Lady Macbeth's Ironical Fate Essay

In William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, changes happen. At the beginning of the play, Macbeth is a well liked and good man of Scotland, who turns into an evil, cold hearted, murderer by the end. His rewards and punishments could have been predetermined by fate, but the actions he took to get to get those rewards and punishments were determined by Macbeth’s free will. In Macbeth, he attempts to control the future and hide the past by listening to other people and committing multiple murders of innocent people.

Throughout life, many of us will find ourselves in some of the worst situations that leave us wondering who’s to blame. The truth is that the misfortunes that befall us are due to our own actions and sometimes due to fate or bad luck. Fate is one person's destiny and it can not be understood by simple mortals but a greater power beyond human comprehension. Fate is so powerful that it can control a person's outcome on life before it happens. Many people tend to become victims of fate in which they catch a glimpse of what their future is going to look like, but do not totally take hold of the outcome. Macbeth can not fully realize the possible outcome of his fate because he is human, and therefore is a victim to his power driven

Fate is one person's destiny, it cannot be understood by mere mortals but a greater power beyond human comprehension. Fate is so powerful that it controls a person's outcome on life before it happens. Many people become victims of fate in which they catch a glimpse of what their future is going to look like, but do not totally grasp the outcome. Macbeth cannot fully comprehend the possible outcome of his fate because he is mortal, and therefore is a victim to his power driven quest and his ultimate fate. Many have been said to agree with this statement. For example, as stated in Shakespeare A to Z, "The Witches are an enactment of the irrational. The supernatural world if terrifying because it is beyond human control, and in the play it is

We see her as a suppressed female clawing to power through men. The most notable scene where Shakespeare conveys this is Act 1 Scene 5. He has Lady Macbeth say, “unsex me here”, demanding elimination of all womanly attributes. She also says, “take my milk for gall”. This demonstrates she does not want to be a nurturing, mother figure. Lady Macbeth thinks her femininity is useless and that she could accomplish more as a male. In the Elizabethan/Jacobean era, women were often subjugated – made to submit to and follow men, regarded as weak and in need of protection. Given no control, women were forced to stay home and bear children. Lady Macbeth yearns liberation from these stereotypes and ideal standards of her time. Her authority cravings lead her to tell Macbeth, “Leave all the rest to me” – seeking dominance. Her husband is essential to succeed so she can be interpreted as somewhat manipulating him into committing larger crimes – namely

Lady Macbeth rebelled against her gender norms because she was craving the power and was willing to do anything to get the power. Most women in that time period were very intimidated by power because they didn’t have very many rights. So the fact that she was so driven to be powerful says something about her character. Back then women didn’t expect power unless they were in the royal families so when Lady Macbeth heard from Macbeth that he was going to become king she was ready to go to extreme extents for that power and to be a royal family. She went to farther extents for power then most men do.

Lady Macbeth’s desire for power prompts her interest in controlling Macbeth’s actions. This theme of the relationship between gender and power is key to Lady Macbeth’s character: her husband implies that she is a masculine soul inhabiting a female body, which seems to link masculinity to ambition and violence. Although women were often expected during Shakespeare’s time to be modest, humble, and obedient, Lady Macbeth is actually one of the most explicitly and relentlessly ambitious of all the characters Shakespeare created. She is a woman who defies the stereotypes of her culture, which assumed that most women were or should be unambitious. At one point, she wishes that she were not a woman so that she could kill Duncan herself. A character

The main character in the play, Macbeth, portrays femininity and feminine characteristics a lot more than would be expected from a man. First, Macbeth displays his manipulative nature when he convinces the murderers he had hired to murder Banquo. When Macbeth is faced with the murderers he hired, he tells them, “Now if you have a station in the file, not in the worst rank of manhood, say it, and I will put that business in your bosoms” (3.1.110-112). In saying this, Macbeth challenges the men's masculinity. He does this to convince the murderers that if they were manly enough, they would kill Banquo. Macbeth manages to convince the men to kill Banquo through the analogy of breeds of dogs. He challenges the men to prove themselves as a stronger breed of man, just as there are stronger breeds of dogs. In doing this, Macbeth goes against the gender norms that are otherwise in place in our society. Instead of displaying typical male characteristics such as bravery and valiance, he uses

For the longest of time masculinity has been associated with higher power/ authority while being weakness and fragility has been connected to femininity. In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Macbeth, the protagonist, struggles with paranoia and inner conflicts after his first murder of Duncan and the murders that follow. Macbeth’s inner struggles lead to the downfall of his kingdom and a despised image of his masculine powers through society. Throughout the play, the reader not only questions Macbeth’s masculine standing but also Lady Macbeth’s unique feminine personality. In Macbeth, Shakespeare uses the dichotomy of masculine vs. feminine to portray how even if male figures are physically stronger, females can match them through different areas

In Shakespeare's play, Macbeth, Lady Macbeth's portrayal begins with the dominant elements of her ambitious and successful plotting of Duncan's demise from the throne and the effective rhetorical manipulation of her husband to be more like a man. This disruption of gender roles presented in Macbeth is demonstrated through Lady Macbeth's place as the dominant role in their marriage; because on many occasions, she rules her husband and dictates his actions through coercion. This shows that gender is out of its traditional order, and by Shakespeare associating her with traditionally male imagery, he is showing that masculinity is linked to power and ambition in society. Because she is portrayed as the more dominant individual in their marriage,

According to the classical view, tragedy should arouse feelings of pity and fear in the audience. Does Macbeth do this?

Here we see that Lady Macbeth believes that Macbeth will only be a true man if he kills Duncan, this proves that she believes that a man’s manhood is defined by murder. During scene 7 whilst Macbeth is considering whether he should go through with the murder, Lady Macbeth taunts him by questioning his masculinity and compares his ability to proceed with killing Duncan with his ability to perform a sexual act. In this scene Macbeth proclaims that Lady Macbeth should “bring forth men-children only” because she is so bold (1.7.72). it seems here that Macbeth is confirming her belief that courage is a manly trait which further shows the theme of gender. Gender is also relevant throughout the rest of the play.

Introduction: William Shakespeare effectively uses dramatic irony to intrigue the reader and deepen the impact of the consequences Macbeth ultimately faces.

Evil is disastrous if someone lets it get to them. In “Macbeth” by Williams Shakespeare, the protagonists, the witches are a symbolism of evil and the devil. They show how greatly Macbeth’s life was impacted by believing their prophecies. The witches nature also impacted Macbeth. Shakespeare uses the witches to display that evil can never benefit anyone.

According to Shakespeare when women try to be masculine, they will always fail in the end. Lady Macbeth could not become all they way masculine. “ Unlike her husband, who ultimately becomes less and worse than” (I.V.243). Lady Macbeth tries to be masculine throughout the play. However, Lady Macbeth just could not let go of her feminine traits. Lady Macbeth tries hard to be brave and evil but she fails at the end. “How tender’tis to love a babe that milks [her]” ( I.VI.55). No matter how hard she tries to be masculine she somehow ends back up feminine. “ The female body is treated as an imperfect, mutilated version of the male body” (Alfer,qtd.Sentov 2). This is one reason why Lady Macbeth ends up feminine at the end of the play. Since her body is the bad version of the males, she was not able

It is interesting to note the importance of gender in the personifications of evil in Macbeth. Lady Macbeth is as obsessed with her gender as her evil. When she implores evil to "unsex" her, to take her "woman's breasts for gall" she reveals the sense of powerlessness and weakness she feels. Being a woman makes her dependant on her husband for her social