Essay: Explore Lady Macbeth’s Portrayal as a Female Villain in Shakespeare’s Macbeth

Shakespeare portrays Lady Macbeth as a heinous, malevolent and determined woman who has an extremely tenacious grip on the thought of becoming queen. She is portrayed as a stereotypical villain, because of her perseverance of the invocation of the spirits, “Hie thee hither”. Some may argue she even possesses qualities of the devil due to her aggressive and manipulative behaviour especially towards her husband and shows no sign of remorse, until the guilt gets the best of her and forces her to suffer till her death. This would impact the audience because they were often very religious.
Throughout the scene she expresses herself to be weak due to her feminine human form and would even go to great lengths to unsex herself. She has contrasting beliefs compared to the other women of her time in which she implies an equal quality to both men and women. Macbeth also seems to have the same opinion as proven in the quote, “my dearest partner of greatness,”. The audience would never have heard of such thing and would be in a state of shock that she could think of such illicit thoughts. This would be an extremely unconventional act for a woman of her time. Shakespeare intended to shock the audience from the start and give Lady Macbeth a seemingly powerful and hubristic image.
After having read the letter Lady Macbeth uses sinful behaviour to control Macbeth, as she commands him to:” look like the innocent flower but be like the serpent under’t”, – a malicious plan from her that degrades Macbeth’s masculinity as he proceeds to follow her commands. Also, snakes are often associated with a treacherous, sly or deceitful person who exploits a position of trust in order to betray it. This could be considered symbolic as she eventually becomes mentally unstable and therefore leaves Macbeth to fend for himself in the situation she put him in, however this may be seen as Macbeth leaving his “partner of greatness” to go to a war that she potentially started instead of helping her out of her suffering. Macbeth is expected to be courageous and not to follow orders but to issue them due to the fact that he has just returned from battle where he and his soldiers slaughtered many men to win the war and could therefore be assumed to be brave.
Lady Macbeth is at war with the body she was born with and has disturbing priorities when it comes to preparing herself for the near future, such as; “take my milk for gall”, This eliminates all her chances of having children, and “fill me from the crown to the toe topfull of direst cruelty” which takes away the stereotypical womanhood and feminine traits such as kindness and thoughtfulness. This act would shock any audience as this is essentially an act of homicide. Despite this, it also subverts the natural role of any human let alone a woman. The only real duty women of her time have is to be a housewife, much like Lady Macduff.
Although she is willing to go through all this pain to “unsex” herself her feminine qualities and reputation were proven to be useful when in Act 2 Scene 3 when Macbeth’s stressed character almost gives away that he killed Duncan, Lady Macbeth uses her supposedly kind nature as a woman to divert the attention from her husband to refrain him from admitting that he committed the murder. Already early in the same act, Shakespeare purposely presents Lady Macbeth as a great actress when she comes across supposedly not knowing why the bell was rung, in which Macduff replies “O, gentle lady,”. This poses as dramatic irony as she is anything but gentle. Also, the fact that Macduff is oblivious to her knowledge of the situation causes the audience to possess information than some of the characters themselves. Some may even feel empathy towards Macduff as he is kind and thoughtful towards the fact that Lady Macbeth is a woman and should not bear witness such evens, the audience would also feel slight disdain towards Lady Macbeth for lying with such ease.
So far, the audience are shocked by the actions and thought of the characters within the play hence why Lady Macduff is presented to remind them of the norm and allows them to have a personality they could relate to. Shakespeare introduces Lady Macduff to us in Act 4 Scene 2 as a stereotypical woman of that era. She is presented to us to show the tragedy of sitting on something rather than acting upon it like Lady Macbeth. To a modern audience, we may assume that Lady Macduff is Lady Macbeth in a parallel universe where in which she didn’t act so selfishly and led a normal life instead and the consequences that would follow. However, some may argue he implies that if the roles of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth were swapped; this would be the situation.
“Wisdom? To leave his wife, to leave his babes?”, this shows that Macduff is willing to sacrifice his blood-family for the family of Scotland by ditching his wife and young son to go to battle. There are several similarities between Macbeth and Lady Macduff in which they are left vulnerable by their partners. They both are forced into difficult situations in where their partner doesn’t attempt to help them get out of it.
Lady Macbeth is behind a cunning plan in which she puts her “partner of greatness” at risk. Macduff is similar in a way where he has other people’s lives rather than his families as his first concern. This correlation contributes to the assumption that Shakespeare wanted to portray the two families to be an alternate reality of each other.
Despite this, Shakespeare wants to prove that women are capable however must adapt to gain strength in a man’s world. There is no doubt that Lady Macbeth is smart however does not line up to feminine expectations in her time or our time.