Macbeth by William Shakespeare

Lady Macbeth states, “Glamis thou art, and Cawdor, and shalt be what thou art promised. Yet do I fear thy nature; It is too full of the milk of human kindness to catch the nearest way. Thou wouldst be great, art not without ambition, but without the illness should attend it” (1.5.16-21). Lady Macbeth depicts her husband as being ambitious, but he is also too kind to murder Duncan and take the throne for himself. She also says, “Come, you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, and fill me from the crown to the toe topful of direst cruelty…”(1.5.41-44). In this quote Lady Macbeth is praying to the spirits to literally deprive her from her femininity because she desires to take the initiative in seizing power for her husband. Another example of reversed gender roles is when Lady Macbeth says, “O,proper stuff! This is the very painting of your fear. This is the air-drawn dagger which you said led you to Duncan. O, these flaws and starts, impostors to true fear, would well become a woman’s story at a winter’s fire, authorized by her grandam.Shame itself!”(3.4.62-67). In this quote Lady Macbeth yet again takes on the dominant role in a relationship and tells Macbeth that he is yet again hallucinating just like he did with the floating dagger that led him to Duncan and he is also acting like a woman. This quote further connects to the thesis in which the roles of the Lady Macbeth and Macbeth is reversed in

In Shakespeare play, Macbeth, Lady Macbeth’s character progresses in an interesting manner. Lady Macbeth is made to act as an incentive to Macbeth's immoral actions. Even though Macbeth is generally the person to have a final say before killing someone, Lady Macbeth plays the role of his “sidekick”. She mocks her husband if he worries over a sinful deed (which usually she instructs him to do), saying he would be less of a man if he does not follow through with their plan (I. vii. 56-57). She gives Macbeth a short lecture in deceptiveness when they are planning to kill King Duncan (I. vi. 73-78). She also prepared the daggers for Macbeth to kill Duncan in advance (II. ii. 15-16). Although her husband was still having doubts, she was always ready to go in for the kill. She did not think twice about it or feel any remorse. This shows that Lady Macbeth evolved into looking like a humble and quieter person on the exterior, but being an insane woman and criminal due to the events that have affected her.

Macbeth starts off as a “brave” man who is physically capable of a lot, but is mentally very weak. Whereas Lady Macbeth is limited physically by her sex, but believes that she is mentally stronger than Macbeth. As the play pans out we are able to make our own judgment on each characters strengths and weaknesses. In the “unsex me” scene Lady Macbeth tells us that she wants to be changed from being a weak woman so that she can replace Macbeth who is mentally weak with her own mental strength in order to successfully become the king. After the killing of Duncan Lady Macbeth accidently hints that she was unable to kill Duncan herself and at this point shows her first signs of mental weakness. After this point they basically change places, Lady Macbeth becomes and insignificant and weak character in the play, who spirals downwards into insanity. She grows so ill that the doctor says there 's nothing he can do to help her. "The disease," he says, "is beyond" his "practice," and what Lady Macbeth needs is "the divine" (a priest or, God), not a "physician". On the other hand Macbeth steps up and plans for himself to murder many more people as his mental strength has significantly grown. Lady Macbeth’s transformation from that of a powerful and "unnaturally" masculine figure into an enfeebled woman reestablishes a sense of "natural" gender order in the play. In other words, Lady Macbeth is put in her place,

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

Everyone has a quality that they do not like about themselves. Some people struggle to be social, others may be too controlling of people. The list goes on and on, but the point is that everybody has a particular quality that they must learn to control or else that particular quality can get out of hand. Of course, one could write a list of characters that have major flaws. There is no better example than William Shakespeare’s character, Macbeth, in The Tragedy of Macbeth. Anyone who has ever read it, could easily identify the fatal flaw that the character Macbeth possesses which is greed. Even though many readers can all agree that greed is Macbeth’s fatal flaw, the argument as to whether or not

Lady Macbeth is intelligent, unable to bear children, “ambitious, manipulative, seductive” and seeks to move up in society (Tucker). She’s everything that women are not supposed to be in this time period. Despite her seeming like a very strong woman character, her weakness in the end, when she loses her mind, is shown to exemplify the patriarchal idea that even strong women are weaker than men. While in today’s society women are expected to be just as intelligent as men, the patriarchy sees her intelligence as a “flaw” and a representation that she is “unnatural and unfulfilled” (Davis). She is certainly not motherly as she says she would “Have plucked [her] nipple from [her sons] boneless gums And dashed [his] brains out” (Shakespeare 1.7.58-59). This violent description of what she’d do to her child is a complete opposite from what one would expect from a mother. Since being a mother is all women were supposed to be in the late 1500s, this was a complete juxtaposition from the norm of society and was hard for most to wrap their simple minds around and accept. This helped Shakespeare present Lady Macbeth as the real villain of

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

First off, Lady Macbeth is a character very much rooted in ambition. The authors use of masculinity versus femininity furthermore portrays the extent to which Lady Macbeth will go to ensure the success of her plan to kill the King. Her hunger for masculinity is first clearly portrayed through her use of the phrase “come, you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here.” This quote exemplifies her willingness to give up her femininity in exchange for masculine cruelty, which would ensure her success in carrying out the murder of King Duncan. Through this quote, Lady Macbeth directly opposes the Elizabethan expectation of women to be feeble, nurturers of life. Lady Macbeth did not believe that her husband had the means to become a strong

Lady Macbeth is not the picture of a perfect woman. She is cunning, dissimulative and ambitious with a solid resolve. She seems to dismiss the stereotypical female qualities in favour of male qualities to better serve her and her ambition. She shows this desire when she calls out “Come, you spirits / That tend on mortal thoughts! unsex me here, / And fill me from the crown to the toe top full / Of direst cruelty" (I.5.43-46).

Gender roles play an important part in Macbeth. When they are broken chaos occurs causing a disturbance in the society,“At the centre of this disturbance of normative gender roles is Lady Macbeth. Her headstrong attempt to unsex herself and her masculine indifference to blood and death make her a terrifying presence, who is not a woman”(Bernstein 31). Lady Macbeth’s rejection of her gender role gives her a unwomanly and supernatural aura compared to women who follow the rules. Constraints on her identity force her to show it in other ways, ie through violence. This creates a moral dilemma in the mind of Lady Macbeth, “In a society in which femininity is divorced from strength and womanliness is equated with weakness, … , the strong woman finds herself hemmed in psychologically forced to reject her own womanliness… if she is true to her strength” ( Asp 159). Lady Macbeth defies her society, but in the end her strength fails. This demonstrates how in the end stereotypes prevail. She causes her own demise through her corruption. Lady Macbeth loses her identity and eventually she commits suicide when her strength gives in. With the loss of her identity comes the loss of her humanity,“ … to “unsex” and depersonalize her into yet a fourth weird sister, even to dehumanize her into the “fund-like” creature that Malcolm styles her at the end”(Bloom 99). Her unyielding desire to defy stereotype labels her with yet another stereotype as an unnatural being, much like the witches. Lady Macbeth’s personality and actions reflect that of the witches. Both parties convince Macbeth to murder King Duncan for power and fulfill his ambitions. As Lady Macbeth represents the female gender role, Macbeth represents the male gender

Upon this realization, Lady Macbeth indicates a newfound desire to be rid of her feminine qualities, seeking instead to replace them with masculine counterparts. Crying out, Lady Macbeth declares, “Come, you spirits. That tend on mortal thought! Unsex me here, and fill me from the crown to the toe top full of direst cruelty” (1. 5. 38-41). Her abstinence towards the limitations of gender thus set her down the road to madness.

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

Lady Macbeth is one of Shakespeare’s most famous and frightening female characters. She is Macbeth’s wife and her role is significant in his rise and fall from supremacy. When we first meet her she is already plotting King Duncan’s murder. Lady Macbeth has a more intense thirst for power than her husband. She is stronger and far more ambitious than Macbeth; she is fully aware of this and knows that she will need to push him into committing murder. At one point she wishes she were not a women so she could do it herself; she doesn’t want to be gentle, soft, sweet-tempered – qualities stereotypically associated with being a woman. During Shakespearean times women were regarded as being insufficient and weak and weren’t thought to be as intelligent

Although not as evil looking as the witches, Lady Macbeth can also be perceived as one. In the same way that the witches sabotage the order of religion and that of society so does Lady Macbeth. She does this by trying to overwhelm her husband and have more power than he does. She also performs several deeds that imply that she is evil and like that of a witch. This includes her challenging her husband’s manhood through attempting to appear and act more aggressive and masculine than he is. This desire for masculinity is expressed when she says: “Come, you spirits. That tend on moral thought, unsex me here, And fill me from the crown to the tow top-full Of direst cruelty” (Shakespeare, 1996), casting