Masculininty in Macbeth

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To this day, Macbeth remains one of Shakespeare’s most well-known tragedies, with the eponymous protagonist being the quintessential tragic hero. In the beginning, Macbeth is a moral man. He is the “brave Macbeth,” (1.2.18) who, with his “brandished steel, / Which smoked with bloody execution,” (1.2.19-20) was able to slice his enemies from “the nave to th’ chops.” (1.2.24) Unlike the previous Thane of Cawdor, he is loyal to his king. However, by the end he is transformed from a man that “smack of honor” (1.2.48) to one that is “smacking of every sin / That has a name.” (4.3.72-73) While we are led to believe that this transformation is caused by his unnatural ambition, the play taken as a whole strongly supports the idea that his primary motive is the assertion or preservation of a threatened masculine self-image. One aspect of masculinity is its dominance over femininity. The first women that appear in the play are the witches. They “should be women,” (1.3.47) but they also possess androgynous features that demonstrate their masculinity. When they meet Macbeth for the first time, he “start and seem to fear” (1.3.54) their prophecies. While it is not explicitly shown in the play, there is also a desire within him to be more powerful, and thus, more masculine, than them. It is evident by the way he emulates the witches: as he prepares to kill Duncan, he invokes “pale Hecate’s off’rings”; (2.1.64) as he plans Banquo’s death, he describes a bat that “hath flown / His cloistered flight, ere to black Hecate’s summons.”(3.3.44-45) He is eventually able to “conjure” the witches “by that which [they] profess,” (4.1.51)demanding and receiving answers from them even when they ask him to “seek to know no more.” (4.1.118) It is this desire that compels him to commit acts that are unnatural, so as to become more like – and better than – the witches. By the end of the play,

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