Loss Of Gender Roles In Macbeth

William Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth, takes place in 11th century Scotland, and has its own portrayal of that society. Although it may not be entirely accurate, the society that Shakespeare develops has distinctive gender roles and societal expectations for each gender. In this society lives Macbeth, a military nobleman trusted by the king who eventually becomes king himself, but through murder. His reign is tainted with inhumane acts such as murdering the family of his former friends, and hiring assassins to kill one of his friends. At the conclusion of the play, Macbeth is murdered by Duncan, another nobleman, and Scotland rejoices because Macbeth’s reign of terror has come to an end. Many have tried to find the cause of Macbeth’s loss of

Shakespeare clearly establishes gender roles and the importance of them in Macbeth. He shows the differences between the male gender role and the female gender role, and he also implies that there are certain activities that should only be done by one sex and it would be disastrous if the opposite sex to interfere. (Liston) Lady Macbeth purposefully goes against this law when she calls on spirits to “unsex” her and fill her “from the crown to the toe top-full of direst cruelty." (Shakespeare). This is proof that Lady Macbeth is having an internal struggle. Specifically, she is struggling between being a woman and wanting control. This is why she wanted to be ‘unsexed’, so she could rid herself of her femininity and become a man. She wants to rid herself of femininity because she believes her society equates femininity with weakness (Asp). Although Lady Macbeth wanted to rid herself completely of her femininity, she could not remove all of it. Throughout the play, there are many instances where Lady Macbeth’s

Many have placed the blame of Macbeth’s downfall on the influence of the supernatural, but this may not be true. The supernatural can be shown as a parallel to Lady Macbeth. The Weird Sisters are an example of this. The physical characteristics of them, such as their beards, point most directly to them. They have a mixture of masculine and feminine traits which parallel Lady Macbeth’s desire to destroy her femininity and become her idea of what a man is (Schiffer). The witches’ line “Fair is foul and foul is fair” (Shakespeare) also parallels Lady Macbeth. She is a woman who thinks like a man. Not only do the witches’ looks parallel Lady Macbeth’s internal conflict, but the witches themselves resemble something when not just looked at as fate or tools of the Devil. They represent a community that is not male-led (Ostovich). The witches reject the patriarchal society around them and exist together without a clear leader, although they do occasionally answer to Hecate. This also parallels Lady Macbeth, since both of them reject the idea of females being followers and become dominant, answering to very few people and making their own decisions. The similarity between Lady Macbeth and the Witches becomes more evident when Lady Macbeth echoes the witches, saying the exact prophesy that the witches told Macbeth to Macbeth. (DiMatteo). From all this proof, it can be a possibility that Shakespeare