Elizabethan Era Gender Roles

During the Elizabethan era gender roles were prevalent and impacted life for all. An Elizabethan writer, William Shakespeare, takes these gender roles and challenges the normal roles and expected personalities for men and women. Two of Shakespeare’s characters in his play Macbeth help to show Shakespeare's beliefs on gender roles. Shakespeare consistently challenges and does not reinforce the gender roles for men and women through Macbeth and Lady Macbeth by having a powerful, dominant female character and a weak and fearful male character.

Throughout the play Lady Macbeth is shown to be a strong and powerful character, in contrast to typical feminine characters and gender roles at the time. After her discovery that Macbeth has been prophesied

Lady Macbeth constantly challenges where or not Macbeth is truly even a man or not. During one of their arguments Lady Macbeth tells him that, “when you durst do it, then you were a man and to be more than what you were, you would be so much more the man” (I.vii.56-58). Through Shakespeare’s uses of the phrases “you were a man” and “you would be so much more the man,” he is displaying the typical roles for a masculine character, but his character is not exemplifying the expectancy that a male character should be confident and violent. To truly be a man, Lady Macbeth believes that Macbeth must kill King Duncan. Shakespeare challenges the gender roles for men by having Macbeth feel unnerved and afraid to commit the murder, while he almost makes fun of the idea that men should be violent and need to be violent to truly be a man. During the same argument, Lady Macbeth tries to encourage Macbeth by telling him to- “screw your courage to the sticking place and we’ll not fail” (I.vii.70-71). Along with the belief that men should be violent and daring comes the idea of courage. Many male characters in the Elizabethan time period are courageous and have no hesitation in committing violent acts, but Shakespeare’s character faces a fear and is afraid to commit treason and murder. Shakespeare’s character once