Women in Macbeth

The play Macbeth written by William Shakespeare is a story of a man who is driven by greed kills the king and after he becomes coronated he kills others to retain his title of King. Women played an active role in the play and they challenge the roles of women who lived in the Elizabethan period. They challenged the role, rights and power of women.
The role of women in the play is vastly different to those of their Elizabethan counterparts. In the play Lady Macbeth plays a vital role in aiding Macbeth to become King. She is the one who persuaded Macbeth in the first place to kill the King using her role as her husband. In Elizabethan times, the women of the household were considered the lowest of the family just because of her gender. The witches also play an active role in the play as they are the ones who tell Macbeth that he is going to be King. It is questionable if Macbeth would have killed the King if the witches didn’t tell him of his fate. They differentiate from Elizabethan Women as they are free of anything. No man controls them and they are more of the opposite as they control the men of the world. An example of this is when one of the witches sinks a ship just because the wife of the captain did not give the witch some chestnuts. The effect of this scenario is that it shows what would happen if women got power and how it would feel if men were at the mercy of women instead of the other way round. The women in the play show how they challenged the role of women in Elizabethan period using various techniques.
The rights of women in the play are unlike the rights women of the Elizabethan times. In the play Lady Macduff is talking to her son. Her son holds very little respect for her mother and disagrees with her on any point. In society women may have been treated very low, but Lady Macduff does not stand for the attitude given to her by her son. When the murderers come to kill them, the son in his dying moments tells his mum to run away and save