Evil Women In Macbeth

Evil Women in Macbeth In just the past ten years, Barack Obama had become the United State’s first African American president, twenty-nine countries had legalized same-sex marriage, and the viral “ALS Ice Bucket Challenge” had brought people around the world to raise awareness and research money for the disease. At the same time young girls are still denied of an education, rape victims are blamed, and less than five percent of Fortune 500 CEOs are women. In an era, where more and more people are standing together to improve the lives of others, a massive amount of women are continuously put behind men and systematically taught to accept mediocrity of themselves. This culture of sexism of powerful women has persisted and permeated into many of the world’s customs, language, and even, literature. Such typical stereotypes are present in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, as explained by Kirsten Weir’s article Power Play, concerning the varying perspectives of life between

Lady Macbeth, an ambitious woman who allowed Macbeth to become king, inevitably died due to her weak mindedness. The three witches, debatably the most powerful characters with their ability to see into the future, were simply characterized as “evil hags.” These female characters, in comparison to their male counterparts, were often treated in a much harsher light than their male counterparts, if they had any significance to the story at all, like in modern culture, that has shunned women from power positions for centuries. The lackluster representation of female characters within Macbeth showcases the sexism in our society that had permeated throughout literature when it comes to women in power, a concept that must be