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Lady Macbeth

When fixed Jacobean patriarchal gender norms are subverted disorder results, this is most
powerfully expressed through lady Macbeth who is not only recognised as a cynical avatar of
evil, but also as symbolic of gender trouble
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On receiving her husband’s
letter, we witness the beginning of a gender reversal that marks their marriage
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Milk was symbolic of nurturing and feminine qualities that would be expected of
Lady Macbeth rather than Macbeth, showing her malevolent and masculine nature
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This is symbolic of the power imbalance in the relationship and her
fiendish desire for power
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The same milk that fills Macbeth plagues her too, hence why she commands spirits to “take
[her] milk for gall”
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This suggests that rather than nurture a child with milk, she now nurtures her dark and evil
desires with gall
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Lady Macbeth could be seen to have
dehumanised herself to such an extent that she is devoid of gender and possibly bereft of
humanity
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She describes how she would have
“plucked [her] nipple from his boneless gums and dashed his brains out”
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The innocence
connoted by “boneless gums” juxtaposes the ruthless action presenting Lady Macbeth as a
malevolent character who preys on the weak
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At
the banquet scene in which the ghost of Banquo appears (it is ambiguous whether it is real or
simply a hallucination either way it can be interpreted as the metaphysical embodiment of
Macbeths guilt) Lady Macbeth stays composed whilst Macbeth is traumatised
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She then takes control of the situation using the imperative “stand not upon the
order of your going but go at once” whilst Macbeth is rendered insane she becomes the most
powerful figure
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this scene is the last time the audience witness her power
before her demise into insanity
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The sleep whose murder she has commanded drives her into madness,
displayed in her guilt-ridden sleep-walking scene
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Yet later,
enacting an obsessive-compulsive ritual of hand-washing, she whimpers “all the perfumes of
Arabia will not sweeten this little hand”
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This is also reflected in a religious was when previously she
called for a “blanket of dark” this is metaphor asking evil to hide her crimes from God
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Insanity and guilt
force her back to the weakness of femininity, which early she yearned to rid herself of

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