Lady Macbeth
Constructions of Femininity in
Shakespeare’s Macbeth
Act I, Sc. IV, L. 15-26
Glamis thou art, and Cawdor; and shalt be
What thou art promised. Yet do I fear thy nature;
Is it too full o’ the’ milk of human kindness
To catch the nearest way. Thou wouldst be great,
Art not without ambition, but without
The illness should attend it. What thou wouldst
highly,
That wouldst thou holily; wouldst not play false,
And yet would wrongly win. Thou’dst have, great
Glamis
That which cries ‘Thus thou must do’ if thou have it;
And that which rather thou dost fear to do
Than wishest should be undone.
Act I, Sc. IV, L. 26-31
….Hie thee hither,
That I may pour my spirits in thine ear,
And chastise with the valour of my tongue
All that impedes thee from the golden round,
Which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem
To have thee crowned withal
Act I, Sc. IV, L. 40-54
Under my battlements. 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,
Stop up th’ access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
The effect and it. Come to my woman’s breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murd’ring ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature’s mischief! Come thick Night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see the wound it makes,
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of dark,
To cry ‘Hold, hold!’
Lady Macbeth’s demonic femininity
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LM renounces her womanhood, ‘come you
spirits…unsex me here’, in order to galvanise her
toward her ‘fell purpose’: the murder of King
Duncan.
What kind of feminine identity is she rejecting?
What kind of feminine (or masculine) identity does
she seek to embody?
Where in the soliloquy does she suggest this
transformation to be unnatural? Why would it be
deemed unnatural?
Lady MacDuff
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‘The most diminutive of birds, will fight, Her young ones
in her nest, against the owl’ (Act IV, Sc. II, L.10-11); ‘But
I remember now I am in this earthly world, where to do
harm Is often laudable, to do good sometime Accounted
dangerous folly. Why then, alas, Do I put up that
womanly defence To say I have done no harm’ (Act IV,
Sc. II, L. 74-79).
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What kind of femininity does Lady MacDuff represent? How
is this different to Lady Macbeth?
What narrative function does the contrast between Lady
Macbeth and Lady MacDuff serve?
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The Witches
Historical Context
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Accusations of witchcraft
Sixteenth and
Seventeenth century
Europe were rife.
Witchcraft Act of 1563.
In 1590, the North Berwick
trials saw over 300 people
from East Lothian,
Scotland accused of
witchcraft.
James I took an active
part in the trials.
Witchcraft and the Plot Against King James
Francis Stewart Hepburn, the Earl of Bothwell found
himself on trial for witchcraft in Lothian on the 15th
of April 1591. He was accused of seeking to harm
the throne and the king. His accuser was a wizard of
North Berwick, Richie Graham, who claimed the earl
took part in black mass, and that he caused a storm
in which the king's ship was caught on its way home
from Denmark.
Take from 'The Witch Trial'
James I and Witchcraft
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The study of witchcraft was an intellectual
obsession for James I. He wrote a book on the
subject called Daemonologie (1597)
Kingship analogous to God’s rule over the earth,
the father’s rule over the family and head’s rule
over the body
Witches analogous to the Devil’s attempts to rule
over the earth, the woman over the family and the
body over the head.
Who were those accused of witchcraft?
Witches could be characterized
by any or none of the following:
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Were healers using folk medicine,
herbal cures, spells (these women
were generally out spoken and were
relatively influential)
Provided gynecological services;
midwife, contraception, abortion
Practiced infanticide
Practiced the old fertility cult religions
Gossips
Fornicators
Prostitutes
Lesbians
Independent, strong-minded women