Lady Macbeth Constructions of Femininity in Shakespeare’s Macbeth

Act I, Sc. IV, L Glamis thou art, and Cawdor; and shalt be What thou art promised. Yet do I fear thy nature; Is it too full o’ the’ milk of human kindness To catch the nearest way. Thou wouldst be great, Art not without ambition, but without The illness should attend it. What thou wouldst highly, That wouldst thou holily; wouldst not play false, And yet would wrongly win. Thou’dst have, great Glamis That which cries ‘Thus thou must do’ if thou have it; And that which rather thou dost fear to do Than wishest should be undone.

Act I, Sc. IV, L ….Hie thee hither, That I may pour my spirits in thine ear, And chastise with the valour of my tongue All that impedes thee from the golden round, Which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem To have thee crowned withal

Act I, Sc. IV, L Under my battlements. Come, you spirits That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full Of direst cruelty! Make thick my blood, Stop up th’ access and passage to remorse, That no compunctious visitings of nature Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between The effect and it. Come to my woman’s breasts, And take my milk for gall, you murd’ring ministers, Wherever in your sightless substances You wait on nature’s mischief! Come thick Night, And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell, That my keen knife see the wound it makes, Nor heaven peep through the blanket of dark, To cry ‘Hold, hold!’

Lady Macbeth’s demonic femininity LM renounces her womanhood, ‘come you spirits…unsex me here’, in order to galvanise her toward her ‘fell purpose’: the murder of King Duncan. What kind of feminine identity is she rejecting? What kind of feminine (or masculine) identity does she seek to embody? Where in the soliloquy does she suggest this transformation to be unnatural? Why would it be deemed unnatural?

Lady MacDuff ‘The most diminutive of birds, will fight, Her young ones in her nest, against the owl’ (Act IV, Sc. II, L.10-11); ‘But I remember now I am in this earthly world, where to do harm Is often laudable, to do good sometime Accounted dangerous folly. Why then, alas, Do I put up that womanly defence To say I have done no harm’ (Act IV, Sc. II, L ). What kind of femininity does Lady MacDuff represent? How is this different to Lady Macbeth? What narrative function does the contrast between Lady Macbeth and Lady MacDuff serve?

The Witches

Historical Context Accusations of witchcraft Sixteenth and Seventeenth century Europe were rife. Witchcraft Act of In 1590, the North Berwick trials saw over 300 people from East Lothian, Scotland accused of witchcraft. James I took an active part in the trials.

Take from 'The Witch Trial' Witchcraft and the Plot Against King James Francis Stewart Hepburn, the Earl of Bothwell found himself on trial for witchcraft in Lothian on the 15th of April He was accused of seeking to harm the throne and the king. His accuser was a wizard of North Berwick, Richie Graham, who claimed the earl took part in black mass, and that he caused a storm in which the king's ship was caught on its way home from Denmark.

James I and Witchcraft The study of witchcraft was an intellectual obsession for James I. He wrote a book on the subject called Daemonologie (1597) Kingship analogous to God’s rule over the earth, the father’s rule over the family and head’s rule over the body Witches analogous to the Devil’s attempts to rule over the earth, the woman over the family and the body over the head.

Who were those accused of witchcraft? Witches could be characterized by any or none of the following: Were healers using folk medicine, herbal cures, spells (these women were generally out spoken and were relatively influential) Provided gynecological services; midwife, contraception, abortion Practiced infanticide Practiced the old fertility cult religions Gossips Fornicators Prostitutes Lesbians Independent, strong-minded women