frances ha

nat gets the crown—gets chosen—and it sits on her like ill-fitting armor. she's macbeth without the ambition, thrust into prophecy's spotlight when all she wanted was to disappear into the woods' anonymity. there's that haunted look she wears after the cards, the way she holds the role at arm's length. the tragic irony is she embodies what macbeth could never grasp: power as burden rather than prize. she's the reluctant sovereign, practicing sartrean bad faith by pretending the choice wasn't hers when deep down she knows every decision in that wilderness was freely made.

shauna though. shauna's lady macbeth with full self-awareness, which makes her infinitely more dangerous. "don't be such a fucking saint" she tells nat—that loaded accusation revealing everything about who shauna knows herself to be. because she said it in the pilot, didn't she? "i loved the saints. they're so tragic." she's always understood martyrdom as performance, sanctity as the ultimate tragedy you choose. she sees through nat's reluctant nobility as another costume.

the philosophical weight here is heideggerian authenticity—shauna owns her dread, her violence, her desires. she's not sleepwalking through murder; she's wide awake. when she looks at nat wearing the wilderness crown, there's that flicker of something like hunger mixed with protectiveness. lady macbeth whispering "screw your courage" but this time it's complicated by want that has nothing to do with ambition.

the wilderness itself becomes fate's mechanism, but unlike macbeth's heath, it doesn't just predict—it demands participation. and here's where shaunat rewrites the tragedy: shauna would have taken the dagger willingly. nat's the one who ends up holding it anyway, destiny's cruel joke. the potential lies in that tension—shauna's radical authenticity meeting nat's existential refusal, both of them covered in the same blood but wearing it completely differently.