Gender and Power in Shakespeare's Macbeth Writing Assignment

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Gender and Power in Shakespeare’s Macbeth
The society has portrayed women as people who are dependent, powerless and dominated while men as powerful people. Women have been denied power based on the notion that are not able to maintain it because of their indecisiveness and weak nature. However, when considering women in Macbeth especially Lady Macbeth, they speak a language that is similar to the one that today women are using. It is the antilanguage which gives them power to control, direct and dominate men in the society. Shakespeare’s Macbeth is one of the environments where women have presented themselves as power and display men like characteristics. This essay introduces a statement that contradicts the views that women are powerless, dependent and dominated and portrays them as sexual objects. Most scholars have asserted that Shakespeare considered men and women to be equal in a world that rendered them unequal. In Shakespeare’s world, which was different from the one he was living in, women have the freedom of exceeding the limits posed on them by the society, either through actions or words. Therefore, it can be said that Shakespeare used to speak in a strange language that contradicted that of his own era. Shakespeare’s language demonstrate how women exercise power and how this power is structured in the society through the use of two variables, powerful and powerless. Through this, Shakespeare introduced a language that shows the structure of power in the society; dominance and dependence. The essay attempts to portray women as powerful, independent and dominating like the men. To demonstrate this, the paper will consider Shakespeare’s Macbeth by analyzing Lady Macbeth.
AGGRESSIVENESS
In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Lady Macbeth appears to be the most dynamic characters because she proves to be manipulative. During the first half of the play, Lady Macbeth positions herself in power by making stern decisions such as the one to murder Duncan. In order to acquire her power, Lady Macbeth does not only disown her femininity, but also rejects the idea of belonging to a particular gender. The audience is introduced to Lady Macbeth in Scene 1 Act 5 where she has just completed reading a letter from Macbeth informing her the prophecy of the witches. In her own interpretations, she knows that for Macbeth to be the King, Duncan must be killed, but she criticizes Macbeth’ abilities by saying:
Yet I do fear thy nature.
It is too full o’th’ milk of human kindness
To catch the nearest way. Thou wouldst be great,
Art not without ambition, but without
The illness should attend it (I.V, p.14-18)
From this quote, Lady Macbeth considers Macbeth to be too kind even if after the audience have been introduced to him as a fierce warrior. However, from the femininity perspective, it is Lady Macbeth who should be feeling the bonds of kind and not Macbeth because women were believed to be having some “milk of kindness in them.” This implies that Lady Macbeth equates femininity with weakness (Klein, 48). Since women were supposed to have some kindness in them, Lady Macbeth is implying that Macbeth is not capable of committing a mur...