The Unconventionality of Lady Macbeth

In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Lady Macbeth defies the common female stereotypes routinely found in literature through the power and influence she upholds. In older literature, women are commonly pushed aside as being minor characters. If mentioned at all, they’re usually there for the enhancement of the man. Lady Macbeth on the other hand, is one of the main characters in this play. She’s not submissive to a man; she’s not emotional and unstable; she’s not willing to be walked all over. Lady Macbeth answers to no one but herself and turns the tables to give a woman a new role of power that was extremely uncommon in drama at that time.
            Lady Macbeth formulates a plan with her husband to murder King Duncan. She is the mastermind behind the plan and she is the one who ensures it’s carried out. When her husband expresses doubts surrounding this plan she responds with, “Would thou have that which thou esteem’st the ornament of life, and live like a coward in thine own self esteem.” Lady Macbeth accuses her husband of being a coward and targets his ego in order to continue to manipulate him into following through with the plan. She continues to say, “When you durst do it, then you were a man and to be more than what you were, you would be so much more.” She accuses him of being weak and lacking his manhood. When he was willing to follow through with their plan then he is a man, but when he shows hesitation he’s willingly stripping himself of his manhood. She knows how to influence her husband in order to get him to do exactly what she wants him to do.
            Lady Macbeth is the leader of this plan. She’s the one who comes up with the plan, she gets the men drunk, she lies the daggers, she instructs her husband on what to do. This is completely opposite of what was common at this time. Normally women would be completely left out of the plan, and even if they were to be included they would be completely dependent on the direction of the men. Following the murder, Macbeth returns with the daggers in his hand extremely remorseful and paranoid. While he freaks out, Lady Macbeth remained extremely calm taking the daggers from his hand and returning to the room to finish the deed. She’s the one who remains emotionally stable through all of this, not the man. She’s the one who has to comfort the man, not the other way around. Their relationship is completely unconventional as the woman has all the power in the marriage, she is in no way under the control of her husband.

            

Comments

  1. Leah EricksonOctober 9, 2017 at 8:16 PM

    I LOVE that you felt that same way about Lady Macbeth as I did! She is seriously such an awesome, strong, female character. I appreciate that Shakespeare wrote about Lady Macbeth as having such dominant and assertive characteristics since like you said, it was very uncommon to discuss women in this way during that time period. The one problem that I did have with Lady Macbeth was that she aspired to take on the "masculine" role. While I know that this is because males were deemed to be strong whereas women were considered weak, it just makes me cringe to think that males and females were treated as such polar opposites in that time period. I wish that there wouldn't have been that rigid, black and white, "masculine versus feminine" regime. But taking the time period into account, Lady Macbeth is an extremely progressive turn for women in literature.

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