Lady Macbeth: “unsex me here, and fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full of direst cruelty” Lady Macbeth is the “true” evil. If it wasn’t for her, Macbeth wouldn’t have killed Duncan. Duncan: The father of Malcom and Donalbain with Malcom set for his throne. He gets killed by Macbeth. 3.
Macbeth has a huge character flaw. This flaw is demonstrated in a plethora of plays, novels, and other literature, and is often the main character’s, or the tragic hero’s flaw that ends all good. It is greed. Macbeth is so full of greed, that no matter what he gets, he only wants more. The witches play off of this
However, Lady Macbeth is much stronger, and more decisive, ruthless as well as aggressive, especially when she is facing death. In behaviors, Macbeth acts so weak that he is subordinated to Lady Macbeth, which is totally conflicted to the social gender convention. Macbeth is so indecisive in decision-making that he vacillates between murdering the King Duncan or not, and eventually he still cannot make his own mind. Instead, Lady Macbeth is aggressive as well as consistent, and she helps her husband make decisions, and also comes up with a plot instantly. She only concentrates on personal benefits so that everything else can be sacrificed.
Lady Macbeth has a plan to kill Duncan. In order for this plan to work Lady Macbeth and Macbeth had to be very deceitful. Lady Macbeth manipulates Macbeth into killing Duncan, when Macbeth had doubts. Lady Macbeth's criticised towards Macbeth: “that I may pour my sprits in thine ear”. (Macbeth I, v, 26) Lady Macbeth made Macbeth feel bad about himself, by lowering his manhood and bravery.
The devil, or the evil spirits, take up many disguises, one of which is through Lady Macbeth. Our tragic hero does not realize that every murder will come back to haunt him. We begin to see the slippery slope Macbeth slides down as he promptly kills his best friend, Banquo, and attempts to murder Banquo’s only child, Fleance, without any outside influences. He was content killing his closest ally because he worries about the witches prophecy that “the seeds of Banquo’s kings, rather than so, come fate into the list, and champion me to the utterance…” (III.I.70-73). Even when you believe Macbeth cannot be any worse he slaughters Macduff’s entire family when he hears Macduff has fled to England; he said that he would “give to the edge o’the sword his wife, babes, and all unfortunate souls that trace him in his line”.
Both women can be seen as victims of oppression, as they both are products of their Patriarchal societies, and the fates that belie them only prove to oppress them further. Medea's position as a victim of fate is defined by the first lines of the play, in which the nurse tells the tale of Medea and Jason so far. Medea had, through Hera's influence, fallen in love with Jason and given up her home, killed her brother, and taken various risks upon her to save him and live with him in a foreign country (Medea, 1-15). Throughout the play, Medea's ill fate is recognized most clearly by her servants and fellow women. According to the nurse, Medea had gone through the entire adventure to retrieve the Golden Fleece and defied her household only to be deserted by Jason and left
She enters the play as a woman whose greed initiates cruel thoughts of murder. To manipulate Macbeth into assassinating Duncan, she verbally assaults him by undermining his manhood: "When you durst do it, then you were a man / And to be more than what you were, you would / be so much more the man" (1.7.56-58). She declares that if she is in Macbeth's position, she "would, ... dashed the brains out, had I sworn as you have done to this" (1.7.64-67). She is one to discuss matters rather than taking action. To avoid the consequences, she cowardly does not do the deed herself but instead manipulates Macbeth.
True masculinity is a conceptual fallacy. Macbeth’s hamartia is his indulgence in the concept of masculinity. Lady Macbeth, the main female protagonist demasculinizes Macbeth throughout the play for his lack of assertiveness. Manipulatively, she states to Macbeth, “What beast was’t then, /That made you break this enterprise to me? / When you durst do it, then you were a man” (1.7.47-49).. She defines manhood as stark aggression to achieve power in any means necessary such as killing Duncan.
But it isn’t just a role reversal in her behaving as a man might. Lady Macbeth is more indecent and conniving because she has maintained her manipulative feminisms which ironically diminish her husband, making him appear weak and without resolve. In the end when she finally confronts her own conscience to know how horrible she has been, the Lady collapses, disintegrates and disappears. How awful. Over and over and over again Lady Macbeth challenges her husband’s manhood and his will to kill and seize Duncan’s throne in Act I:
The one time when we knew that Lady Macbeth was still human and still had feelings was towards the end of the play when the guilt drives her mad and she commits suicide. As the inspiration behind Macbeth’s downfall, lady Macbeth deserves a lot of the responsibility for it, as she was the one who forced him to take the first step by killing the king (a heinous