essay on masculinity in macbeth

Masculinity

Masculinity - macbeth.

At the beginning of the play, Macbeth is viewed as an honourable and masculine character. He starts to be viewed as evil when he goes against the idea of the honourable man and lets women control him.

Start - masculine

• Macbeth behaves like a fearless warrior at the start of the play. The Captain tells King Duncan about his bravery in battle.
• Macbeth acts how people expected men to act at the time. They expected men to behave with honour, which meant fighting for their king. It was their duty.
• Men were also supposed to be fearless.

Goes against the idea of an honourable man

• He lies to Banquo (his best friend), which is dishonourable.
• He brings his friend and leader (King Duncan) into his home and then kills him.
• He also goes against fighting rules when he kills Duncan. He waits for the king to fall asleep and kills him whilst he is defenceless. This also goes against honour because Duncan trusted Macbeth to keep him safe whilst he was a guest in his home, but Macbeth goes against this.

Controlled by women

• Macbeth also shows his lack of traditional masculinity when he allows women to control and manipulate him.
• The witches tell him he will be king, so he starts to plot against King Duncan.
• Lady Macbeth tells him he will be a coward and a weak man if he does not kill the king, and so he kills King Duncan.

Threatened by events

• The witches control and manipulate him – helps to cause his downfall.
• Lady Macbeth controls and manipulates him – encourages him to murder King Duncan, which helps to cause his downfall.
• He has visions of ghosts (Banquo) – shows his people that he is mentally unstable.
• His increasing mental instability (apparently feminine trait) causes him to murder more and more people – helps to cause his downfall.

Masculinity - Lady Macbeth

Lady Macbeth is a woman with masculine traits who wants to have her femininity removed. She attacks Macbeth's masculinity at various points in the play.

Wants to be more masculine

• Lady Macbeth wishes that she could be more masculine. She wants to be masculine to have the qualities that people thought belonged to men.
• These included strength, courage and ruthlessness: ‘Come you spirits / That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here / And fill me from the crown to the toe topfull / Of direst cruelty’ (1,5).
• She uses many imperative (ordering) verbs here to show she is in command.
• She orders the spirits to ‘unsex’ her because she wants to be less feminine. She wants to be cruel and feel no remorse (regret).

Attacks Macbeth's masculinity

• Lady Macbeth attacks Macbeth’s masculinity when he shows doubts about going through with the murder in Act 1, Scene 7.
• She calls him a coward, saying he is ‘pale and green’ . She asks him if he would rather live in fear than take action for the things he wants: ‘Art thou afeared / To be the same in thine own act and valour, / As thou art in desire?’
• By questioning his bravery, she suggests that he is weak. Men were supposed to be strong. She shames him by seeming stronger than he is.
• When Macbeth sees Banquo’s ghost, Lady Macbeth says: 'Are you a man?' (3,4). Madness was seen as a disorder that only affected women.

Has masculine traits

• Lady Macbeth persuades Macbeth to go ahead with the plan. When she does, he tells her: ‘Bring forth men-children only, / For thy undaunted mettle should compose / Nothing but males’ (1,7).
• This reflects the value of bravery at the time. He is saying that her bravery – ‘undaunted mettle’ – is so praiseworthy and masculine that the only children she will give birth to will be males.
• Again, this suggests that Lady Macbeth has some masculine traits in the play.

1 Literary & Cultural Context

1.1 Context

1.1.1 Tragedy

1.1.2 The Supernatural & Gender

1.1.3 Politics & Monarchy

1.1.4 End of Topic Test - Context

2 Plot Summary

2.1.1 Scenes 1 & 2

2.1.2 Scene 3

2.1.3 Scenes 4-5

2.1.4 Scenes 6-7

2.1.5 End of Topic Test - Act 1

2.2 Acts 2-4

2.2.1 Act 2

2.2.2 Act 3

2.2.3 Act 4

2.3.1 Scenes 1-3

2.3.2 Scenes 4-9

2.3.3 End of Topic Test - Acts 2-5

3 Characters

3.1 Macbeth

3.1.1 Hero vs Villain

3.1.2 Ambition & Fate

3.1.3 Relationship

3.1.4 Unstable

3.1.5 End of Topic Test - Macbeth

3.2 Lady Macbeth

3.2.1 Masculine & Ruthless

3.2.2 Manipulative & Disturbed

3.3 Other Characters

3.3.1 Banquo

3.3.2 The Witches

3.3.3 Exam-Style Questions - The Witches

3.3.4 King Duncan

3.3.5 Macduff

3.3.6 End of Topic Test - Lady Macbeth & Banquo

3.3.7 End of Topic Test - Witches, Duncan & Macduff

3.4 Grade 9 - Key Characters

3.4.1 Grade 9 - Lady Macbeth Questions

4.1.1 Power & Ambition

4.1.2 Power & Ambition HyperLearning

4.1.3 Violence

4.1.4 The Supernatural

4.1.5 Masculinity

4.1.6 Armour, Kingship & The Natural Order

4.1.7 Appearances & Deception

4.1.8 Madness & Blood

4.1.9 Women, Children & Sleep

4.1.10 End of Topic Test - Themes

4.1.11 End of Topic Test - Themes 2

4.2 Grade 9 - Themes

4.2.1 Grade 9 - Themes

4.2.2 Extract Analysis

5 Writer's Techniques

5.1 Structure, Meter & Other Literary Techniques

5.1.1 Structure, Meter & Dramatic Irony

5.1.2 Pathetic Fallacy & Symbolism

5.1.3 End of Topic Test - Writer's Techniques

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Over and over again in Macbeth , characters discuss or debate about manhood: Lady Macbeth challenges Macbeth when he decides not to kill Duncan, Banquo refuses to join Macbeth in his plot, Lady Macduff questions Macduff's decision to go to England, and on and on.

Through these challenges, Macbeth questions and examines manhood itself. Does a true man take what he wants no matter what it is, as Lady Macbeth believes? Or does a real man have the strength to restrain his desires, as Banquo believes? All of Macbeth can be seen as a struggle to answer this question about the nature and responsibilities of manhood.

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Manhood Quotes in Macbeth

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Manly Manipulation: The Liability of Masculinity in Macbeth Josie Reynolds College

While history has us assume that the idea of masculinity is equated with strength, Lady Macbeth’s soliloquy in Shakespeare’s Macbeth epitomizes the play’s understanding of masculinity in relation to power. When Lady Macbeth commands the spirits, “unsex me here, and fill me from the crown to the toe top-full of direst cruelty,” she asserts that the male gender is necessary to be able to exercise extreme violence, which, in the case of her and Macbeth’s plot to kill Duncan, is vital to being successful (1.5.47-50). In some ways, Lady Macbeth’s assertion of masculinity being equated to unrestrained cruelty complicates the traditional notion of masculine traits equaling strength and power. While Lady Macbeth asserts to men that these so-called masculine traits are necessary to her accomplishment of her plan, she uses her specific concept of masculinity as cruelty to urge male characters to act in ways that are in accordance with her murderous plan for power. In that regard, an understanding of Macbeth through the lens of its emphasis on masculinity diverges from the common idea in older literature that manliness is next to godliness. While the central characters may speak about masculinity as though it is the epitome of power and...

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Macbeth and masculinity: the struggle for power

Lessons (7), duncan as a father figure, macbeth and the importance of kingship, banquo and the chivalric code, macbeth's lack of a male heir, macbeth and the external feminine influences, masculinity as macbeth's hamartia, writing nuanced responses about the role of masculinity in 'macbeth'.

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Manhood and Masculine Identity in William Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Macbeth. By Maria L. Howell. New York: University Press of America, 2008. Pp. 42.

Maria L. Howell’s Manhood and Masculine Identity in William Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Macbeth is a concise, interesting, and intriguing read. The monograph primarily focuses upon Lady Macbeth and her husband, delving into the gendered qualities that make these characters who they are. Professor Howell’s study of Macbeth also seeks to answer the following questions: “What is a man?”; “How do we define masculinity?”; and “What values constitute true manhood?” (1). Howell’s work answers these questions as they pertain to Macbeth, while developing the idea that adherence to the masculine stereotype carries a double edge.

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Feminism is the most common term nowadays as since the 19th century women have been struggling for their rights and for banishing the patriarchal dominance. Women are more united and aware to establish the equity and equality in society, but men in the name of social and religious behaviour always try to enchain women and use how they wish. For these, they change their strategies frequently. As feminism is a discourse and academic discipline, people have attempted to know why and how men have started dominating women. Consequently, reading Shakespeare is important as he creates a lot of women characters in his tragedies. And a deep reading of Shakespeare's Macbeth from a feminist perspective shows how technically Shakespeare introduces Lady Macbeth as a criminal and the so-called fourth witch. Even nowhere does Shakespeare mention what Lady Macbeth's real identity is. That's why, the paper aims at reading the text from a feminist perspective to search the treatment of Shakespeare towards Macbeth and Lady Macbeth and to know why Lady Macbeth's identity is ignored here. To fulfil these, the paper briefly describes the nature of patriarchy and feminism, then the textual analysis critically with these features. Finally, it shows its findings and proves that Shakespeare is not also free from patriarchal tendency.

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In this paper, our purpose is to depict the feminist message as articulated in Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler by portraying Lady Macbeth and Hedda Gabler who are representatives of Elizabethan England and the 19th century Scandinavian Bourgeois society and culture respectively. Through these female protagonists, both dramatists wanted to expose their contemporary situation of the female community. Both Hedda and Lady Macbeth have raised a fiery voice or initiated a dreadful revolution against the patriarchal rule, power, and domination with a view to attaining self-pelf, self-power, and self-domination. In these two plays, both Shakespeare and Ibsen have prioritized the female identity, revolt, and dominance more than the male order and custom. This paper also aims to discuss the character of Lady Macbeth as the matriarchal influence upon the patriarchy, the ambitious crime, woman’s idea upon masculinity, Lady Macbeth’s effort to repudiate womanhood, her femininity versus her unnatural resolve, her fear and remorse, her sleep-walking; Hedda is also viewed as a maladjusted, neurotic, unfulfilled, unnatural woman, full of nervous energy and longings-gliding to irresistible selfdestruction. Here, I have tried to highlight the critical judgments of several critics based on the character-analysis of the two powerful female protagonists. Considering the femme fatale characters of Shakespeare and Ibsen, the most renowned and powerful playwrights writing in English and Norwegian language respectively, especially the powerful and domineering female protagonists cum heroines, Lady Macbeth and Hedda Gabler, this paper proposes to draw attention to the play-texts of both dramatists as the embodiment of the 21st century radical feminism as well. Keywords: "Lady Macbeth", "Hedda Gabler", Shakespeare, Ibsen, and Post-Feminism

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Please contact me if you wish to read any of this work directly. Presented at the ANZSA 'Shakespeare at Play' conference at the University of Melbourne, February 8, 2018. Shakespeare’s reputation for puns, or plays on words, is well founded, but one text for which he is particularly well known is a play about words. Language in 'Hamlet' is frequently centred on the impossibility of representing meaning through acting or through words. However, Shakespeare’s playful language does not stop at the edges of the English but moves further beyond it. The critical history of connections between Shakespeare’s work and the 'Essais' of Michel de Montaigne go back as far as 1779. However, this comparative history has been largely conducted through John Florio’s 1603 translation, even though 'Hamlet' was first performed at least as early as 1600, and perhaps much earlier. Making a case for Shakespeare’s knowledge of French, this paper will trace some of the ways in which Shakespeare has Hamlet translate Montaigne’s philosophy, with a particular focus on plays and playing. As well as acknowledging the influence of the essays’ original French on all three 'Hamlet' texts – the First and Second Quartos, and the Folio – the comparison will reveal the authors’ shared general interests in invoking multiple meanings. Furthermore, doing so will reveal ways in which Shakespeare’s linguistic playfulness in 'Hamlet' works at and beyond edges of English.

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This dissertation is a study of the lexical representation of gender in two contrastive Shakespearean plays to identify ways that gender is represented in Early Modern literary language. I ask if the lexical representation of binary gender features in these two plays match our expectations based on social and literary understandings of the period. Social roles for men and women are often pre-determined in the Early Modern period, and literary critics base their analysis upon these assumptions. I suggest representations of men and women are dependent upon underlying linguistic structures and patterns that are widely ignored in a literary analysis of a text. Macbeth focuses on issues of masculinity; it is contrasted with The Merry Wives of Windsor, a play centered on its female characters. I conduct three analyses: first, I investigate whether male pronouns are more likely to appear in a subject, rather than object position; I also ask if the feminist literary critics are correct in assuming that women are more likely to appear as objects. I then conduct a close reading of possessive structures using specific lexical clusters (his/her + noun) as they appear in the texts of the plays. I compile three separate corpus linguistic tools based on their strengths - a statistical analysis, a simple concordance compiler, and a distributional analysis – to identify and isolate these patterns in the Early Modern Period, presented in a literary-linguistic context. Gender representation can be visibly patterned. An analysis of these results shows that linguistic representations of men and women in these plays are not consistent with a literary critic’s understanding of gender in the texts. I argue against the consideration of literary texts as a social reality; instead I combine corpus linguistics methodology with a stylistic, critical discourse approach to literary features gender as presented by the plays.

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Masculinity, femininity, and androgyny in MacBeth

“you should be women,/ and yet your beards forbid me to interpret / that you are so.” (i.iii.45–46): masculinity, femininity, and androgyny in macbeth.

Shakespeare’s Macbeth isolates and contrasts conventional notions of masculinity and femininity, yet also examines their interplay, in the form of androgyny, or their absence, in the form of sexlessness. In a play that treats the themes of succession, hierarchy, and order, Shakespeare’s perversion of orthodox concepts of manhood and womanhood, in terms of physical anatomy and mental sensibilities alike, may be mapped onto the presence, within the play, of the disruption of the so-called natural order. Through Macbeth’s androgynous witches, whose beards cloud the distinction between male and female physical attributes, Shakespeare associates the conflicting presence of masculinity and femininity simultaneously with a parallel distortion of natural harmony and the eerie consequences of supernatural interference. Whereas the androgyny of Macbeth’s witches constitutes a combination of masculine and feminine elements, Lady Macbeth’s androgyny signifies a rejection of sex entirely. Nonetheless, said defeminisation of Lady Macbeth, as she pursues her unsexing, is, likewise, accompanied by an indication of the unnatural ruthlessness and civil chaos which she engenders as a result of her purported rejection of the course of nature. Just as Lady Macbeth rejects her femininity, Macbeth himself is emasculated. Formerly the embodiment of the warmongering and virulent masculine ideal, Macbeth’s personal and political unravelling is concomitant to his compromised manhood, indicating a distortion of masculinity that is mirrored in the disruption of mental and societal order. That the corruption of environment and administrative order is resolved by the reintroduction of masculine hegemony at the play’s climax demonstrates most explicitly the association of order with masculinity and femininity that is distinct and orthodox. Equally, Shakespeare’s perversion of traditional notions of masculinity, femininity, through androgyny, is evocative of environmental and political chaos.

Liston asserts that “[p]robably none of Shakespeare’s plays is so explicit in demarcating man from woman as is Macbeth ” (232). Though it is certainly true that notions both of manhood and womanhood are scrutinised at length within the play, with “man” and its derivatives appearing more than 40 times in the play, and “woman” approximately a third as frequently (Liston 232), a conception of Macbeth as a text that seeks to separate and differentiate man and woman is unwarranted. Rather, Shakespeare’s demonstration of an aberrant interplay of the sexes, both in terms of anatomy and of temperament, generates a dislocating perversion of conventional notions of masculinity and femininity. The occult androgyny of Macbeth ’s witches, the brutal defeminisation of Lady Macbeth, and the ineffectual emasculation of Macbeth, contrasted with the virulent manhood of Macduff, exemplify, through the subversion, and, at times, explicit rejection, of orthodox gender roles, a deformation of the natural order. That natural order that is restored at the end of the play, wherein masculine dominion defeats the disquieting corruption of what “should be” (1.3.45), constitutes a condemnation of the uncanny distortion of conventional models of man and woman.

Shakespeare’s association of the disruption of masculinity and femininity with the perversion of societal order is perhaps most evident surrounding the androgynous witches, whose muddying of gender boundaries is translated into a debasement of societal harmony. The witches’ introduction is one that immediately conveys an aura of unnatural distortion: the witches’ promise of “a general season of inversion” (Ramsey 287) with “[f]air is foul, and foul is fair” (1.3.45) is mirrored by Macbeth’s observation, just before encountering them, of “[s]o foul and fair a day I have not seen” (1.3.38). This baffling disfigurement of regularity, wherein the repellent and the pleasant are equated, is developed by Banquo’s confusion by their sexually ambiguous anatomy: with “[y]ou should be women,/ And yet your beards forbid me to interpret/ That you are so.” (1.3.45–47). Here, Shakespeare’s employment of the modal verb “should” indicates an disturbance of what ought to be, and develops this through the disquieting incongruence of the “fair” beauty associated with “women” with the contemporaneous “foul” quality of their abnormal beards, which La Belle labels “the most obvious outward sign of their defeminisation” (384). Just as the androgyny of the witches’ appearances “forbid” Banquo “to interpret” (1.3.46) their gender, the parallel ambiguity of their prophecies, such as “[l]esser than Macbeth, and greater” (1.3.65), which continues the dislocating technique of simultaneous discordance, refuses to permit interpretation. Instead, Shakespeare demonstrates a continuation of the association of their muddying of gender binaries with the obfuscation of their divinations through the unnatural combination of dissonant elements. The disharmony associated with witchcraft, demonstrated by the aberrant forcing together of partitioned human and animal organs, such as “[l]iver of blaspheming Jew” (4.1.26) with “[n]ose of Turk” (4.1.29) into one grotesque corporeal form, is translated into perturbances in the natural world, such as a “falcon towering in her pride of place” being “by a mousing owl hawked at and killed” (2.4.12-13), exemplifying the inversion of order that is caused by the murder of a superior by an inferior, an act that is mirrored by Macbeth, and thereby demonstrating that the witches’ discordant combination of femininity and masculinity in their physical appearance is concomitant to parallel disruptions of harmony in their environment and government. Indeed, that the witches “vanish” (4.1.143) before order is restored upon Macduff’s definitive victory compounds the impossibility a harmonious coexistence of these disruptive entities and political stability.

Whereas Macbeth ‘s witches combine incongruous facets of masculinity and femininity to achieve corporal androgyny, the play’s distortion of conventional notions of gender manifests itself, in Lady Macbeth, through a process of defeminisation affects both her anatomy and her temperament, exemplifying how her unorthodox rejection of gender norms results in callous brutality. Lady Macbeth’s command that spirits should “unsex” her (1.5.41) contains, as La Belle asserts, “suggestions of biological unsexing” that “foreshadow Lady Macbeth's mental de-feminization” (382). This translation from the anatomical to the emotional first surfaces with Lady Macbeth’s request to be divested physically of “menstruation” (La Belle 382) and “reproductive function” (Levin 40) with her urging that spirits cease her “compunctious visitings of nature” (1.5.45). This signifies a yearning, through the disruption of natural physical processes of female fertility to pervert the allegedly natural mental processes of femininity, namely sympathy and sorrow, in order to block of “th’access and passage to remorse” (1.5.44). Moreover, the image of the nourishing fluid of her “milk” (1.5.48) being replaced by bitter “gall” (1.5.48) is evocative of Lady Macbeth’s rejection of her feminine anatomy instigating a corruption of the innate compassion and sweetness associated with it; mirrored later with her admission that she would not hesitate, while breastfeeding her baby, to have “plucked the nipple from his boneless gums,/ And dashed the brains out” (1.7.57-58). Here, Shakespeare demonstrates the explicit distortion of any natural maternal instinct in Lady Macbeth through his juxtaposition of the “tender” (1.7.55) description of the act of breastfeeding and the vulnerability evoked by the baby’s “boneless gums” (1.7.57) with the immorality and viciousness of committing infanticide for the sake of political power. Nonetheless, equivalent to the discordance caused by the witches’ blurring of gender binaries is the chaos triggered by Lady Macbeth’s defeminisation: not only does the creation of a political vacuum through her instigation of the murder of Duncan “nurture... social and political chaos” (Chamberlain 79), but Lady Macbeth’s attempt to minimise her femininity in order to act with unfeeling ruthlessness culminates in her downfall. Her endeavour to block the “passage to remorse” (1.5.44) ultimately fails, as initially alluded to her reticence to carry out the murder she implores Macbeth to effectuate, claiming “[h]ad he not resembled/ My father as he slept, I had done’t” (2.2.12-13)), and compounded by her guilt-induced delusions of a “damned spot” (5.1.35) of blood following the deed, in addition to her subsequent suicide. Lady Macbeth’s attempts to defeminise herself thus constitute a “great perturbation in nature” (5.1.9), that prompts a calamitous and unstable attempt to embrace the conventionally masculine authority much more fruitfully exercised by Macduff.

Just as Lady Macbeth’s efforts to defeminise herself in pursuit of masculine influence prove her downfall, the emasculation of Macbeth himself corroborates the ill-fated consequences of an allegedly aberrant interplay between masculinity and femininity. Macbeth, upon the play’s opening, appears to conform to an unconfused ideal of exaggerated manhood: the audience is informed of his military prowess by the sergeant praising his bloody ruthlessness, encouraging classifications of the warrior as “brave Macbeth (well he deserves that name)” (1.2.16), and “valiant cousin, worthy gentleman” (1.2.24), thereby demonstrating Liston’s conclusion that Macbeth conforms to a definition of a man as “a being who is valiant, courageous, and essentially a person committed to direct, unreflective physical action” (233). Nevertheless, the distortion of this masculine ideal is quickly evidenced with Lady Macbeth’s ascribing of feminine corporeal characteristics, namely the implication of being suffused with milk, to him, with her confession “[y]et I do fear thy nature,/ It is too full o’ th’milk of human kindness” (1.5.16-17); an emasculation of Macbeth that is developed by Lady Macbeth’s questioning of, “[a]re you/ a man?” (3.4.54-55), and her assertion that he is “[q]uite unmanned in folly” (3.4.71). Furthermore, just as Lady Macbeth’s attempted acquisition of sterile cruelty, inharmonious with her natural feminine sympathy, is the origin of her delusion, it is Macbeth’s excess of unmasculine remorse that triggers his delusions, both of “a dagger” (2.1.33), and of Banquo’s ghost seated at the table, thereby demonstrating that the couple’s betrayal of what is societally expected of their genders, whether feminine compassionate guilt or masculine unremorseful action, leads to chaos in the form of the perversion of their perceptions of reality. Indeed, Macbeth’s attempt to reassert his masculinity upon the delusion’s end, with “I am a man again” (3.4.106), indicates that his temporary insanity has compromised his masculinity in a manner reminiscent of notional female hysteria. Macbeth’s inability to embody the masculine ideal of virulent warrior, unburdened by hesitation, empathy, or regret, proves to be his undoing: it is the wholly masculine Macduff, empowered by his marked lack of any affinity with womankind through being “none of woman born” (4.1.79) and “from his mother’s womb/ Untimely ripped” (5.8.15-16), hereby profiting from the violent connotations of “ripped”, who succeeds in defeating Macbeth, signalling that “Macbeth is forced to accept a concept of manliness that consists wholly in rampant self-seeking aggression” (Ramsey 289). Macduff’s victory, that of a warrior defeating a tyrant through said “self-seeking aggression”, signals the restoration, by a wholly masculine entity, of a social harmony and natural order once threatened by Macbeth, his wife, and the witches, through their dislocating and purportedly unnatural perversion of masculinity and femininity.

Liston affirms that “the norm against which Macbeth works is a traditional definition of man as valorous, firm, commanding... and a traditional definition of woman as soft, maternal, nourishing, a help meet to her husband” (238). Shakespeare’s demonstration of the distortion, corruption, and perversion of these traditional definitions of man and woman, through the androgynous witches, the defeminised Lady Macbeth, and the emasculated Macbeth results in an apparent interruption of the natural order, wherein “[n]ature seems dead” (2.1.50). The multifaceted, transitory, unfixed, and ambiguous presentations of gender in Macbeth occur against a background of political and environmental chaos; chaos that is demonstrated to be unsupportable, and reversed by the play’s end, wherein fixed masculine dominion is restored.

Works Cited

Chamberlain, Stephanie. “Fantasizing Infanticide: Lady Macbeth and the Murdering Mother in Early

Modern England”, College Literature , Vol. 32, No. 3, 2005, pp. 72 – 91. La Belle, Jenijoy. ““A Strange Infirmity”: Lady Macbeth’s Amenorrhea”, Shakespeare Quarterly , Vol. 31,

No. 3, 1980, pp. 381 – 386. Levin, Joanna. “Lady MacBeth and the Daemonologie of Hysteria”, ELH , Vol. 69, No. 1, 2002, pp. 21 –

55. Liston, William T. ““Male and Female Created He Them”: Sex and Gender in Macbeth ”, College

Literature , Vol. 16, No. 3, 1989, pp. 232 – 239. Ramsey, Jarold. “The Perversion of Manliness in Macbeth”, Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 , Vol.

13, No. 2, 1973, pp. 285 – 300. Shakespeare, William. Macbeth , edited by Sandra Clark and Pamela Mason, London, Bloomsbury, 2015.

Further Reading

Asp, Carolyn. ““Be Bloody, Bold and Resolute”: Tragic Action and Sexual Stereotyping in Macbeth ”,

Studies in Philology , Vol. 78, No. 2, 1981, pp. 153-169. Greatley-Hirsch. “’What are these faces?’ Interpreting Bearded Women in Macbeth ”, Renaissance

Drama and Poetry in Context: Essays for Christopher Wortham , edited by Andrew Lynch and Anne

M. Scott, Cambridge Scholars Press, 2008, pp. 91-114. Howell, Maria L. Manhood and Masculine Identity in William Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Macbeth,

University Press of America, 2008. McGuinness, Frank. “Madness and Magic: Shakespeare’s Macbeth ”, Irish University Review , Vol. 45, No.

1, 2015, pp. 69-80. Willis, Deborah. Malevolent Nurture: Witch-Hunting and Maternal Power in Early Modern England ,

Cornell University Press, 2018.

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Macbeth and Gender

Read this extract from act 1 scene 7 of the play. in this scene, macbeth has just said that he doesn’t want to kill duncan and lady macbeth begins to talk him around., lady macbeth, was the hope drunk, wherein you dressed yourself hath it slept since, and wakes it now, to look so green and pale, at what it did so freely from this time, such i account thy love. art thou afeard, to be the same in thine own act and valour, as thou art in desire wouldst thou have that, which thou esteem'st the ornament of life,, and live a coward in thine own esteem,, letting 'i dare not' wait upon 'i would,', like the poor cat i' the adage, prithee, peace:, i dare do all that may become a man;, who dares do more is none., what beast was't, then,, that made you break this enterprise to me, 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., starting with this extract, how does shakespeare present gender in macbeth, in your answer you should:, · look at gender in the extract above and, · look at gender in the play as a whole, p1: introduction about gender and outline brief argument, p2: focus on lady macbeth and her deceptive ways, p3: focus on macbeth and his role as victim, p4: conclusion of argument, and modern vs jacobean context, throughout the play shakespeare toys with the stereotypical roles of each gender in jacobean england and most noticeably seems to reverse these roles at several key points in the play. while the traditional roles are seemingly apparent at the beginning, with macbeth being a valiant soldier and lady macbeth being a ‘lady’, the gender roles of both become increasingly ambiguous and indistinct as the plot develops. this fact is somewhat subtly highlighted in the witches’ iconic opening line “fair is foul and foul is fair” which establishes a setting where nothing is as it seems, including the typical roles of each gender. the decisions made by macbeth, which were undoubtedly under the powerful influence of women, and the damaging consequences to these actions are central to this tale of a tragic, ‘brave’ hero and the message shakespeare was trying to get across. he seems to argue that women should not be given too much power as that power can have a detrimental impact on a man’s life, especially a well-respected soldier like macbeth was., in this extract, lady macbeth is berating macbeth, insulting his masculinity as she labels him a “coward” and asks if he is “afeard” of killing the king. this is like a personal attack on macbeth, who at the beginning of the play is established as a ‘brave’ soldier whose sword ‘smoked with bloody execution’, yet lady macbeth is accusing him of being a weakling and a ‘coward’ and therefore questioning his entire ego. her aggressive tone, which is evident by her use of multiple rhetorical questions, makes it clear she is the more powerful person in this relationship. this verbal attack incidentally comes soon after she says, “such i account thy love” which is her way of saying that macbeth doesn’t “love” her if he doesn’t kill the king. this use of emotional blackmail is especially effective as it is clear that macbeth is very much in love with his wife, shown in act 1 scene 5 when he addresses her as “my dearest.” and while the pronoun ‘dearest’ shows that lady macbeth was precious to macbeth, it also has the connotations of expensive, which lady macbeth certainly was to macbeth in the play, costing him his sanity and ultimately his life it is clear in the play that lady macbeth exerts her power through lies and manipulation. by asking macbeth, “ what beast was't, then, that made you break this enterprise to me” she is clearly gaslighting him in a bid to convince him to kill duncan, and we know this because in act 1 scene 5, she asked when duncan would be leaving the castle, macbeth said “in the morning, as he purposes” and then she said “never shall the sun that morrow see.” so she was the one who suggested the murder, yet her deceptive ways manage to convince macbeth that he had suggested it. lady macbeth even encourages macbeth to lie and manipulate when she says “look like th’ innocent flower but be the serpent under it.” but it would seem as though to macbeth, his wife is actually the serpent, tempting him to do the evil deed, just like in the bible with adam. in the play however, macbeth seems oblivious to his wife’s true feelings about him, and his subservience to her is what leads to his downfall. lady macbeth has an influence on macbeth that no one else in the play, apart from the witches, had on him. the way she ridicules him and humiliates him to his face is almost unexplainable to the jacobean audience, given the status of macbeth in society at the time. she even directly questions his manliness when she says, “when you durst do it, then you were a man” even though macbeth had more than proven himself as a worthy man, when he killed the norwegian king by “unseaming him from the nave to th’ chaps,” his wife still questions his willingness to kill, which no one else would have dared done ., macbeth responds to this by saying, “i dare do all that may become a man; who dares do more is none” this is his way of saying that he has already done what he needs to do to become a man: he has served loyally to the king and killed many in his name. his reference to those doing more as being ‘none’ is him sticking to his masculinity and implying that a true man is loyal to the king. earlier in this scene, he says that he has bought “golden opinions from people.” the adjective ‘golden’ clearly shows that macbeth values those opinions and he is effectively treasured by those in the society. he is as high as he can be in the great chain of being and he has come to accept that, but his wife’s ambition forces him to do the terrible deed, something he clearly didn’t want to do. he repeatedly references that killing duncan is “against nature” which is quite telling, as while nature refers to the natural order in which he shouldn’t have tampered with, it also symbolises his own nature, which lady macbeth describes ‘as being too full of the milk o’ human kindness. the use of the word ‘milk’ has strong connotations to femininity and it essentially portrays macbeth as being too soft, completely disregarding his ruthlessness in the battlefield at the start. his decision to go against his nature (and his masculinity) is what leads him to killing the king. the witches also have a massive impact on macbeth throughout the play, and they were arguably controlling him. after seeing the witches, macbeth says that the thought of murder “shakes so my single state of man that function is smothered.” this means that his masculinity is so shocked by the idea of betraying his king that he doesn’t think he can act on it. so here we know that macbeth is trying to stick to his manly nature, yet the influence of these powerful women effectively forces him to do something against his will. in fact, it could be argued macbeth was under the influence of the witches from the very beginning, as his first line in the play is ‘so fair and foul a day i have not seen’ which is paraphrasing what the witches said at the beginning of the play. also, after he kills duncan, macbeth anxiously tells his wife, ‘me thought i heard a voice cry “sleep no more macbeth hath murdered sleep.”’ the use of the third person, with macbeth referencing himself as ‘macbeth’ not ’i’ – and the inclusion of the inverted commas that indicate speech – imply that it was someone else who said that to him. surely this is the witches, casting their spells on the wind, and doing to macbeth exactly what they did to the sailor they referenced in act 1 scene 3. the fact that macbeth spends the rest of the play suffering the fact that “sleep shall neither night nor day hang upon his penthouse lid” is another incidence of women (in this case the witches) dominating and controlling macbeth’s actions., shakespeare definitely raised serious questions in this play about the devastating effects of giving women too much power. king james was definitely afraid of this, as at the time society was very much misogynistic under his reign. while the modern audience would probably view lady macbeth as a woman whose power should be admired, the jacobean audience would certainly be worried by the thought of giving women too much power, therefore shakespeare went at lengths to show that this power resulted in the downfall of even the strongest men. the whole play represents the catastrophic consequences of doing the unnatural, whether that is going against the natural order, listening to the supernatural or going against the normal gender roles. all of these lead to this tale of a tragic hero, and shakespeare’s audience would definitely have been reassured by this..

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To the Editor:

Re “ Grappling With Regret as a New Parent ,” by Miguel Macias (Opinion guest essay, “How to Live With Regret” series, Aug. 11):

Over the years, the prospect of having children has been a notion fraught with anxiety and fear for me, and a subject discussed at length with my ever-patient and understanding husband.

After leaving my nursing career of 10 years, one that compounded past trauma and enabled poor coping skills, I am finally comfortable with the thought of having kids. While I take the responsibility of childbearing seriously, I no longer feel consumed with anticipatory anxiety and regret. I applaud the author’s transparency and honesty.

Societally, regret appears to be a shameful feeling, a taboo not to be discussed openly for fear of projecting ingratitude. Mr. Macias’s openness proves that regret and fulfillment, although incongruous, can coexist in the human condition.

Jackie O’Halloran-Carrillo Boston

I regret reading Miguel Macias’s essay about his own regret of being a father to an 18-month-old. As a 44-year-old father of three young kids, I have no patience for his self-pity about his loss of personal time and freedom that every parent in the history of civilization has experienced.

His assertion about parents that “we are supposed to love it, to think it is the most wonderful thing we have ever experienced” is simply untrue. While joyous, being a parent is also harrowing because kids are challenging. Each day is emotionally draining, and our time to recover at night is often interrupted.

But our job as parents is to raise happy, kind adults — not enjoy every single moment of the relationship. Rather than moan about your own lost dreams, open up “Goodnight Moon” and make your daughter’s that much sweeter.

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