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Examples Of Sexism In Macbeth

1510 Words7 Pages

William Shakespeare is considered by many to be the most famous English poet and playwright. During Shakespeare’s time, there was a patriarchal society with a strong feeling that women were inferior to men. Shakespeare incorporated this societal misogynistic view of sexist manifestation in many of his works.
In many of Shakespeare’s works, we see examples of sexism and stereotypical gender roles. A great example of this would be seen in one of Shakespeare’s most famous works, Macbeth. Throughout Macbeth, upon looking deeper, it is easy to notice a pattern: The successful and prosperous characters are all male, and the female characters are associated with destruction, with the most common destruction being the destruction of the family. This idea was described …show more content…

Furthermore, when discussing the representation of masculinity in Macbeth, we see similar instances of females having negative connotations for simply being a woman. Feminine qualities are associated with weakness in this time period and we see the characters of Macbeth tapping into this stereotype. For example, Lady Macbeth rejects her feminine qualities and tries to adopt more masculine qualities. She tries to convince Macbeth to adopt his cultures vision of manhood and kill Duncan (Rosenblum). Rosenblum theorizes that masculinity is defined through violence in Macbeth. Lady Macbeth has made it very clear that violence does not intimidate her because of her masculine mindset. On the contrary, Macbeth originally had no intention to kill and he was scared of the idea of murder. However, after adopting Lady Macbeth's mindset we see him develop this culture’s idea of masculinity. Once Macbeth equates manhood with violence, he subordinates his wife. He does not tell her about his plan to kill Banquo and leaves her in the dark. Likewise, after Act 3, Scene 4, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth do not appear onstage

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