Gender in Macbeth

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Recommended: Compares of masculinity to femininity

Have you ever considered what gender actually means? Most people think gender is if you are a man or woman. Gender describes if you are a man or a woman but it also entails your identity. Everyone has two sides to him or her, a masculine side and a feminine side. Men are mostly masculine and women are mostly feminine. Masculinity means you are strong, meaning that you do not whine or act foolishly. Men are mostly athletic and energized. Being feminine means that you are scared sometimes. You are afraid to do things. It also means that you are gentle with others and you are sensitive to the world. William Shakespeare’s play Macbeth is about a person who wants to become king. Throughout the play, he has to fight with his gender. He keeps getting confused when his wife Lady Macbeth is telling him what to do. During the play, both characters trade gender roles, Lady Macbeth loses her feminine qualities while Macbeth attempts to become more masculine, and events exert emotional pressure that cause an unraveling of their mental states.

Lady Macbeth had wanted to unsex herself. She wanted to become more like a man than like a woman. She wanted to get rid of all her feminine qualities. As Duncan is about to enter the place where he was going to be killed Lady Macbeth requests from the evil spirits:

“… Come, you spirits/ That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, / And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full/ Of direst cruelty. Make thick my blood. / Stop up the access and passage to remorse, / That no compunctious visitings of nature/ Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between/ The effect and it! Come to my woman’s breasts, / And take my milk for gall, you murd’ring ministers, / Wherever in your sightless substances/ You wai...

... middle of paper ...

...ing. Lady Macbeth had died because she did end up becoming insane and was too afraid of what was going to happen to her and Macbeth. During the play, both characters trade gender roles, Lady Macbeth loses her feminine qualities while Macbeth attempts to become more masculine, and events exert emotional pressure that cause an unraveling of their mental states.

Works Cited

Adelman, Janet. "“Born of Woman”: Fantasies of Maternal Power in Macbeth." Macbeth- William Shakespeare, New Edition. By Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House, 2010. 33-60. Print.

Berry, Ralph. "Macbeth : The Sexual Underplot." Macbeth- William Shakespeare, New Edition. By Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House, 2010. 101-116. Print.

Shakespeare, William Macbeth. The Language of Literature: British Literature. Ed. Arthur N. Applebee, et al. Evanston: McDougal Littell, 2006. 327-416. Print

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