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Examples Of Manipulation And Dominance In Macbeth

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In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, he tells a tale that is consumed with greed for power and willingness to assert dominance. Both the male and female characters throughout his play go through periods of acting like the opposite sex and using that to manipulate other characters or show dominance. The best example of this use of manipulation and dominance is through Shakespeare’s character, Lady Macbeth. Through reading this play, one may experience her struggle of wanting to be a man in the beginning, but then falling back into the stereotype of a weak and psychotic woman. Lady Macbeth experiences the two extremes by desperately wanting to be a man with dominance and power and also, being a woman who goes mad because of guilt and anxiety. For many …show more content…

Once he shares this information with his wife and the information that the first prophecy from the witches has come true, Lady Macbeth and Macbeth decide to make this one come quicker by killing the current king so that Macbeth can take his place. They come up with a plan and in the preparation for the killing Lady Macbeth senses the worriedness from her husband and becomes annoyed. She fiercely wants the power of being king not for her husband but for herself and is angry that since he is a man he is the only one out of them two who can claim once they kill the present king and yet he is second guessing going through with the killing and not claiming the power. When Macbeth starts questioning her and considers failures she snaps at him out of anger and says, “But screw your courage to the sticking-place,And we’ll not fail.”().Thus as Macbeth weakens and becomes increasingly scared to follow through with their plan Lady Macbeth becomes more vicious and starts to manipulate her husband. Macbeth express his fears in Act 3 when he …show more content…

So, good night. My mind she has mated, and amazed my sight. I think, but dare not speak. It is interesting to witness a character change so dramatically throughout a play. Lady Macbeth tries so hard to avoid being the type of women she falls to at the end. The sole reason for her tragic demise is due to the guilt she caused herself. Lady Macbeth is so focused on grabbing all the power that is in her reach that she pushes herself to kill. However, what she doesn’t realize when she decides to kill is how much of a strain it will put onto her. That one action drives her to awaken at night and relive her decisions: Out, damned spot! Out, I say!—One, two. Why, then, ’tis time to do ’t. Hell is murky!—Fie, my lord, fie! A soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account?—Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him. Lady Macbeth does not realize her emotional boundaries and that is why she goes through the two extremes of her

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Macbeth is just a broken puppet obeying her whims and commands. She controls him to use his position of status to gain herself more authority. From the very moment that Lady Macbeth hears of the prophecies she begins plotting a way in which to bring King Duncan to his demise. All of this without even a hesitation to ponder if this information is even accurate. She immediately makes the conscious decision to commit treason to her country while using her husband as her pawn at the mere thought of power.

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Her presence of mind and her cunningness make her realise from the beginning which are the traits of her husband that she is put against (I.5 15-16).

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Her determination to succeed is illustrated through her weaponisation of femininity against her husband, successfully presenting her ruthlessness. Her desire to be “unsex” demonstrates her desire to lose all soft, sweet, feminine qualities in order to gain power. To a Jacobean audience, these qualities were the things that made her weak and her want to get rid of this sex identification may indicate her desire to become something that isn’t a man or woman, potentially an unnatural power. This may ingrain her connotations of a witch in the audience, pointing at Lady Macbeth as a supernatural character. Shakespeare uses the character of Lady Macbeth to show the problematic nature of their patriarchal society, one where men were expected to be blood thirsty and violent while women were punished if they wanted the same things.

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