What Are Gender Roles In Macbeth

William Shakespeare’s Macbeth dove into the issues of power and relationships. Specifically, gender roles had an impact upon the course of events in Macbeth. As context, Macbeth was a minor government official in Scotland. He had a run-in with witches that gave him a prophecy. The witches made several predictions but the most shocking was one stating Macbeth would be king. After one of the preceding predictions proved to be true, Macbeth figured he was destined to be king. The characters in this drama made decisions based off what they thought was the correct move in accordance to their gender. Shakespeare explored the existence of and manipulated gender roles in his plays. Lady Macbeth changed the way we see women in reach of power, while
The plot was first sparked with the murder of King Duncan. Macbeth killed him, but not without the manipulative influence of Lady Macbeth. She used his masculinity against him to persuade him to murder Duncan. “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. (1.7.) Being a woman, she felt it was not her duty to do morally irregular deeds; so she questioned Macbeth’s manliness when he began to feel bad in order coax him into murder. She felt it was a man’s role to kill and get his hands dirty. Lady Macbeth was using gender roles as a tool of persuasion. She wished she was a man so she could commit the malicious deeds stereotypically associated with men, so she calls on the supernatural to give her the strength of a man.“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” (1.5). She asks for her womanly traits to be taken away, “Come to my woman’s breasts,/And take my milk for gall, you murd'ring ministers,”(1.5.) Lady Macbeth believed so strongly in the restrictive influence of gender roles she was willing to give up her woman hood to obtain power. Behind every great man, there may be a desperate
Gender roles are influencers placed by society that tell someone how to act based only off their sex. Both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth were susceptible to these pressures. The characters made decisions based off what they thought was the correct move in accordance to their gender. Gender roles are still affecting us today, as we watch North Carolina try to make laws to cement gender roles into modern day society. A power struggle continues with the transgender community and legislature as the lines of gender progressively blur. The characters in Macbeth and the transgender population both had to combat gender roles set by their perspective