Lady Macbeth Gender Roles Essay

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In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the gender roles of men and women play an important part in the lives of the main characters; whether these characters are conforming to gender roles, defying them, or blurring them altogether, each individual is uniquely bound by their presumed gender characteristics. While Lady Macbeth clearly asserts herself as a dominating, independent women, she ultimately still falls victim to the sexist notions enforced by her patriarchal society.
Lady Macbeth’s characterization has survived decades, a Gothic, manipulative woman who uses her sexuality and marital position to tempt her husband to commit murder. In her first scenes with Macbeth, she plays the role of unadulterated antagonist. Lady Macbeth taunts her husband saying, “Was the hope drunk/wherein you dressed yourself? Hath it slept since? /And wakes it now, to look so green and pale/at what …show more content…

Make thick my blood, / Stop up th’access and passage to remorse, /that no compunctious visitings of nature/ Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between/Th’ effect and it. Come to my woman’s breasts, /and take my milk for gall, you murd’ring ministers” (1.5.31-38) and thus renounces he femininity in order to adopt the stronger, more violent characteristics attributed to the male sex. Through shedding her weak, womanly role Lady Macbeth becomes a formidable entity. This serves as her most famous characteristic, assuming the role of man to fulfill her murderous desirous, yet she has to lose all of female identity in order to reach these goals. At this time she no longer wishes to be “Lady” Macbeth, but rather Macbeth himself able to perform the tasks her truly weak-willed husband cannot do. Lady Macbeth cannot be strong and assertive without first losing the foundation of her as a person—her

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