How Many Children Had Claire Underwood?

The author of the essay inspiring this one--L.C. Knights--titled his famous essay, "How Many Children Had Lady Macbeth?" People like me who'd only glanced at it in graduate school went about for years imagining that he'd wondered about what kind of mother such a woman could be, since Lady Macbeth, when she's browbeating her husband into agreeing to murder King Duncan, utters these memorable lines:

I have given suck, and know 

How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me.

I would, while it was smiling in my face,

Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums

And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn as you

Have done to this.

She's nursed a baby, and knows how lovely breastfeeding can be: the baby loves and trusts you, the mother. But, Lady Macbeth tells her cowering husband, if she'd sworn to slam the kid's head on the floor so hard that it cracked open and spilled out his brains, she'd have stuck to her word. Her husband, she's saying, is a wuss, since he's going back on his promise to stab that king--and stab while the king sleeps. Indeed, what kind of woman would, first of all, make such a promise, and then carry through on it?

Absolutely not the question L.C. Knights was asking in his 1933 essay, the title of which is intended as a rant against folks who were into praising Shakespeare's ability to create fabulous characters. Knights says Macbeth really a statement about evil. 

But why would that position preclude the title question? Oh, that title has a life all its own.

In any case, the answer to the question of what kind of woman would make, and follow through on, a promise to dash out her baby's brains is obvious: Claire Underwood. 

Or is it obvious? I imagine the baby kicking triumphantly inside her as Mom stabs Doug Stamper in the gut, twisting the knife in the wound so he'll bleed out fast. Would the girl grow up to be just like Mom? And what if she asked  insistently about her daddy? Developed into just the kind of investigative reporter Claire loves to have shot in the back of the head? Had the ethical command of Catherine Durant? What if Claire's baby took after some other branch of the family? Would Claire leave the kid alone if she sat around writing poems?

In other words, I wish the series would go on . . . and on. We finally finished season six last night. I wasn't surprised by the ending--I knew it would be, in Robin Wright's description, "operatic," and indeed it was. But I want the next scene. Kid with au pair all the time? Or kid being homeschooled by Mom and accompanying her to all political events? Yes, I can see Claire in a stylish nursing top, threatening somebody with something. My favorite moment was the look of shock on Petrov's face, and his question: "Are you a gangster?" Well, Duh, Petrov. 

Really. This show must go one. Just for one more season. Please. What kind of a mom will she be? Will the kid say, "Mommy, get me a brother?"