Lady MacbethConstructions of Femininity in

Shakespeare’s Macbeth

Act I, Sc. IV, L. 15-26Glamis thou art, and Cawdor; and shalt beWhat thou art promised. Yet do I fear thy nature;Is it too full o’ the’ milk of human kindnessTo catch the nearest way. Thou wouldst be great,Art not without ambition, but withoutThe 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

GlamisThat which cries ‘Thus thou must do’ if thou have it;And that which rather thou dost fear to doThan 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. 40-54Under my battlements. Come, you spiritsThat tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-fullOf direst cruelty! Make thick my blood,Stop up th’ access and passage to remorse,That no compunctious visitings of natureShake 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 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 ‘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).

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?

The Witches

Historical Context 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.

Take from 'The Witch Trial'

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.

James I and Witchcraft 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:

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