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The Power Of Ambition In Macbeth

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Ambition:
Shakespeare portrays the undeniable power of ambition throughout “Macbeth”. Ambition is a corrupting and unrelenting force in which Lady Macbeth and Macbeth fall victim to. Both Lady Macbeth and Macbeth show a desire for power. However, Lady Macbeth shows more ambition in getting immediate power. Lady Macbeth takes on a masculine persona in order to commence her plans. Rather than taking a back seat and following her husband’s instructions like the other women of this time period, Lady Macbeth takes the initiative and formulates a plan to kill King Duncan as soon as she learns of the prophecy. She emotionlessly explains to her husband, “Only look up clear./ To alter favor ever is to fear./ Leave all the rest to me” (1.5.70-72). …show more content…

Lady Macbeth is able to distinguish herself as a dominant force in the spousal relationship. In doing this, Lady Macbeth is taking on a man’s role of being portrayed as dominant and assertive. This is exemplified before King Duncan’s visit to the Macbeth’s home. Lady Macbeth declares, “Must be provided for; and you shall put/ This night’s great business into my dispatch,/ Which shall to all our nights and days to come/ Give solely sovereign sway and masterdom.” (1.5 66-69). Lady Macbeth is able to seize control of the situation and demand that Macbeth be put together when King Duncan visits their home. Macbeth is taking on a more feminine role by being submissive to his spouse’s orders. Lady Macbeth is also able to accomplish a regaining of control after Macbeth kills Duncan. Women are portrayed as being sensitive, however during this scene, Macbeth is sensitive rather than Lady Macbeth. Macbeth does not plant the murder weapon with the king’s grooms in order to put blame on these men. Lady Macbeth sees this and takes matters into her own hands when Macbeth refuses to return to the room in which Duncan’s body lays. Lady Macbeth bellows, “Infirm of purpose!/ Give me the daggers. The sleeping and the dead/ Are but as pictures; 'tis the eye of childhood/ That fears a painted devil” (2.2. 55-58). Lady Macbeth’s ability to show dominance and control and Macbeth’s weakness portrays a reversal in traditional gender …show more content…

After the murder of Duncan, Macbeth is portrayed as emotionally unstable. Macbeth presents himself as weak and guilt ridden. Macbeth exclaims, “I’ll go no more./ I am afraid to think what I have done;/ Look on ’t again /I dare not.” (2.2.52-55). Macbeth shows that he is remorseful and cannot handle the truth in regards to his actions. Lady Macbeth, however, is initially unfazed by the idea of murder and retains this mindset immediately after Duncan is murdered. Lady Macbeth exclaims, “Infirm of purpose!/ Give me the daggers. The sleeping and the dead/ Are but as pictures; 'tis the eye of childhood/ That fears a painted devil” (2.2. 55-58). Lady Macbeth shows the masculine qualities of being strong minded and unfazed by

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First of all, Macbeth is presented as a strong and noble soldier at the beginning of the play. As a warrior, he has very traditional masculine traits, such as bravery and strength. However, his masculinity is often questioned by his own wife, Lady Macbeth. When the couple is planning Duncan’s murder and Macbeth hesitates, Lady Macbeth is always ready to insult his manhood. She calls him a “coward” and tells him

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He decides to write to his wife, Lady Macbeth, who holds this dark ambition inside of her. She tells Macbeth that he is a coward and that he must do whatever it takes to become king of Scotland. This dark ambition is first shown in act one scene four when Macbeth says, “This is a step on which I must fall down... which the eye fears, when it is done, to see.” Lady Macbeth plays an enormous part in Macbeth’s mental corruption. After murdering Duncan,

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Lady Macbeth views masculinity as powerful, which is one of the reasons she rejects her femininity. She calls upon the spirits to take away her femininity which she

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Macbeth’s pride allowed his wife to use his ambition as leverage calling him a ‘coward’, ‘lesser than a man’. Macbeth was unable to withstand the belittlement and his masculinity mocked. Previously, Macbeths desire to obtain the

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Men were supposed to act as strong fighters, while women were locked in the domestic sphere. These gender roles are prominent in the character developments of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. At first, Macbeth is a strong, heroic solider that shows unbounded courage in battle and loyalty to his king. As the play progresses, he becomes cold, ruthless, and miserable. Lady Macbeth takes on a “manly” role, which is surprising because of how patriarchal the society is.

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Macbeth allows himself to be overtaken by her command over him, and ends up killing Duncan. He knows this is wrong, displayed by his internal pro and con list. This is a far cry from the expected roles of men and women during this time period, where the wife is expected to submit to the husband’s will and ambition, while unexpectedly in the first act she is the one bending him to her much stronger ambitions. For example, in “‘Be Bloody, Bold, and Resolute’: Tragic Action and Sexual Stereotyping in Macbeth”, author Carolyn Asp writes, “Lady Macbeth consciously attempts to reject her feminine sensibility and adopt a male mentality because she perceives that her society equates feminine qualities with weakness,” (Asp, 153).

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William Shakespeare portrayed the character Lady Macbeth to be extremely ruthless, malicious and manipulative. Thus, being the reason she could easily convince Macbeth to do her will, yet still put on such a convincing performance in front of those who knew nothing of her and her husband’s actions. Lady Macbeth shows her complexity constantly throughout the story when she shares her view-point on masculinity by demasculinizing her own husband, when she strategically plans the murder of the King Duncan, and finally when she finally goes crazy because of the guilt she possesses for not only her own actions but also turning her own husband into a

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[with] direst cruelty”, grants her the ability to act in a way that is considered both ruthless and respected among men, suggesting the difference between the actions of women and men as well as the difference in seriousness taken as a result of action from either gender(1.5.48-50). Without the presence of a stigma relating to gender throughout the play, Lady Macbeth has no reason to declare her disconnect with her feminine identity. However, the idea that gender makes one inferior

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In the play Macbeth, William Shakespeare uses the subversion of gender roles to reinforce Elizabethan notions of female and male behavior through the characters of Lady Macbeth, the three witches, and Macbeth. The ideal woman in Shakespearean times was submissive and docile. She is expected to be a mother and hostess, and little else. However, Lady Macbeth is the exact opposite of this notion. She constantly challenges and manipulates her husband to feed her ever-growing ambition.

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In Macbeth, Shakespeare displays how women manipulate men. Lady Macbeth’s ‘evil’ is an ideologically inscribed notion that is often linked to our literary tradition to strong female characters who seek power, who reject filial loyalty as prior to self-loyalty and who pursue desire in all its forms. (Thomas 82). In the story, after Duncan’s killing, Macbeth ended up feeling kind of bad.

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Lady Macbeth tried and attempted to fasten onto Macbeth’s inner feelings and attacked his level of masculinity. He is a easy person to manipulate once the future queen questioned his manliness. Macbeth tells Lady Macbeth that he cannot go through with killing King Duncan, she proceeds to tell him that he is a coward. To further convince her husband to kill Duncan is the utmost importance she said that she “would, while (her unborn child) was smiling in my face, have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums and dashed his brains out.” (Act 1, Scene 7, Lines

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but is then cast aside by her husband at the end. Shakespeare thus presents masculinity in both a positive and negative light. In Act 1, Shakespeare presents Macbeth with admired masculine qualities countered with Lady Macbeth criticising his idiosyncrasies. Lady Macbeth’s definition of a man is disparate to others’.

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Well Lady Macbeth, who is dead set on having absolute power, disagrees with that. She convinces Macbeth to kill, to cover up the murders, and tries to convince him that these murders will get them to the top. Lady Macbeth calls upon the witches and states, “unsex me here, and fill me from the crown to the toe top-full of direst cruelty” (Macbeth Act 1 Scene 5 lines 31 and 31). This shows that while in the pursuit of power, Lady Macbeth wanted it so much that she asked the witches to “unsex” her and make her more like man. But along with that you see the theme of gender roles are uncertain which ties into Lady Macbeth leading Macbeth in this pursuit of power, also giving him the ambition that she wants him to

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“Come, you spirits, That tend on mortal thoughts,/unsex me here, And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full/ Of dire cruelty” (1.5.41-44). Lady Macbeth is the personification of male dominance, ruthlessness and violence. She hopes that she could take control of all action. She yearns to be a man and her implication is that she is more masculine than Macbeth. Her drive and violent nature is more akin to men and their masculinity.

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However, Lady Macbeth’s power depends on her husband’s, due to her disempowerment in the realm of the political. She believes her husband’s political power relies on him conforming to a more masculine identity. In order to convince Macbeth to undertake this transformation, like she did, Lady Macbeth must subvert the stereotypical role of a submissive wife and become domineering. This leads to her exercising power in the only form she can, that is, attacking Macbeth’s masculinity as she states: “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.”

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