The Demise of Lady Macbeth in Macbeth
Uploaded by queenofpersia on Apr 08, 2004
The Demise of Lady Macbeth in Macbeth
Lady Macbeth is first portrayed as a strong character in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Since she is introduced while calling on evil spirits to make her cruel, any reader can easily believe that she is manly, even more so than many of the male characters in the play. However, how strong and manly is she? Lady Macbeth’s masculinity may be strong at first, but her feminine traits far outweigh her masculine ones. Lady Macbeth’s ungraceful demise in Macbeth is due to the conflict and complexity caused by the strain of taking upon herself both male and female gender roles.
When Lady Macbeth is first introduced, she calls out to spirits: “unsex me here,/ and fill me from the crown to the toe top-full/ Of direst cruelty. Make thick my blood” (1.5.48-50). Her villainous line, “unsex me here,” cries out masculinity. She begs to be neither man nor woman, but just a cruel being. Cruel however, is what she considers a man should be, proven by her lines to her husband: “When you durst do it, then you were a man” (1.7.56). She is referring to murdering Duncan as “it.” Although she desires to be a man, her same lines prove her femininity and her conflict. Coriat suggests her insanity is bought about because she believes she possesses bravery although she really does not (2). Her having to ask to be “unsexed” and filled with “direst cruelty” proves she is not truly manly. She just wishes to be so for the purpose of helping her husband to achieve his ambition. This line is the first sign of role strain; she is truly feminine, but her lust for her husband to sit upon the throne makes her behave otherwise. Later in lines 47-48 in Act One scene four, Lady Macbeth again shows this strain in sexual roles. Lady Macbeth invokes the spirits with the command, “Come to my woman’s breasts,/ And take my milk for gall” proving that she is aware of her sexuality by using the classic words associated with childbirth and maternity, breasts and milk (Jameson,192). Her lines, “Stop up th’ access and passage to remorse” (1.5.51), foreshadow her evil deeds coming back to haunt her even though she may feel no remorse now. Again, she must ask for the strength not to regret what she is about to do, and again this shows that...