Stereotypes In Macbeth

Imagine a man is on a night out with his friend and he dared into jumping off a building, “you don’t have the balls to do that” before he knows it, he takes the plunge. How many people get persuaded into doing rash actions just because of an impractical gender stereotype? Shakespeare uses a plethora of different thematic elements throughout his different works to push forward the plot and one of them is the trope of gender stereotypes. In the play Macbeth by William Shakespeare, gender stereotypes, in specific, toxic masculinity, are a tool for persuasion. This is shown through Lady Macbeth's influence on Macbeth to kill the king, Macbeth's conversation with the murderers to kill Banquo, and Malcolm's conversation with Macduff to kill Macbeth.

As we begin the 7th act of scene 1 we see Macbeth reasoning himself out of killing the king using smart reasoning, this is quickly destroyed however after Lady Macbeth questions his manhood. “When you durst do it, then you were a man; / And to be more than what you were, you would / Be so much more the man.”(Shakespeare 1.7.48-51). Lady Macbeth is using toxic masculinity here by questioning if Macbeth is truly a man if he were to go back on his word of killing the king. She knows how much Macbeth cares about his masculinity and targets it in order to get what she wants. After hearing this Macbeth thinks some more about the act of murder eventually stating his final decision. “I am settled, and bend up / Each corporal agent to this terrible feat.”(Shakespeare 1.7.80-81). From this statement from Macbeth we can see how drastically his opinion switched from being against the act of killing the king to saying that he would do anything to complete the crime. This shows that Lady Macbeth's questioning of his Masculinity was all that he needed in order to switch over as no other reasoning is given to him prior to this to switch his mind other than this criticism. Lady Macbeth is able to use Macbeth’s insecurity of his manhood in order to take advantage of him and persuade him to kill king Duncan as shown through the evidence

During the first scene of Act 3, we see the conversation between the two murderers and Macbeth over the killing of Banquo in which Macbeth gives them a speech. “Now if you have a station in the file, / Not’ th’ worst rank of manhood, say ‘t, / And I will put that business in your bosoms,”(Shakespeare 3.1.102-104). Here Macbeth tells the murderers that if they want to be highly valued males, they must commit this act of murder. This is an essential act of using toxic masculinity in order to convince them to commit this crime by telling them that they will be the lowest of the low as a man if they do not commit this crime for him. After hearing this from Macbeth the murderer's mindset seems to be changed from thinking that it is manly to not kill Banquo to more on the side of Macbeth's belief. “So weary with disasters, tugged with fortune, / That I would set my life on any chance, / To mend it or be rid on‘t.”(Shakespeare 3.1.111-113). Through the murderer's expression of hopelessness, we see a complete switch in the opinion of the murderers. They go from thinking that it is manly not to kill Banquo, to giving in and saying that maybe this murder of Banquo would make their lives better. And all of this is because he told them that this act of crime would make them men at the top of the hierarchy, a simple but effective lie