Gender Roles In Shakespeare's Macbeth

Ambition can be used for good or evil. At the beginning of the play, Lady Macbeth uses her ambition for cruelty and wants to gain power. Lady Macbeth shows her cruelty by saying, “Come, you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, and fill me from the crown to the toe topful of direst cruelty!” (1.5.38--41). What she means by this is that if Macbeth is too scared and cowardly to kill Duncan then she wishes that she was not a woman so that she could do it herself.

In the play, Macbeth says to himself, "The ruler of Cumberland! That is a stage I should either tumble down from or else jump over, for it lies in my way. "(Act 1 scene 4 Lines 55-57)

In the play Macbeth, Lady Macbeth is more responsible for the deaths that occur in the play. Lady Macbeth accomplished this by infringing Macbeth’s comfort level, which made him uncomfortable and give into her desires. The four reasons why Lady Macbeth is responsible is she summons evil demons to fill her body with evil, her death pushes Macbeth over the edge, she has the gender power over Macbeth, and she drives Macbeth to become power hungry. During the course of the play most of Lady Macbeth’s actions cause a direct reaction from Macbeth. If Lady Macbeth had not exhorted Macbeth into murdering King Duncan, then he would have remained a sane man and decided against killing Duncan.

" He no longer confides in his most trusted confidant showing his descension into paranoia and obsession with control. The natural order of the universe is disrupted when they murder the king and chaos it unleashed. This is shown in the aftermath: Macbeth hallucinates, Lady Macbeth

Lady Macbeth’ s soliloquy: Act 1, scene 5 Lady macbeth’s soliloquy opens up all the atrocious things that will take place throughout the play, particularly the death of King Duncan and all the other murmurs that follow. It also reveals lady macbeth’s nefarious nature. In Macbeth, Shakespeare uses numerous literary devices. In lady macbeth’s soliloquy, he uses personification in her speech in which lady Macbeth claims her “ keen knife see not the wound it makes” giving it human quality in order to convince herself to go trough the murder of King Duncan and make sure that not even her knife won't see the murder occur.

With this he tells his wife Lady Macbeth the news, and convinces himself that he must kill the king. Lady Macbeth agrees, yet Macbeth starts to have doubts. Lady Macbeth pressures him and tells him to quit being a woman with this Lady Macbeth sets the murder up and Macbeth goes through with it. After this tragedy, they turn to Macbeth and gave him the throne of the Kingdom. The question is was Macbeth evil or sick, Macbeth suffers from Brief Psychotic Disorder and he is not evil.

After the victory of Banquo and Macbeth against the king 's traitor Macdonwald the witches presence contract the vibe of manipulation seeking Macbeth as its next victim. As they encounter with Macbeth and Banquo, they start-off questioning the trio of leery ladies. "look not like the inhabitants of the earth, / And yet are on it"; they seem to understand him, and yet he cannot be sure; they "should be women," and yet they are bearded. One by one the witches told Macbeth his upcoming abundance of power leaving him immensely petrified. As a result the prophecies were the contemporary force plaguing Macbeth into slaughtering King Duncan for his aspiration.

Murder's Impact: Empathy and Blood in Macbeth Throughout the play “Macbeth”, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth’s characters change as a result of murder and the trauma of bloodshed. Lady Macbeth thinks she can turn off her conscience and convince her husband to kill Duncan, which results in her crippling guilt and insanity. Macbeth feels no remorse of this kind, and instead fears the consequences, consistently referencing his safety. As the play progresses, we see examples of blood being used to communicate the guilt and remorse Lady Macbeth feels.

Similar to the point made above, both of the antagonists have a desire for control. Lady Macbeth asks evil spirits to "Thick up [her] blood and clog [her] veins". She wants her veins to clog up so nothing can pass through, especially not remorse. She would rather die than feel remorse. Lady Macbeth is therefore willing to drop the part that makes her human for more power. "

Free Will over Fate in Macbeth This theory is obvious in a scene, where Macbeth is consciously deciding to kill king Duncan. In Act 1, Scene 3 he states: - “My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical, shakes so my single state of man that function, is smother’d in surmise, and nothing is, but what is not” (Macbeth 1.3.138-141). We observe his conscious unstable thought processes about contemplating and planning the murder of Duncan emerging shortly after hearing the prophecy, and before Lady Macbeth could hear the message and influence his decision.

This is done by condemning her husband’s biggest insecurity; his manhood. She states that Macbeth would be “So much more the man.” (Shakespeare, trans. 2012, 1.7.58 if he were to follow through with the plan. Lady Macbeth even points out that she herself would kill her own baby as a means to reach her goals.

(1.3 50). When Macbeth sees the Witches for the first time they tell him he is going to become a King. Macbeth gets inspiration and ambitions of becoming the King of Scotland. After this meeting Macbeth becomes determined to reach goal and his wife forces him to murder the current King. The Witches subvert the stereotypical gender roles as they are females with power which gives them masculine characteristics.

Lady Macbeth even views her husband’s weaknesses as leverage to harass him into killing Duncan. This can be seen when, at one stage, Macbeth repels the idea of killing a good king and believes that the assassination should not be done, his wife demands him to kill by saying abusive words. She questions if Macbeth loves her, she questions Macbeth’s masculinity and she criticizes Macbeth’s aspiration to be king. These three brutal statements hurt Macbeth. Since Macbeth wants to prove his manhood, his love for

Second, Macbeth is aware of his tragic flaw, but he does not choose to better himself. Lastly, although being influenced by the witches, Macbeth makes the choice to believe in the witches and to take certain actions. To begin with, Macbeth is greatly influenced by Lady Macbeth. She “is depicted by Shakespeare as an equal of Macbeth in the realm of ambition and ruthlessness; without her, in fact, Macbeth 's courage may never have reached the ‘sticking-place’” (Moss & Wilson 7).

Gender-Role Reversal in Macbeth During the time period in which Shakespeare wrote Macbeth, the frail, tender, and submissive stereotype of women was in full force. Yet, in Macbeth, Shakespeare writes women to be powerful, intelligent, and dominant; Macbeth was full of gender-role reversals. Lady Macbeth showed many examples of this althroughout this five act play.