Masculinity In Macbeth

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William Shakespeare’s Macbeth focuses heavily on gender role reversals and ambition. Lady Macbeth shows both of these themes consistently with her character. She also frequently shows how this masculinity and ambition combination can cause her to break. More precisely, Lady Macbeth shows the inherent masculine cruelty her ambition brings, how violent and toxic this masculinity causes her to be, and how this brings her to the breaking point.
Throughout most of the play, it becomes more and more apparent that lady Macbeth is extremely ambitious. Furthermore, Lady Macbeth shows that her ambition is more violent and cruel or to generalize, more masculine. Society has this idea that masculinity is very violent and that is very advanced through Lady Macbeth’s character. …show more content…

In Shakespeare’s Macbeth he does quite frequently use these female characters to show a violent person, which is generally the opposite stereotype that females have. Females are shown as nurturing, kind people. Ironically, the title character is shown to be very weak and far to kind by his wife multiple times. One such example being: “I fear thy nature; / It is too full o’ the milk of human kindness,” (I.V.15-16). Here Lady Macbeth says to Macbeth that he is far to kind and therefore weak to do what he needs to do to get what he wants. Even though Macbeth was in a war, Lady Macbeth is far more gruesomely violent that her husband. Chamberlain states again, “Lady Macbeth declares that she would have ‘dashed the brains out’ of an infant to realize an otherwise unachievable goal. Scholars have traditionally read this as well as her earlier ‘unsex me here’ invocation as evidence of Lady Macbeth’s attempt to seize a masculine power to further Macbeth’s political goals,” (72). The gruesome quote that is said by Lady Macbeth is, “I have given suck, and know / How tender ‘tis to love the babe that milks me; / I would, while it was smiling in my face, / Have pluck’d my nipple

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