Jacobean Women

In his 1606 tragedy titled Macbeth, Shakespeare presents Lady Macbeth as a greedily power-hungry woman who, as she spirals, heightens the feeling of necessity for gender roles in a Jacobean society, specifically the audience, through her unfeminine depiction of ambition and ruthlessness.

Lady Macbeth’s dangerous ambition for power is first portrayed when she reveals to the Jacobean audience she believes her husband to be too weak to kill the king. Shakespeare immediately re-enacts Lady Macbeth as a power-hungry woman after she reads the letter written by her husband, Macbeth. Intentionally, her first spoken words are “Glamis thou art, and cawdor; and shalt be what thou art promised.” Shakespeare purposefully reveals Lady Macbeth’s determination

Women were expected to be wives, mothers, seen but not heard. Women were definitely not meant to defy their husbands, gain power, and commit acts of violence and destruction. Lady Macbeth violates these stereotypical ideologies of women in marriages of the time and therefore violates the natural order, which she is ultimately punished for later in the play. Shakespeare uses the character of Lady Macbeth as a warning to the audience – a deterrent. The fact Lady Macbeth does not have her own name and depends on her husband for an identity emphasises the expectations of a woman and furthers Lady Macbeth’s unnatural desire for power. As she fears Macbeth will be “too full of the milk o’ human kindness”, Shakespeare successfully conveys the idea that Lady Macbeth is dangerously ambitious through the implication that Macbeth is the one in the marriage “too full of the milk.” The metaphor “milk” has feminine connotations of nurturing, motherhood and purity, especially as “milk” is the product of women in nature. The ironic implication of Lady Macbeth thinking Macbeth “is too full of the milk o’ human kindness” is dangerous towards these stereotypical

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. Through the weaponisation of losing her child to persuade Macbeth in the killing of the king, “I have given suck, and know how tender ‘tis to love the babe that milks me”, Shakespeare once again reinforces the unnatural image of a hopeful mother ruthlessly willing to use her child to gain power. The fact Lady Macbeth is willing to use her sex to her own advantage reinforces the idea that she is supernatural as she wished to be “unsex[ed]”. This would have certainly shocked a traditional Jacobean audience as people were expected to be