Lady Macbeth
Lady Macbeth is one of Shakespeare's most famous and frightening female characters. When we first see her, she is already plotting Duncan's murder, and she is stronger, more ruthless, and more ambitious than her husband. She seems fully aware of this and knows that she will have to push Macbeth into committing murder. At one point, she wishes that she were not a woman so that she could do it herself. This theme of the relationship between gender and power is the key to Lady Macbeth's character.
Her husband implies that she is a masculine soul inhabiting a female body, which seems to link masculinity to ambition and violence. Shakespeare, however, seems to use her, and the witches, to undercut Macbeth's idea that "undaunted mettle should compose / Nothing but males" (I.vii.7374). These crafty women use female methods of achieving power that is, manipulation to further their supposedly male ambitions. Women, the play implies, can be as ambitious and cruel as men,......
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Approximate Word Count: 370
Approximate Pages: 2 (260 words per double-spaced page) |