Gender Roles In Macbeth By William Shakespeare

Women throughout Macbeth continously set the theme for the circumstances that occur in the play.

From the opening scene of the Witches, to the eventual downfall of Lady Macbeth, the entirety of the play is foreshadowed by the Women and their actions. Throughout history, men and women have been stereotyped; men as the tough, hard-working male, and women as the kind, caring home-makers.

Shakespeare had set the stage for a new type of content nobody had seen before. These gender roles had been set in stone for men and women before the play of Macbeth even came along. The differences in the marriage of Lady Macbeth and Macbeth and other marriages in the play are very evident in the roles they both had. Lady Macbeth took on the role of the “stereotypical”

Most marriages in the play were of tradition and convience (as seen in the marriage of the Macduffs). However the Macbeth marriage is mostly focused on the rise to power and how they will get there. This is proven early on in the play when we see the gender roles take a complete one-eighty spin. Lady Macbeth is our most solid proof of this. In Act I:

Scene 5, Lady Macbeth is begging to be “less like a woman, more like a man” when she expresses, “Come, you spririts That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, and fill me from the crown to the toe top-full Of direst cruelty.” As proven, Lady Macbeth does not want to be kind and warm-hearted, but rather cold, and ruthless. This evidence can be gathered from CliffsNotes, where it is stated that, “As Lady Macbeth propels her husband toward murdering Duncan, she indicates that she must take on masculine characteristics.” Lady Macbeth feels the urgency to take on these masculine characteristics due to the actions and attributes of her husband, Macbeth.

Macbeth is very reserved in his actions and words. As Lady Macbeth mentions an abundance of times, his hesitancy and limp-wristed approach to life is what will ultimately lead him to

The play opens with Macbeth being seen as a war hero; very tough, brave, and valiant.

However as the story goes on, it is proven that Lady Macbeth truly “wears the pants” in the marriage. Her ruthlessness and ambition is ultimately what gets her killed near the end of the play. Leading up to the point of her death, she is seen as being very bold and daring in her decisions, one of which being her to become the mastermind behind Duncan’s death. Her connoving ways are mannifested in the treatment directed torwards her husband and how she manipulated him through her words. Demonstrated in Act III when Lady Macbeth yells at

Macbeth, “Imposters to true fear, would well become a woman’s story at a winter’s fire,

Authorized by her grandam, shame itself!” There are multiple reasons why Lady Macbeth proclaims these statements to her husband. According to Yale National Initiative, “Lady

Macbeth is not aligned with the stereotypes in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, but nonetheless she must contend with them from both insde and outside herself.” Lady Macbeth, while could be seen as an antagonist, is the main reason for Macbeth coming into power. From the very beginning of the play when she was begging the spirits to make her more like a man, to her planting the seed