Quotes About Gender Roles In Macbeth

4. Theme - Gender Roles

Throughout this play, many characters equate cruelty and violence with masculinity; Lady Macbeth questions her husband’s masculinity in order to manipulate him to help her achieve her ambitions--goals that she cannot have as a woman.

In an attempt to manipulate and convince Macbeth to follow through with Duncan’s murder, she mocks his worries, asking him “Hath it slept since? / And wakes it now, to look so green and pale” (1.7). Here, she questions Macbeth’s complexion, noting his fatigued, sickly, and pallor appearance; these symptoms are associated with green sickness, often called “The Virgin’s Disease.” Lady Macbeth uses a disease commonly associated with young virgin girls as a threat to her husband’s masculinity,

While the fate of the characters have all been planned, the paths they take are still of free will.

In the introduction, we first hear the captain praising “brave Macbeth (well he deserves that name) / Disdaining Fortune, with his brandished steel, / Which smoked with bloody execution” (1.2). In these lines, the captain makes it sound like Macbeth is able to evade fate and fortune and escape death using his own abilities. The use of “disdain” shows that it is Macbeth’s decision to reject, due to his superiority complex, what lies before him and choose his own direction, illustrating the idea that while there is an end goal, the path taken is still up to the characters.

Once he learns about Duncan’s plans to put Malcom onto the throne, he decides it “is a step / On which I must fall down, or else o'erleap, / For in my way it lies” (1.4). Here, Macbeth again acknowledges that these are decisions he can make on his own: he can either choose to lose his position in line for the throne or figure out a way to “overleap” the challenge. However, one must also recognize that the path he chooses--to murder Duncan in order to secure his title--was influenced by the witches’ prophecy. While fate seems to guide Macbeth, he is still able to make is own