the better of me, which only leads to my own downfall. I am my own worst critic. I set impossible expectations, and then find myself disappointed when I cannot live up to them. Whether you love him or hate him, it is undeniable that Shakespeare is a great writer; if he wasn’t, he wouldn’t be as widely known and taught as he is. I’m no Shakespeare. I’m just me and sometimes I fear that will never be good enough for me. What is enough? How do I define enough? I don’t. I can give it my all and it still won’t be able to reach my impossible threshold of enough. I don’t want to be Shakespeare, I just want to be someone I can be proud of. I want to write, not to be the best, but because I love the craft. 

The first time I fell in love with writing was when I found myself in the principal’s office. I have only the vaguest memory of my teacher complimenting my writing and deciding, for some reason unbeknownst to me, that a paragraph about my breakfast was something the principal needed to see. As I sat showing off my description of cereal, I remember feeling proud, not just because of the validation from the adults around me, but because it was the first time in my young life that I made something that felt truly mine. 

The second time I fell in love with writing was at the Georgia Governor’s Honors Program for communicative arts the summer after my junior year of high school. There, I took a class on retelling a story from a side character’s perspective. I wrote Lady Macbeth a new monologue to be spoken right before she takes her own life. This piece was selected to be performed in front of all the other students at the program. I remember feeling proud, not just because I did not feel the slightest bit of anxiety about performing my writing (a first for me), but because I was in love with the craft the same way I had been sitting in the principal’s office twelve years prior. Writing this monologue, I finally felt that I was writing, not to be the best, but because I was in love with the art of writing. Writing was finally about more than accomplishment, it was about my own happiness. 

The one book I brought with me to Carnegie Mellon at the beginning of my freshman year was my copy of Macbeth. Even though I have not had the chance to study the play in any of my classes, it is the one book to have a permanent space on my ever revolving bookshelf. It sits in front of my desk as a constant reminder of where I’ve been and what has yet to come. There is so much left to write, and I will continue to do so until my Lady Macbeth finally gets out that damned spot.