Psychoanalytical Criticism of Macbeth

Macbeth wants to hold back his ambitions of taking over the crown by murdering the king due to Duncan’s kindness and the honor he has received recently from the king. However, Lady Macbeth wants her husband to be more brave and ambitious in order to take over the crown by mocking his perceived weakness.

In ‘Macbeth’, masculinity is presented as a driving force to Macbeth’s crimes, making it a vital theme. The essay’s focus is masculinity’s presentation through Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. Primarily, Shakespeare portrays Macbeth as “valiant”: a prized, respected masculine quality in their society. However, this trait becomes warped along the play. Furthermore, Lady Macbeth yearns for masculinity but she fails to acquire it. Shakespeare thus displays masculinity in two different lights.

Situated at the the start of the play, Shakespeare exposes Lady Macbeth’s masculinity through her dialogue. Lady Macbeth has just received the news that Macbeth has been named Thane of Cawdor, during in which she said, “Come you spirits...Unsex me here.” When Lady Macbeth uses the words, ‘unsex me’ she is exhibiting that

here”, by changing sex Lady Macbeth feels she would be more masculine, than she is now,

When Lady Macbeth was saying this, she was desiring the strength she needed to murder. It was believed that the strength she wished for could be gained through masculinity by “unsexing” herself. Another example of masculinity from Lady Macbeth was when Macbeth said, “Bring forth

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).

Macbeth was also affected by Lady Macbeth when she questions his manhood in, “When you durst do it, then you were a man// Be so much the man.” For a male at the time, to be questioned of their masculinity was the ultimate insult, especially from a woman. This emotional blackmail device from Lady Macbeth clearly worked, because Lady Macbeth was able to take full control of Macbeth hereafter. In the same manner that Lady Macbeth goads her husband, Macbeth then provokes the murderers by questioning their manhood, “Ay, in the catalogue ye go for men”. Both of these acts show that both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth equate masculinity with naked aggression, and whenever they converse about manhood, violence soon follows. Their understanding of manhood allows the political order depicted in the play to descend into chaos.

In Act 1 Scene 5, Lady Macbeth begs the spirits to ‘unsex’ her so that she may be able to kill Duncan. She believes that once she is ‘unsexed’ into a man that she will be able to kill. Act 1 Scene 7, Lady Macbeth questions Macbeth’s masculinity, “What beast was’t, then, that made you break this enterprise to me? When you durst do it, then you were a man; And to be more than what you were, you would. Be so much more the man.

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

35-38). It is clear here that Lady Macbeth wishes to gain more of a masculine side to her; she says this in regards to her desire for power by becoming the queen of Scotland, but at this time, the only way for her to receive the title of queen is for her husband, Macbeth, to become king. The reality though is that she knows that he wouldn’t be brave enough to go along with her horrible

In William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the author exposes the cruelty within women that exceeds the amount that men contain, representing women as vicious and devious. He shows the women as scheming with their ability to propose corrupt arrangements while leaving the murderous deeds to the men. Despite the lack of action, the women exclusively contribute to the developments of the activity.

Throughout the story of Macbeth, feminism is a tremendous aspect that helps convey the idea that Lady Macbeth is unequal to the other characters because of her gender. She is constantly being ignored and does not feel that she has the power to do some things. For example, when Lady Macbeth and Macbeth were planning on killing King Duncan, she did not murder him herself because she lacked confidence and power. Later on in the story, she becomes more confident and begins to comment about her unequalness. “Under my battlements. 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. Make thick my blood. / Stop up the access and passage to remorse...” (page 334). In this quote Lady Macbeth is praying to be given power to kill Duncan. She does not want to have the mindset of either a female nor a male, simply she wants to kill without consequence. This shows that Lady Macbeth must believe that there are weaknesses to both sexes, because she could have easily said to make her behave like a male. Instead she asks to be “unsexed.” The story of Macbeth has shown how feminism can affect others and why it was such an important aspect in the

Inspiration for his analysis came from his “formative years by phenomenological and psychoanalytic reformulations of psychiatric practice that began to criticize the constitutional model of the causation of mental disorders dominant during that period” (Groden 573). Michael Groden also states that inspiration for Lacan’s works came from the hysteria and paranoia of society on the issue of delirious subjects (573). While Lacan was heavily inspired by the psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud, Lacan also greatly contributed to the field of literary theory and criticism specifically in his “speculations on language, the subject, sexual difference, ethics, and the unconscious” (Groden 573). In his text, Lacan’s focus is on “the connection between the structure of language of the unconscious with the formula that defines the sign” (Baggett lecture). Ferdinand Saussure, the originator of Structuralism, theorizes that the signifier is just the sound-image or a “mental image” that comes to mind, while

She calls the spirits to “unsex” her, to fill her “from the crown to the toe top-full” (1.5. 49) with cruelty and thick her blood in order to “Stop up the access and passage to remorse” (1.5. 51) To gain enough power to sustain Macbeth in his accession to the throne, she gave up on her femininity, on her womanhood. In fact, she demands to become a man, all her feminine parts to be taken away and replaced with manly traits. Her prayer reminds of the incantations performed by the witches in the first Act of the play. Thereby, the role of Lady Macbeth is related to witches in the play, she mirroring them in her “attempt to take on psychological masculinity and her perversion of the wifely duties of hospitality.” (Kemp

Through the text, Shakespeare portrays a theme of how women attempt to fight the boundaries of being compassionate, submissive and incapable of “immoral” actions or thoughts. Lady Macbeth is the main vessel in which women’s immoral, murderous ideas are depicted. As a first attempt to destroy the gender barriers, Lady Macbeth appears to try psychologically change her personal perception of gender by “unsexing herself”. As an unsexed person, she would be able to coordinate the murder of King Duncan, coincidentally giving her dominance over her husband. “Under my battlements. 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. Make thick my blood. / Stop up the access and passage to remorse,” (1.5.30-34) In addition to being emotionally ready to murder, Lady Macbeth also asks to “Stop up the access and passage to remorse,” which correlates to wanting to avoid the emotions expected with being a woman.