Gender In Macbeth

Throughout the play Macbeth, Shakespeare uses many metaphors and examples about gender and traditional gender roles to show us how the two main characters, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, change throughout the piece and become different people. At the beginning of the play, both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth have many characteristics that are usually associated with the opposite gender. Shakespeare creates these gender roles to show how the characters change many of their behaviors when they are confronted with stress and power.

He specifically picks these roles based on how he wants to portray these character’s views and how he wants them to fit to a common gender guideline for that era. He uses other ideas to help convey this theme of change in the

The only remaining lord in Scotland to challenge Macbeth is a man named MacDuff, who leaves Scotland to find Banquo’s son. The final murders happen in act 4 when Macbeth sends another murderer to kill MacDuff’s family while he is away. These murders show that Macbeth has lost almost all connection to his emotions because he not only shows no remorse for the killing of MacDuff’s family, but Macbeth also has no reason to do it since he is already king.

This part of the play is very strange because it is such a quick leap from Macbeth’s shaky, slightly emotional state, to his utter indifference to the murder of both women and children. The fact that there is absolutely no emotional reaction from him shows that he is now a true man, but that he may also be going slightly insane because even those who are real men would still feel some form of emotion for their

While Lady Macbeth’s character has finished her metamorphosis from cruel and rude to depressed and hurt, there is another change in the final scene with Macbeth. This occurs when MacDuff and Banquo’s son return to Scotland to challenge Macbeth. Macbeth is holding his final defense in his castle and there is a final spark of emotion within him, but it is not regret or sympathy as one would expect from a tragic hero. Instead it is fear and disdain because he realizes that life is pointless and he is scared to die even though he knows his death is inevitable. This shows that he has gone from a kind and trustworthy man, to one who is both extremely violent and has no regard for the value of life. The change of both Macbeth’s and Lady Macbeth’s values and gender traits throughout the play is very well portrayed using the gender guidelines that Shakespeare set, as seen through the many examples from both them and other characters above. However, character change isn’t the only element needed to make a play great. Therefore, there is no most important theme throughout the play Macbeth however the gender ones do the best job of portraying character