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The Power of a Woman
The familiar saying "Behind every great man is an even greater woman" can certainly hold true in many cases. A woman may very well be the driving force behind any successful man. However, a woman can also use her strong influence in a negative way. This can be seen in Macbeth, where Lady Macbeth is the evil force behind Macbeth's cruelty and evil doings. In Shakespeare's Macbeth, Lady Macbeth is the main reason that Macbeth is transformed from a noble, respected Thane into a ruthless, murderous character. Lady Macbeth fuels his inner desire for power and brings forth his greed and ambition, which both eventually lead to his downfall. The tactics that Lady Macbeth use to drive her husband to this downfall are manipulation, dominance, and her evil nature.
Lady Macbeth manipulates Macbeth into believing that he is a coward and a bad husband, which persuades him to agree to the murder of King Duncan. She dwells on the fact that he is a coward, when she says "My hands are of your colour, but I shame/ to wear a heart so white" (2.2.64-65). This instills feelings of embarrassment into his mind, and manipulates him into believing that if he does not murder King Duncan, he will be a weak, cowardly man. Not only is she challenging his manhood, by appearing to be the stronger and braver of the two, but also, by calling his heart "white", she is criticizing his cowardice. The fact that his wife is undermining his masculinity causes Macbeth to want to be stronger, and not to appear weak and timid. When Lady Macbeth yells "Infirm of
purpose! Give me the daggers. The sleeping and the dead/ are but as pictures. 'Tis the eye of childhood/ that fears a painted devil" (2.2.53-55), she further contributes to the shame which she has driven into Macbeth's mind. She bluntly tells him that he is acting like a weak, nervous child, and insults him for being afraid of something that is already dead! This shame encourages Macbeth to want to consent to his wife's plan. Another method which Lady Macbeth uses to manipulate her husband's mind is by making him feel guilty for being a bad husband, who breaks his promises: "What beast was't then/ that made you break this enterprise to me?" (1.7.47-48). She knows that by saying this, he will feel remorse for breaking a promise to his wife whom he loves so much.
He no longer is the innocent soldier he once way, he now has “unclean hands”. Lady Macbeth however, assumes his innocence. She claims she cannot murder Duncan herself because Duncan looks to much like her sleeping father. She is all words and no actions. Macbeth is devoid of any human emotions as the play goes on, and Lady Macbeth assumes the emotional role. Lady Macbeth begins to have dreams in which she cannot get the blood off her hands, and ultimately commits suicide from guilt of her actions. This breakdown of Lady Macbeth really highlights how inhuman the murder of Duncan has made Macbeth.
We start to see Lady Macbeth’s actions have a huge impact on Macbeth’s character as he transforms from a decent being to an overly bitter creature. The cause of his alteration is due to the fact that Lady Macbeth is constantly excreting heartless information into his mind. "Art thou afeard to be the same in thine own act and valour as thou art in desire?" (I;vii;39-41) "And, to be more than what you were, you would be so much more the man." (I;vii;50-51) Lady Macbeth uses these quotes to push her husband beyond limits and is therefore responsible for his dramatic change in attitude. She is constantly feeding his thoughts with negative comments and later on Macbeth realizes that he has another side to him. As he moves along to discover the concealed side of him, Macbeth falls in love with himself and begins to be drawn towards his evil desires. Because Lady Macbeth was the main cause of his new hidden discovery, she is fully responsible for opening up the door and letting the darkness in. This results in Macbeth committing both murders.
After Macbeth's deed was done, he would of succumb to his guilt if it weren't for lady Macbeth. His paranoia started to get the best of him. Macbeth thinks that someone has heard him commit the crime, " I have done the deed, didst thou not hear a noise? " (Macbeth, II, II, 15) The good Lady tells Macbeth she heard nothing, she is comforting him by reassuring him that no one heard a thing, " I heard the owl scream and the crickets cry. Did not you speak? " (Macbeth, II, II, 16 - 17) Macbeth feels guilt and pity for what he has done to Duncan, he looks down on himself. [looking at his hands] " This is a sorry sight. " (Macbeth, II, II, 22). Lady Macbeth comes through and shows Macbeth comfort and strength before he loses it and does something irrational. When Macbeth returns to his chamber after killing Duncan and Lady Macbeth learns that he didn't carry out the end of the plan, the reader sees a moment of panic in Lady Macbeth. She quickly regains her composure, though, and decides that she must complete the plan herself. She says to Macbeth, "Give me the daggers. The sleeping and the dead are but ...
So far, in the play, Lady Macbeth has been shown to be a very powerful and ambitious character. After reading Macbeth's letter, she says, "Thou wouldst be great, / Art not without ambition, but without / The illness that should attend it"(I.v 17-19), here, she is saying that he needs more evil or "illness" in him to become King, and therefore implies that she will "poison" him and give him the illness he needs to increase his ambition. Here she is also undermining her husband's authority (which is very unusual for a woman in the Elizabethan era) by saying he is unable to become a King, and is undermining his masculinity as she is thinking about things that a man would usually take charge of. To try to persuade Macbeth to kill Duncan when the audience first see them meet on stage, she is very bold, "Your hand, you tongue, look like th'innocent flower, / But be the serpent under't" (I.v 65-66), she shows her strong female identity, whose ambitions speak for her obsession with power.
When she learns Macbeth has been given a fortune of been given thane of cawdor then king and half the prophecy has become true, she knows if Macbeth is king she will be queen. She is willing to do anything to get it. On the night that Macbeth and lady macbeth have planned to kill Duncan. Macbeth is having second thoughts but Lady Macbeth is not letting him back down by saying he is a coward and she would do it if she was in his place by saying ”When you durst do it, then you are a man. And to be more than what you were you would be so much more than a man”. Macbeth is a hearty warrior and feels as though he has to prove to Lady Macbeth he is a man and he is not a coward. Therefore due to Lady Macbeths manipulation Macbeth murders Duncan. On Macbeths return Lady Macbeth is happy but Macbeth is Filled with regret Lady Macbeth tells Macbeth to forget what happened “ A little water clears us of this deed”. Which is Ironique as At the end of the play Lady Macbeth has been in the anxiety and it has finally eaten away at her and she has gone mad and keeps seeing blood on her hands. “Out damned spot out, I say !” which in turn leads to her own suicide and portrays Lady Macbeth as taking her fate into her own hands in an evil manner, However the guilt from doing the evil task highlighted Lady Macbeth was not as manly as she wanted to be and she still had feelings, showing the audience by her suicide as an act showing she was unable to withstand the guilt of being queen knowing the great evil she had to do to get
The Manipulative Lady Macbeth In certain situations, women are the downfall of men. Macbeth is a prime example of how women influence men. We are going to probe into the hidden lives of Lord and Lady Macbeth, and show how without Lady Macbeth, Macbeth would have lived and prospered. Lady Macbeth was a small but very important part of the play Macbeth. She is always on the side of Macbeth, telling him what she thinks he should do.
After Lady Macbeth reads his letter and Macbeth arrives home, she is excited about becoming queen. She asks Macbeth when King Duncan is to be arriving and tells Macbeth to leave the plan up to her, his only job being that he has to look innocent and hide their true intentions. Macbeth seems to be stunned and nervous, telling his wife that they will talk later when she begins to tell him of her plan. In the seventh scene, at the castle, Macbeth speaks of the intense guilt he is feeling even before he is to kill Duncan; “… this even-handed justice/ Commends the ingredients of our poisoned/ Chalice to our own lips…” (1. 7. 10-12) (Shakespeare), “… He’s here in double trust…” (1. 7. 12) (Shakespeare), “… Besides, this Duncan/ Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been/ So clear in his great office…” (1. 7. 17-19)(Shakespeare) all express Macbeth’s discomfort with murdering Duncan to steal the throne. Not only does he convey these emotions during this monologue, but he does so when Lady Macbeth enters the room, saying “We will proceed no further in this business./ He hath honored me of late, and I have bought/ Golden opinions from all sorts of people…” (1. 7. 32-34) (Shakespeare). To respond to this, Lady Macbeth does what she does best: emasculating her husband. She first articulates her questioning of his manhood after she reads Macbeth’s letter in the first act when she says “Yet do I fear thy nature;/ It is too full o’ th’ milk of human kindness…” (1. 5. 2-3) (Shakespeare), which contrasts with the heroic description the dying Captain gives of Macbeth in the opening scene. After Macbeth tells his wife that he is calling off the plan to kill King Duncan, she
William Shakespeare differentiated Macbeth's and Lady Macbeth's reactions towards the murder of Duncan in the tragic play Macbeth. The plotting of the homicide, the actual assassination, and the actions after the slaughter demonstrate these responses due to the murder. First, as I am his kinsman and his subject, / Strong both against the deed; then, his host, / .../ Not bear the knife myself. Besides, this Duncan/ Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been/ So clear in his great office, that his virtues/ Will plead like angels," This quote from Macbeth's soliloquy explains his relationship with Duncan, and how he has no reason for killing the king. He understands his plan will eventually backfire. At the time of the murder, the quotes "Is this a dagger which I see before me / The handle toward my hand?", and "Sleep no more! / Macbeth does murder sleep" represents Macbeth's guilty conscience beginning to deteriorate inside. The floating dagger Macbeth sees before the murder illustrates Macbeth's disturbed mind. The voices he hears exhibits his suspicion that the sleepers see him listening to their shrieks of fear. Macbeth cries, "Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood/ Clean from my hand? No. This my hand will rather/ The multitudinous seas incarnadine, / Making the green one red.", while washing his hands. This shows that Macbeth's paranoia overwhelms him when the blood seems permanently stained on his hands. Macbeth believes there is enough of Duncan's blood on his hands to make the seas red. On the other hand, King Duncan's assassination effects Lady Macbeth in a different manner. Lady Macbeth exclaims "That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here/.../ Make thick my blood; / Stop up the access and passage to remorse," when she learns of Duncan's stay. At first Lady Macbeth calls upon the spirits to "unsex" her, making her susceptible to murder. She wishes not to have female emotions that will cause her to fault the murder. The quote "Had he not resembled/ My father as he slept, I had done't.", exhibits Lady Macbeth's reason for not committing the murder herself. If Duncan had not looked like her father as he slept, Lady Macbeth would commit the murder. Next Lady Macbeth hears an owl, an omen of death, scream, which startles her after the murder is committed.
Lady Macbeth is a vicious and overly ambitious woman, her desire of having something over rules all the moral behaviors that one should follow. On the beginning of the novel, Macbeth receives the news that if Duncan, the current king, passed away he would be the next one to the throne. So, Lady Macbeth induces Macbeth into killing Duncan by filling his mind with ambition and planting cruel seeds into his head. After accomplishing his deed of killing the king, he brings out the daggers that were used during the murder, and says, “I’ll go no more. I am afraid to think what I have done; look on’t again I dare not.” This is his first crime and Macbeth is already filled with guilt and regret. He shows the reader to be the weak one of the duo. Lady Macbeth as the cruel partner still has some sentiment and somewhat a weakness in her heart and mind. When talking about Duncan she says, “Had he not resembled my father as he slept, I had done’t.” Weakness is still present and will always be there throughout the novel but this one change the fact that Lady Macbeth is still the stronger and cruel one.
The struggle for control over birth transcends centuries and continents. Gloria Steinem, a women’s rights advocate of the 1990s describes how “the traditional design of most patriarchal buildings of worship imitates the female body” in order that “men [can] take over the yoni-power of creation by giving birth symbolically” (Steinem XV). The struggle for control over the power of procreation between the sexes existed in Ancient Greece. It is apparent in the Theogony, an account of the creation of Greek deities, composed by Hesiod sometime between the eighth and seventh centuries. The Theogony depicts how males attempted to subvert control of procreation by monitoring the womb, through force, and by undermining mother-child relationships. The Theogony also describes how women combated the subversion through willpower, deceit, and forming mother-child bonds to preserve the female power of birth, the unique power to control what is created and influence the actions of that creation.
After struggling with the thought of killing Duncan, Macbeth is reprimanded by Lady Macbeth for his lack of courage. She informs him that killing the king will make him a man, insinuating that he isn’t a man if he doesn’t go through with the murder. This develops Lady Macbeth as a merciless, nasty, and selfish woman. She will say, or do anything to get what she desires, even if it means harming others. It is this selfishness that makes it hard for the reader to be empathetic towards her later in the play, as it is evident in this scene that her hardships were brought on by herself. If she hadn’t insisted on the murder, she would not be driven in...
Macbeth rejects conformation to traditional gender roles in its portrayal of Lady Macbeth’s relationship with her husband, her morals and their effect on her actions, and her hunger for power. Her regard for Macbeth is one of low respect and beratement, an uncommon and most likely socially unacceptable attitude for a wife to have towards her spouse at the time. She often ignores morality and acts for the benefit of her husband, and subsequently herself. She is also very power-hungry and lets nothing stand in the way of her success. Lady Macbeth was a character which challenged expectations of women and feminism when it was written in the seventeenth century.
Throughout the play and leading up to her eventual suicide, Lady Macbeth slowly weakens. Yet, in the beginning of the play, she acts as if she is unstoppable. When Macbeth has his doubts and fears about murdering the loyal Duncan, Lady Macbeth chastises him, calling him everything from a coward to a helpless baby (I. vii. 39-49, 53-67). She even offers to do it herself, possibly to make Macbeth feel that he's even more cowardly because a woman is offering to do "his" job. This pushes Macbeth to kill, though these are the actions that will eventually lead to both of their demises later in the play. Macbeth tries to convince Lady Macbeth, as well as himself, that she is wrong: 3 Prithee, peace. I dare do all that may become a man. Who dares more is none. (I. vii. 50-52) However, Macbeth does not seem to fully convince her, because he is still mocked by his wife. Whether he failed to convince himself or to convince his Lady is irrelevant; he went through with the murder anyhow.
Shakespeare is known for strong male heroes, but they are not laying around in this play, not that Macbeth is full of strong female heroines, either. The women in the play, Lady Macbeth and the witches have very uncommon gender belief, and act as inhumane as the men. While the men engage in direct violence, the women use manipulation to achieve their desires. As Lady Macbeth impels Macbeth to kill King Duncan, she indicated that she must take on some sort of masculine characteristic in order to process the murder. “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.” (i v 31-34) This speech is made after she reads Macbeth’s letter. Macbeth, she has shown her desire to lose her feminine qualities and gain masculine ones. Lady Macbeth's seizure of the dominant role in the Macbeth's marriage, on many occasions, she rules her husband and dictates his actions. Her speeches in the first part of the book give the readers a clear impression. “You shall put this night’s great business into my dispatch, which shall […] gi...
Lady Macbeth proved to support her husband by using her strengths to make up for his weakness by consoling him during the decline of his insanity. Lady Macbeth becomes afriad that could perhaps expose their devilish doings through his acts and facial expressions. She tells him, “Look like the innocent flower but be the serpent under’t”. It is clear that Macbeth needs support, and without insurance and control from his wife, Macbeth would have fallen apart sooner than later. Although Macbeth committed the murder, it is actually Lady Macbeth who is in control of the assassination. She assures him, “Infirm of purpose! / Give me the daggers The sleeping and the dead/ are but as