Similarities Between Lady Macbeth And Mean Girls

Reagan Gibson

Mrs. Dean

Literature

04 January 2017

Lady Macbeth and Mean Girls: Two Generations of Cruel Women

Lady Macbeth and Mean Girls… what is similar? Are these two related in any way? Do the two have anything in common at all? Lady Macbeth is an important character in Shakespeare’s play Macbeth. Then, there is Tina Fey’s Mean Girls, a movie based on high school drama. How could a Shakespearean play from 1606 resemble a group of cruel high schoolers from 2004? Lady Macbeth and the characters in Mean Girls are similar in their feeling of superiority, their cruel personalities, and their manipulation of others.

Lady Macbeth, one of the main characters in Macbeth, written by Shakespeare, is a powerful and cruel woman. The wife of Macbeth,

In the first act, Lady Macbeth reads a letter from Macbeth, who has been given the title of Thane of Cawdor. Lady Macbeth immediately becomes obsessed with the idea and possibility of power. Although she appears to love him, she degrades Macbeth when she learns of this news. She thinks that her husband “is too full o’ the milk of human kindness to catch the nearest way.” When Macbeth arrives, just before the King, Lady Macbeth suggests that something happen to Duncan the King, Macbeth does consider the idea of killing Duncan but thinks that his wife is going to commit the murder. She makes a plan for the murder to happen when Duncan is sleeping, and she will accuse the guards of the crime. First, she must get the guards drunk, and she will then kill him, putting the blood on the guards to make it look like they did it. She manipulates her husband into thinking that the plan will work. He is convinced and says that he will “dare do all that may become a man.” However, when Lady Macbeth goes to kill Duncan, she cannot because he resembles her father sleeping. She states, “Had he not resembled my father as he slept, I had done’t.” Lady Macbeth’s obsession for power and her willingness to degrade and manipulate her husband make her a quite cruel

Regina is the queen bee of not only her clique but also most of North Shore High School. She is a fake, spoiled, rich girl who always gets what she wants. She has her few friends in her clique and if a girl is not one of them, Regina feels superior. She is the girl at NSHS that the boys drool over, insecure girls want to be, and Janis’ worst enemy. In elementary school, Janis and Regina were best friends. However, Regina has a private journal in which she discredits and slanders high school girls. After they were in high school, Regina started rumors about Janis who now wants revenge. When Regina befriends the new student Cady, Janis thinks it is a perfect time to get revenge. Because Cady likes Regina, she does not comply with Janis’ idea until Regina hurts her feelings. From that point forward, Cady is ready to hurt Regina. Janis manipulates Cady by encouraging her to do so. Cady harrasses Regina’s life by secretly doing many petty things. She continues to be Regina’s “friend” but also continues to play these tricks on her. She costs Regina her boyfriend, her perfect body and much more. Regina, Janis, and Cady are all “mean girls” because of their cruel behavior towards each other.

The characters of these two works have many similarities of being powerful, cruel and manipulative. Lady Macbeth wants to become queen. To achieve this power, she uses her strong personality by degrading and manipulating