Lady Macbeth Gender Roles Essay

A majority of Shakespeare’s plays include significant presence of female characters that reveal his views regarding woman’s role during the time period. Generally, women during the Shakespearean time period were obligated to suppress their opinions and were stripped from rights that women in the twenty-first century possess. They were expected to manage the household, as opposed to men, who were expected to be the decision makers. Additionally, the qualities of an ideal woman were mainly her virtue, beauty and youth. With that said, many of the female characters in Shakespeare’s plays oppose the societal norms of that time period in some form or another. For example in Twelfth Night, we observe opposition to these cultural assumptions in an
Lady Macbeth serves as a masculine figure and takes up the role of a man by denouncing herself as female. She also does this by using gender discrepancy to her utmost advantage to manipulate and control her husband, especially in a time period when societal norms about gender and sexuality were very unfavorable toward women portraying such behavior. Macbeth, a brave Scottish general, much to our surprise, falls under the presumed gender role of a feminine figure due the influence of his powerful and ambitious wife, Lady Macbeth. Analyzing how these two characters can fall into gender roles that are opposite to their respective sexes reveals to us that women have the potential to have as much ambition and barbarism as men do. However, it is the patriarchal society that denies women from attaining these ambitions and achievements at their own account. 
 Lady Macbeth goes about certain tactics and strategies in order to achieve her role as the more masculine, an attribute that all males in the society have the privilege of being born with. It would be apt to suggest that metaphorically, Lady Macbeth is a man