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Gender Roles In Macbeth

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How are gender roles shown in today’s society? How have they changed over time? In the play Macbeth by William Shakespeare, the author shows how gender roles can be adopted by the opposite gender. The author also shows how characters can manipulate their situation by adopting roles they might not normally portray. Shakespeare uses the character Lady Macbeth to illustrate how goals can be obtained by adopting non-traditional gender roles. In the play Macbeth, the author shows how gender roles can be demonstrated by the opposite gender through Lady Macbeth. In the beginning of the play when Macbeth begins to have doubts about killing King Duncan, Lady Macbeth reminds him of his statement that he would murder King Duncan to become king himself. …show more content…

“Was the hope drunk wherein you dress'd 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 valor 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' th' adage?” (1.7). Lady Macbeth is calling him virgin girl by saying that he is “green and pale”. This is very insulting for him because he has killed many times before in battle; however, he does deserve it in Lady Macbeth’s eyes because he is supposedly too cowardly to kill for power in his own home. She does the same thing later on in the play when Macbeth is talking about killing Banquo. “O, proper stuff! This is the very painting of your fear. This is the air-drawn dagger which you said led you to Duncan. O, these flaws and starts, impostors to true fear, would well become a woman's story at a winter's fire, authorized by her grandam. Shame itself! Why do you make such faces? When all's done, you look but on a stool” (52, 3.4). In this case instead of Lady Macbeth calling Macbeth a virgin girl she calls him an old man. It continues to show how she manipulates him to murder so he can become king or continue to be

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For instance, she uses words related to cowardice to describe him such as "pale" (1.7.41), "afeard" (1.7.43) , "coward" (1.7.47) , "poor cat" (1.7.49) before using the parallelism " you were a man [...] you would be so much more the man" (1.7.56-58). The past tense indicates that Macbeth is no longer a man whereas the modal verb "would" teases a better status in the future, provided that he murders the King. As a result of this provocation, Macbeth makes his mind to commit the crime declaring "I am settled" (1.7.91). In essence, Shakespeare uses this dialogue of Lady Macbeth to show the danger of women who can easily play on men's Achilles heel in order to make them commit evil deeds. Following this logic, if women were allowed to have power, they would throw world peace into hell.

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