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Lady Macbeth Femininity Quotes

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Lady Macbeth's Character Analysis Due to Lady Macbeth's challenging traditional gender roles, she and Macbeth face a tragic downfall. Lady Macbeth is shown to have dominant control in her relationship, she is expressed as an ambitious woman with evil attributes. She is seen forcing her husband to murder his best friend by antagonizing his manhood and making him become driven by ambition. Her famous quote, “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 /That no compunctious visitings of nature /Shake my fallen purpose.”(Shakespeare, 1.1.5). Lady Macbeth asks for her to be ‘unsex’, wishing for her femininity to be released, then goes on to mention how she might …show more content…

In Act I, Scene 5, Lady Macbeth receives a letter from Macbeth detailing the witches' prophecy and she ululates how she wants to discard her femininity and explore her masculine ones. She exclaims, "Come, you spirits that tend to mortal thoughts! Unsex me here, and fill me from the crown to the toe top-full of direst cruelty" (Shakespeare, 1.1.5). Macbeth is said to view Lady Macbeth as a ‘masculine soul inhabiting a female body’, saying she is ‘ambitious’ and ‘violent’, but Shakespeare uses that as a way to describe her in a different light. Shakespear shows that her masculine attributes don't make her ambitious and violent, until Macbeth leads her to it, she is only ambitious of becoming queen after she receives the letter. Shakespeare also portrayed her as more malicious and dominant, for instance, when having to make her husband kill his best friend but also it is implied that throughout their marriage she was the one in control of it. Additionally, in Act III scene 4, Lady Macbeth again takes charge as her husband loses control upon seeing the ghost of Banquo. During the time where Macbeth loses his mind, Lady Macbeth controls him, she keeps telling him to ‘fix himself’ and even orders others in the dining area to stay seated and to

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