Macbeth's Feminist Power

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Although positions of power do exist, they are sometimes just a guise for who really holds all the power. In Shakespeare’s tragic play Macbeth, there are constant shifts in power between mostly feminine characters. At the beginning, Macbeth’s relationship contains mostly of being controlled and pushed towards objectives that Lady Macbeth desire. She comes off as an extremely corrupt person, wishing for more and more power. As the play goes along, the power moves away from Lady Macbeth and more towards the Witches, who control Macbeth’s actions through paranoia. The Witches and Lady Macbeth hold all power in Shakespeare’s most feminist tragedy. The first feminist power holders are the witches. Throughout the play, the witches always hold some type of power, whether or not it was the most dominating at the time. When the witches first meet Macbeth, the witches say, “All hail, Macbeth, that shalt be King hereafter! ...Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none. So all hail, Macbeth and Banquo!” (I.iii.51, 68-69). This is the withes’ prophecy that Macbeth will one day become king, and that Banquo’s descendents will be too. While this may not seem to be controlling, the mental affect on Macbeth was more damaging then anything they could have imagined. Macbeth’s mental state from the beginning when they first said the prophecy went on a massive decline sanity wise, were Macbeth could only think about how the witches predicted Banquo’s descendents to take the throne. Later on in the play, an apparition that the witches had summoned up for Macbeth says, “Macbeth! Macbeth! Beware Macduff! Beware the Thane of Fife” (IV.i.71-73). These words, spoken by the first of three apparitions, are the words that send Macbeth on a paranoia-induced rage. Just from the two words, “Beware Macduff”, Macbeth proceeds to kill Macduff’s family while Macduff was in England. This also marked
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