Shakespeare Defying Gender Roles

Until recently it was very uncommon to hear of a woman controlling a relationships let alone a marital relationship. Yet, somehow Shakespeare got away with this way before his time. Lady Macbeth is the quintessential "new woman" which doesn't come about until the end of the Victorian Era and even when this new woman does begin to come about in society it takes several decades until the term or idea is no longer considered taboo or to be a foreign concept. Shakespeare however, had realized the power of the female centuries before the modern/ new woman had even been thought up. Lady Macbeth is portrayed as a wife however, at the same time she happens to be the more masculine one in the relationship at least when it comes to the unsavory and cruel tasks of murdering the king and his guards. A woman's intuition is definitely what gives Lady Macbeth the knowledge that her husband is too weak to kill the king in order to advance his own career yet it his this masculine "willing to get dirty" in order to benefit oneselves mentality that gives Lady Macbeth the strength she needs to kill Duncan. While at the same time Macbeth himself is almost skirmish about killing the king; he is reluctant and when he finally gives in and is stabbing the king is cries out and yells. In traditional genders roles the woman is seen as the fragile, skirmish, nurturing and docile one who never wants to get her hands dirty while the male is seen as the provider and the one who is willing to do anything at any cost; the sacrificial one of the two. Even today it is more unheard for a woman to kill someone, you usually hear about men committing crimes and murdering people but hardly ever do you hear about a woman doing these things. A woman is suppose to the voice of reason to their unruly and rash counterparts but in this case Lady Macbeth is encouraging her husband to do the wrong thing.

LADY MACBETH Give him tending. He brings great news.
	Exit SERVANT
30 35 40	The raven himself is hoarse That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan Under my battlements. Come, you spirits That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full Of direst cruelty. Make thick my blood. Stop up the access and passage to remorse, That no compunctious visitings of nature Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between The effect and it! Come to my woman’s breasts, And take my milk for gall, you murd'ring ministers, Wherever in your sightless substances You wait on nature’s mischief. Come, thick night, And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell, That my keen knife see not the wound it makes, Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark To cry “Hold, hold!”

She is just as rash if not more rash and unbeliveable because when Macbeth begins to have doubts it is she who re-convinces him that killing the king is a good idea, she is also the one who comes up with the plan of how to kill the king. Women during this time period aren't supposed to be sneaky and manipulative. Having finished reading the play and knowing from the last time I read Macbeth it begs the question if the conclusion of Lady Macbeth at the end of the play is Shakespeare saying that women can try and act like men all they want but in the end they don't have the stomach for the consequences of their actions like a man might. Shakespeare is saying that women can't play with the big boys, they can try all they want but in the end they just won't be able to handle it.