Lady macbeth

• Femme fatale


  • Subverts gender roles
  • Rejects femininity
• Lady Macbeth: '"come thick the shows her desperation to find light and hope in her mental darkness and summon"'
• Lady Macbeth calls upon external forces


  To help free her of the constraints of her femininity
• Lady Macbeth


  Mobilises the plot of regicide through emasculating and manipulating Macbeth
• Lady Macbeth's androgynous nature would be depicted as supernatural in the Jacobean era
• The gender roles were strict and set in stone in the Jacobean era
• Any break within gender roles shows Lady Macbeth directly going against God, fully portraying her as an evil and malevolent character
• Lady Macbeth


  Could be regarded as a femme fatale as she mobilizes Macbeth's temptation into evil and mirrors the witches in her desire to influence and manipulate Macbeth
• Lady Macbeth and the witches

  Both similarly share this series of malevolent and supernatural forces
• Lady Macbeth: '"I will pour spirits in Macbeth's ear"'
• This depicts Lady Macbeth's dominance and power within her atypical relationship, as well as her evil and malevolent nature behind the regicide
• Lady Macbeth


  Mobilises the plot of the regicide through her emasculation and manipulation of Macbeth
• Shakespeare exposes Lady Macbeth's true cowardice
• Lady Macbeth: '"had he not resembled my father as he slept had done it"'
• This exposes her inner cowardice and ingrained fear of patricide
• Lady Macbeth takes advantage of her femininity by using it in her favour, yet rejecting it when it represses her
• Immediately after Duncan's murder, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth's reactions are diametrically opposed
• This scene truly reveals Lady Macbeth's manipulative, deceptive and cowardly nature
• Lady Macbeth later fragments this deceptive facade as she descends into madness, seeking the light metaphorically, seeking the light and hope from God to guide her out of her psychological hell
• Lady Macbeth starts to conform to her typical feminine role
• The power dynamics between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth start to shift as Macbeth begins to extrapolate her evil
• A shift in power is clear when Lady Macbeth retreats to her weaker feminine role, her ability to restrict her remorse weakens as she is unable to combat her natural weak human nature
• Macbeth has now extrapolated Lady Macbeth's evil
• Lady Macbeth's mental insanity and demise begin in Act 4, yet we only see the consequences in Act 5
• Lady Macbeth doesn't appear in Act 4, hence making her fall from grace even more rapid
• Lady Macbeth


  • Hallucinogenic madness
  • Mentally fragmented
  • Carcass of insanity
  • Need for salvation
• Lady Macbeth has been critically described as a sprinter in evil, unlike Macbeth who is a long-distance runner
• This is apparent through the descent of her character, the drive from evil is transient and she is rendered a carcass of
• Lady Macbeth: '"Come, thick night, and pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell, That my keen knife see not the wound it makes, Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark, To cry 'Hold, hold!'"'
• Lady Macbeth enters with a taper, as a taper provides light, it's emblematic of how she's seeking out the hope, light, hope and solace in her eternal mental darkness
• Jesus was seen as the salvation for mankind, therefore Lady Macbeth clinging onto the light would be symbolic of her holding onto the hope of redemption as she knows that the violation of the great chain of being, religion and divine rights of king will have her mentally fragmented
• Lady Macbeth's vulnerability and madness is emphasised by the beginning of the play, where she speaks in iambic pentameter which denotes the character's high status
• Critic DJ Enright: 'Lady Macbeth is a sprinter of evil as her descent into madness is as rapid as she climbs to tyranny, she has quickly transitioned from being a strong woman to a carcass of insanity'
• However, to contrast this, in Act 5 she speaks in disjointed prose, her regression from blank verse to disjointed prose shows that her guilt has infected and engulfed her mind, so consequently she has lost the status and power she had once possessed
• with a tragic ending
• Lady Macbeth: '"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!"'
• Lady Macbeth: '"Make thick my blood; / Stop up the access and passage to remorse, / That no compunctious visitings of nature / Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between / The effect and it!"'
• Lady Macbeth: '"Dash'd its brains out"'
• Lady Macbeth: '"a little water clears us of this deed"'
• Lady Macbeth: '"Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under't"'