Lady Macbeth Character Analysis Essay

In William Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth, Lady Macbeth is portrayed as a masterful puppeteer in a male predominant world in which she attempts to control. Throughout this tragedy, the role of manhood and what it takes to be a man is called into question. Lady Macbeth is one who desires to take on the male role in the play’s cruel world. The audience sees what manhood means in her eyes as she manipulates her husband into committing numerous, horrific crimes. She has many male characteristics, but also contains plentiful fatal female flaws. One obvious flaw is that she is, in fact, physically a woman, and by being a woman she is able to use this as an asset in her tactics in securing more power. She uses her femininity as a mask to conceal her nefarious morality. In Act I, scene V of the play, Lady Macbeth receives word of her husband’s encounter with the weird sisters and their prognostication for Macbeth. It is important to …show more content…
The audience sees the gender roles reverse, as we notice Lady Macbeth’s masculinity come out to her husband. She believes that in taking on the role of a man, she is able to commit malicious acts to achieve power. Her view on her husband is that he is less than a man and that she is the one with the true masculine power. Once Lady Macbeth has pushed her husband, he “Can only respond with a kind of over-mastered tribute to her ferocity” (Ramsey 289). It’s shown that when Lady Macbeth is faced with her acts that contributed to Duncan’s murder, her true masculinity is apparent. She admits that she could have committed the deed if Duncan when she says, “Had he not resembled My father as he slept, I had done ’t” (2: 2: 12-13). It can be determined that Lady Macbeth is contradicting her masculinity and femininity. She has the idea of what manhood is in her fantasy, but when facing reality, she is no more of a man than her