Macbeth Murderous Woman

When Macbeth questions whether he should kill Duncan, Lady Macbeth attacks Macbeth calling him a “coward” (16) and a “poor cat” (17). Unlike May in “The Canterbury Tales”, Lady Macbeth does not use clever analogies to manipulate her husband, instead, Lady Macbeth bullies Macbeth into going with the plan to assassinate King Duncan. Although women were still below men as they were during the time period of “The Canterbury Tales” as defined by the Great Chain of Being, Lady Macbeth acts like the head of the household instead of Macbeth. One of the reasons for the inconsistency between the traditions of the time period and the play is that Lady Macbeth, upon receiving the letter from Macbeth about his promotion to Thane of Cawdor asked for “spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, and fill me from the crown to the toe, top-full of direst cruelty” (12). By being “unsex[ed]”, she loses the identity given to her by society and instead takes on the role as head of the Macbeth household and the equivalent of a man.

When one thinks of the words ‘womanhood’ or ‘femininity’, one thinks of gentle, pretty objects. Images that are usually associated with these words are dresses, makeup, housewives, cooking, cleaning, heels, painted nails, skinny, weak, jewelry, etc. Society deems these images as feminine. Although these are the typical stereotypes of being feminine or a woman, most women do not fit these stereotypes. In Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth, Lady Macbeth fits the stereotype and breaks the stereotype at different points in the play.

Macbeth, a character in the novel “Macbeth” written by William Shakespeare is a brave Scottish general, and powerful man who lacks virtuous. Macbeth’s wife, Lady Macbeth is a deeply ambitious woman who lusts for power and place. Both are the key to the majority of murders that took place in Macbeth. In the play there are many evil deeds that Macbeth committed. These include the murders of Duncan and Banquo, Macduff and her son. Starting off he had no trouble killing an old man who was asleep in his bed. In addition, a weakling move is made by Macbeth that he allows his wife to force him to do something that is clearly against his will (killing king Duncan). Using Lady Macbeth to dilute her husband's responsibility only adds shame to his guilt.

In present day, women are looked up on for their courage and confidence; but, in the Elizabethan Era, it was looked down upon. “The raven himself is hoarse/ that croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan/ under my battlements, come, you spirits/ that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, and fill me from the crown to toe topful/ of direst cruelty” (1.5.38-43). Lady Macbeth prays to the spirits to change her feeble and nurturing self into a cruel and ruthless women. Lady Macbeth wishes are answered, she is the one to plan Duncan’s murder. Men who show guilt are rebuked, in both the Elizabethan Era and Modern Era.

Lady Macbeth is unlike the women of her time. Her dominant personality and commanding tone differ from the culture of the Renaissance period where a common theme for women was to be seen but not heard. Men thought women were inferior in society, and a multitude of ladies were expected to take on humble occupations with no hope of furthering their education or job position. Leadership and the ability to make decisions concerning life and welfare were left up to the men (Cloud 1). Lady Macbeth challenges this belief in her ambition to be queen and her manipulative tactics to make sure such a goal is accomplished.

Women can be as ambitious and cruel as men, yet social constraints denied them the means to chase these ambitions on their own. Shakespeare, however, appeared to have used Lady Macbeth, and the witches, to weaken Macbeth’s idea that “undaunted mettle should compose / Nothing but males (Act I. sn. VII ln..73–74).” Lady Macbeth’s sweltering ambition to be queen was the target source of motivation that willingly kept her drawn to committing such atrocities. She persistently taunted her husband for miniscule amount of courage he possessed, even though we were aware of his bloody deeds on the battlefield; this exemplified her lack of remorse.

Although Lady Macbeth wants to become more masculine there appears to be a flaw in her psychology as she can’t kill Duncan. Her not being able to kill Duncan shows the audience that even though she tries hard to act masculine she’s still a female and in fact, she’s too much of a woman to be cruel and kill so she makes her husband do it. This statement also once again reinforces the idea of the patriarchal society, even though Lady Macbeth wants to break free of men and be control of her own fate, she cannot do so as men are still controlling her and she can’t help it as she’s only a woman. Lady Macbeth also states that she saw her father within Duncan implying that she couldn’t kill and go against her own father, even though Duncan wasn’t her real father; he is the father of her country and that symbolism of men being in control is too much for her to overcome. Men will always have her power and this could be part of her tragedy since she lived in a time where women couldn’t be

Macbeth himself withholds high ambitions and determination to hold the throne, but his wife seems to hold even more so. At first Macbeth was hesitant to murder Duncan, yet it was Lady Macbeth who persisted and drove him to complete the task. It is crystal clear that Lady Macbeth drives Macbeth forward through complete manipulation. Being a women, and confined in the time period that she lives, the Lady is limited to the conventions of society that prevent her from doing much. In result, Lady Macbeth pours her ambition and power into Macbeth.

The women in the story of Macbeth are viewed as both powerful and powerless, strong and weak, and most importantly predator and prey (Shakespeare,497). The darkness inside one woman in particular, ends up flowing over into the others, twisting the story toward it’s inevitable close. That woman is Lady Macbeth, representing greed. Her lust for power ends up causing Macbeth to be comfortable with murder (Shakespeare,455). She and the witches use their various powers of persuasion to cause him to commit this horrific crime (Shakespeare,446).

William Shakespeare was the most prolific author of his time, and is accredited to writing nuanced and complex female characters, a feat not seen before his iconic plays. Consequently, his stronger female characters, namely Lady Macbeth, are seen, in the modern era, as feminist role models who challenged the gender roles. However, by analyzing the text and by understanding how women were viewed during the time, Lady Macbeth can be seen as quite the opposite of a feminist character, and instead a message to women pertaining to their supposed place in society as a caretaker. Through analysis of Lady Macbeth’s infamous soliloquy, Shakespeare’s scattering of metaphors pertaining to women, and comparisons of the three witches to Lady Macbeth, a

Lady Macbeth has female appearance and male ambitions, and Shakespeare (perhaps through the manipulative technic) shows that women could have same ambitions as men do. Although, the patriarchal boundaries and social structures still require the usage of men for the proper achievement of their (women) goals. In this way, Lady Macbeth overcomes the “expectations” of how woman suppose to behave. She ought to behave as male but not as her husband. She clearly performs a desire to be someone with lack of feelings and emotions, someone who is capable to carry a burden of responsibilities. By doing so, she labels Macbeth with lack of masculinity and

Lady Macbeth urged her husband to do some terrible things, but once it got later in the story, Macbeth took control over his own actions on his downhill spiral of treachery. When Macbeth told his wife that the King would be visiting their house, she responded with “... 0, never Shall sun that morrow see!” (Doc B). Not only was this a questionable response, but she then proceeded to force Macbeth to do the physical murder by telling him he was not a real man, and once Macbeth had done the deed of killing Duncan, she told him “My hands are of your colour; but I shame To wear a heart so white” (Doc C). Lady Macbeth soon becomes consumed with guilt, “ Whenever, then, we find that the memory of a criminal act, however successful and enduring in its issues it may have been, awakens a repentance and moral detestation so consuming that for no single instant is it absent from the mind of the criminal, and that self-abhorrence leads to insanity and suicide…”(von Rumelin). Lady Macbeth was the person who pushed Macbeth off the edge causing him to turn to even more tyranny, send him on a killing spree, become full of ambition, and way too power hungry. Not only did lady Macbeth urge her husband to start his terrible journey by killing the king, later she was too overwhelmed with all the guilt knowing she was the cause of many murders,

Macbeth is about a man’s yearning for power, and the unforgiving, homicidal acts that he commits in order to gain it. In addition to that, this story equally focuses on his power-hungry wife and her extreme desire for control. Both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are connected to each other by more than just marriage. Shakespeare develops an interesting relationship that discovers the failures of not one person, but a spirit made up of two. The focal point is heavily on this unity within the plot of Macbeth, where the roles of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are defied by the stereotypical gender roles.

According to gender theory, society assigns certain conventions and roles to men and women. In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, these gender roles play an important part in developing the plot and the ensuing conflict that follows. Both Lady Macbeth and Macbeth appeal to the role of “manhood” as violent and aggressive in order to accomplish the murders of King Duncan and Banquo. Women are portrayed as initiators of evildoings and, thus, inherently wicked. In Macbeth, William Shakespeare uses the characters of Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, and Macduff to demonstrate how the change in gender roles from those of medieval society to those of a more modern society create confusing choices in the means of achieving goals.

As in other works of the time, the gender divide is clear and noticeable. The male-dominated cast contains more major characters with important roles, such as Macbeth, Macduff, and Duncan, and a small host of other lords, soldiers, and commoners. The women, made up of Lady Macbeth, Lady Macduff, and Hecate and her witches, have smaller roles. Stephanie Chamberlain notes the part Lady Macduff plays, saying: “Lady Macduff, Macduff's sad, abandoned wife, is also killed within the play to motivate Macduff into taking the kind of action necessary to defeat the murderous Macbeth: to breathe new life, if you will, into a dying Scotland” (Chamberlain 86). Using a character’s death as motivation has been a popular practice, especially in this time, to advance the development of a character at the cost of the another character. Often the killed character is merely placed in that role to die, reducing the worth of said character. Remarking on his wife’s death, Macbeth says: “She should have died hereafter. There would have been time for such a word” (V.v.17-18). Macbeth’s indifference to her death demonstrates the complete degeneration of her character throughout the play, as the reader comes to feel a shock, which is soon lost upon the following events in the play. Exploring the inequalities between the male and female characters of the play, the restrictions of the time period lead to a misogynistic devaluation of the importance of the women of the