What kind of woman wouldn’t fit in the Elizabethan society?
A woman like Lady Macbeth from the “The tragedy of Macbeth” by Shakespeare.
Shakespeare lived in England during the Elizabethan Era: where the ruler of the kingdom was a woman: Queen Elizabeth. You would think “since the queen is a woman, then women should be considered the same as men and have the same rights”. But, even if it’s hard to believe, women had a really limited role in the Elizabethan society.
Lady Macbeth was written to go against the biases on women at the time and to show that if a woman tries to escape from them, she is going to come to a bad end.
HEAD OF THE FAMILY
As soon as we meet Lady Macbeth in Act 1 scene 5, we can notice how she is the one making decisions …show more content…
Lady Macbeth is the exact opposite: after Macbeth soliloquy (1.7.1-29), at the end of which he decides he has too many reasons not to murder the king, Lady Macbeth comes in and, after having questioned his manhood, she tells him that she has breastfed babies and she knows how sweet they are, but she would “dash the brains out” (1.7.59.) of a baby if she had sworn to do so, as Macbeth has sworn to kill Duncan. We don’t know if the babies she is talking about were her own children.
This scene is important because it shows us that Lady Macbeth is a very wicked, emotionally strong woman: she is not afraid of doing something as horrible as killing an harmless baby and she appears not to have feelings of guilt; she almost seems to be driven by dark entities. Usually this kind of women were considered witches at the time and were sentenced to death.
Plus this is a very powerful scene because if nowadays we find it a repulsive scene, imagine how shocked would have been the Elizabethan …show more content…
They were believed to always need someone taking care of them, that someone was usually her husband, her father or her brother. In this play, though, Lady Macbeth seems to be the one emotionally stronger who takes care of the mistakes of her husband: for instance, immediately after the murder Macbeth and his wife meet, he is already regretful for what he has done and has been having hallucinations; Lady Macbeth, to reassure him, says: “Go get some water, and wash this filthy witness from your hand.” (2.2.46-47). Then she notices that Macbeth still has the guards daggers in his hands and tells him to go put them back to frame them; he refuses to go because he doesn’t want to see again the terrible deed he has done, so she grabs the daggers and take them in the place they belong to.
Lady Macbeth believes the guilt of this murder can be washed away with some water; this tells us how cruel and remorseless she is.
We are shown by these scene that Macbeth is already being oppressed by his senses of guilt and is emotionally weak: he is not even able to come back in that room and wishes all this had never happened.
Instead, Lady Macbeth is glad her man was able to commit the homicide and has no problems being in the same room with Duncan’s dead body.
A woman like Lady Macbeth from the “The tragedy of Macbeth” by Shakespeare.
Shakespeare lived in England during the Elizabethan Era: where the ruler of the kingdom was a woman: Queen Elizabeth. You would think “since the queen is a woman, then women should be considered the same as men and have the same rights”. But, even if it’s hard to believe, women had a really limited role in the Elizabethan society.
Lady Macbeth was written to go against the biases on women at the time and to show that if a woman tries to escape from them, she is going to come to a bad end.
HEAD OF THE FAMILY
As soon as we meet Lady Macbeth in Act 1 scene 5, we can notice how she is the one making decisions …show more content…
Lady Macbeth is the exact opposite: after Macbeth soliloquy (1.7.1-29), at the end of which he decides he has too many reasons not to murder the king, Lady Macbeth comes in and, after having questioned his manhood, she tells him that she has breastfed babies and she knows how sweet they are, but she would “dash the brains out” (1.7.59.) of a baby if she had sworn to do so, as Macbeth has sworn to kill Duncan. We don’t know if the babies she is talking about were her own children.
This scene is important because it shows us that Lady Macbeth is a very wicked, emotionally strong woman: she is not afraid of doing something as horrible as killing an harmless baby and she appears not to have feelings of guilt; she almost seems to be driven by dark entities. Usually this kind of women were considered witches at the time and were sentenced to death.
Plus this is a very powerful scene because if nowadays we find it a repulsive scene, imagine how shocked would have been the Elizabethan …show more content…
They were believed to always need someone taking care of them, that someone was usually her husband, her father or her brother. In this play, though, Lady Macbeth seems to be the one emotionally stronger who takes care of the mistakes of her husband: for instance, immediately after the murder Macbeth and his wife meet, he is already regretful for what he has done and has been having hallucinations; Lady Macbeth, to reassure him, says: “Go get some water, and wash this filthy witness from your hand.” (2.2.46-47). Then she notices that Macbeth still has the guards daggers in his hands and tells him to go put them back to frame them; he refuses to go because he doesn’t want to see again the terrible deed he has done, so she grabs the daggers and take them in the place they belong to.
Lady Macbeth believes the guilt of this murder can be washed away with some water; this tells us how cruel and remorseless she is.
We are shown by these scene that Macbeth is already being oppressed by his senses of guilt and is emotionally weak: he is not even able to come back in that room and wishes all this had never happened.
Instead, Lady Macbeth is glad her man was able to commit the homicide and has no problems being in the same room with Duncan’s dead body.