Thinking Activity:-
This blog is a responses to the Thinking Activity Of the tragedy of Macbeth.
The Tragedy Of Macbeth by William Shakespeare :-
Macbeth:-
"Fair is Foul, and foul is fair; Hover through the fog and filthy air." - William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare's Macbeth is one of the most iconic Character ever created. It is a famous tragedy of William Shakespeare. It is based on history of Scotland. A brave Scottish general named Macbeth receives a prophesy from a trio of witches that one day he will become king of Scotland. Consumed by Ambition and spurred to action by his wife, Macbeth murders king Duncan and takes the Scottish throne for himself. He is then wracked with guilt and paranoia. forced to commit more and more murders to protect himself from enmity and suspicion, he soon becomes a tyrannical ruler. The bloodbath and consequent civil war swiftly take Macbeth into the realms of madness and death. Here you can see the trailer of Macbeth.
As a tragedy, Macbeth is a dramatization of the psychological repercussions of unbridled Ambition. The main themes of the play is
- Loyalty
- Innocence and
- Fate
all deal with the central idea of AMBITION and its consequences.
Q.1 Feminist reading of lady Macbeth.
Lady Macbeth :-
"Be bloody, bold and resolute.
laugh to scorn the power of man,
for none of woman born shall harm Macbeth."
Lady Macbeth is a leading character in William Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth. As the wife of the play's tragic hero , Macbeth, lady Macbeth goads her husband into committing regicide, after which she becomes queen of Scotland. In this play , there are more male characters than female. There are only two women, lady Macbeth and lady Macduff , but both are opposite in nature. But there is not a single scene where two ladies are together. So in this sense, we can evaluate that Shakespeare has presented an inverted image of women, who generally want to be together. There is complete isolation for lady Macbeth as she has no female companion in the play. Three witches are also portraying women.
Among all these woman characters, lady Macbeth is different in each way. Shakespeare's portrayal of lady Macbeth leads us to think more about the concept of feminism. Whenever we try to analysis a character in feminist perspective, We first have to know what is the general concept of feminism.
According to Cambridge English Dictionary meaning of feminism,
The belief that women should be allowed the same rights, power and opportunities as men and be treated in the same way.
Feminism is a movement that seeks equality for all people, and an elimination of classical ideas of gender ( male intelligence versus female inferiority; male strength versus female emotional weakness ) as gender is a social construct rather than something that a person born into. We first have to look towards the situation of women in the time of William Shakespeare.
condition of women in plays of Shakespeare :-
During the times of Shakespeare and reigns of Queen Elizabeth I and King James I , English ideas of sex and gender, the legal rights of women and the social expectations of Femininity all played a significant role in the way that theatre was performed, the stories it told and who told them. In addition to other legal restrictions on the rights of women there was considerable social pressure on women to behave according to specific social roles. Women were expected to be subservient, quiet and homebound, with their primary ambitions entirely confined to marriage, childbirth and homemaking; granted, social status and economic class played into what degree these expectations manifested, with the chief example being Queen Elizabeth I herself. Here I Put a video of condition of women in plays of Shakespeare.
In Shakespeare's tragedies and his plays in general, there are several types of female characters. They influence other characters, but are also often underestimated. women in Shakespearean plays have always had important roles, sometimes the leading role. whether they are there to change the story or Stabilise it, they are there for a reason. Some women are stronger than others, and their effect on the play is different for each one. They often surpass the male heroes.
Here is a list of 7 most coveted roles for women in Shakespeare's plays:-
- Lady Macbeth, Macbeth
- Portia, The Merchant Of Venice
- Cleopatra, Antony and Cleopatra
- Juliet, Romeo and Juliet
- Rosalind, As You Like It
- Emilia, Othello
- Viola, Twelfth Night
Here we can see that different women characters in Shakespeare's play like lady Macbeth from Macbeth, Juliet from Romeo and Juliet, Emilia from Othello are all character of women who took action to control their own lives. Here we talk about lady Macbeth as a feminist.
Lady Macbeth is strong , ruthless and ambitious.
Lady Macbeth is one of Shakespeare's most famous and frightening female characters. when we first see her, she is already plotting Duncan's murder, and she is stronger, more ruthless, and more ambitious than her husband. She seems fully aware of this and knows that she will have to push Macbeth into committing murder. At one point , she wishes that she were not a woman so that she could do it herself. Her name suggest that she should be just as her name says, a lady, an accessory to Macbeth himself, her protagonists, defies the definition of the traditional female gender role defined by Tyson as she is neither emotional nor submissive. Here is one dialogue from Macbeth,
"O Never
Shall the sun that morrow see!
your face, my thane, is as a book
where men
May read strange matters. To beguile the time,
Look like the time. Bear welcome in your eye,
Your hand, your tongue. look like th'
innocent flower,
But be the serpent under 't. He that's coming
Must be provide for: and you shall put
This night's great business into my dispatch,
which shall to all our nights and days to come
Give solely sovereign sway and Masterdom.
In these lines, in ACT 1 Scene 5, lady Macbeth tells her husband to leave everything to her: she'll set up Duncan's murder that evening. In the meantime, she tells Macbeth, he should try to look as innocent as possible. The lines show lady Macbeth pushing her husband to kill Duncan. we can't know if Macbeth would have decided to murder his king if his wife hadn't encouraged him so strongly.
In the construction of the female gothic this scene is of great importance, as it displays lady Macbeth's qualities, the supernatural, evil and womanhood. Shakespeare reveals lady Macbeth's assessment of her husband
"Yet I do fear thy nature, it is too full o'th milk of human kindness"
suggesting that Macbeth is weak willed and he will not commit murder because he is too noble of a character. Milk also suggests the motherly tone of lady Macbeth, suggesting that Macbeth has not been brought up to be a brutal murderer but a man of honour ,conveying the virtue of his character. It also foreshadows the destruction that lady Macbeth will impose upon her husband therefore suggesting that she could be viewed as a 'femme fetale' figure. From the very beginning of Macbeth, lady Macbeth is shown as a character is relents in creating rebellious plots.
Furthermore, she openly rejects her femininity through the words
"Come...unsex me here...come to my woman's breasts, and take my milk for gall..." To make her worthy of murder, she asks spirits to "Unsex me here", implying that being a woman means she can not be powerful. This is the first example of lady Macbeth purposefully rejecting her femaleness to gain power.
Guilt of lady Macbeth:-
Lady Macbeth obsessively washes her hands in the 5th act of the play in order to wash off the imaginary blood on them, a reminder of the guilt she has over the killings she and her husband carried out. The guilt of lady Macbeth is presented in her Soliloquy, where she is continuously rubbing her hands. she is also Suffering from somnambulism. she commits suicide out of guilt what she has done before. so now she is completely opposite what she was earlier at the beginning.
Lady Macbeth as Fourth Witch:-
Lady Macbeth is sometimes been called "The Fourth Witch" of the play. To Goethe, she is 'The super witch. In Fact, lady Macbeth's commanding role in murdering Duncan, her cruel and witch like approach to the horrid deed is simply amazing. In the play there is three witches ignites a personal desire of Macbeth but, if lady Macbeth would force him to kill Duncan, he would not done that. It is also believed that destruction of Macbeth is not only because of the desire and force of lady Macbeth. Shakespeare's witches are not the only characters who help push Macbeth's natural ambitions over the edge. His wife, Lady Macbeth, possesses a similar desire for Macbeth to become king.
Patriarchal society encourages Lady Macbeth to invest herself in the role of mother. Lady Macbeth is seen as selfish and abnormal when she confess that there is a situation in which she would, a very unnatural statement according to patriarchy's belief that women's desire to have and protect children is a part of "their natural biological makeup" Though intelligent and strong at the beginning of Macbeth, Lady Macbeth is reduced to an insignificant person haunted by nightmares and guilt as a result of a patriarchal portrayal of her gender.
So, We can say that Lady Macbeth finds the classical concept of Femininity repulsive, but cannot deny womanhood without denying morality as well. The fact that Lady Macbeth had murderous thoughts makes her equal to the men she was surrounded by. It is through these points that Lady Macbeth's character can be both vilified and explored as a feminist role model. she is the real feminine power in the plays of William Shakespeare.
"To be more than what you were, you would be so much more the man." - William Shakespeare
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