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Explore how Shakespeare presents Lady Macbeth as an unstable character (30 marks)
Thesis:
1. women shouldn’t be denied power
2. supernatural doesn’t control us - our own actions do
3. consequences of going against the great chain of being
Ending:
● guilt entraps Lady Macbeth - she surrenders to her inevitable damnation - her
distressed state of mind is indicative of the consequences of someone who strongly
opposes morality + the confines of religion
● Lady Macbeth’s hamartia is that she’s not free from remorse + she can’t free herself
from Christian guilt - she morphs from being the embodiment of evil to someone
who crumbles under the weight of such - Hectare doesn’t respond to her wishes of
being unsexed - doesn’t have their power so she descends into madness
● Lady Macbeth finds solace in paganism - calling on the witches - in paganism,
women who cannot have kids aren’t viewed as demons + excluded from society
Quotations:
1. “Too full o’th’milk of human kindness”
2. “Out damned spot”
3. “Come you spirits… and fill me… full of direst cruelty”
4. “Unsex me here”
5. “A little water clears us of this deed” - peripetia - her false thinking that she would be
able to abandon all human traits + emotions
6. “Sleep no more”
Motif - sleep - represents utter corruption + descent into evil - mental collapse shows that
moral justice cannot be avoided, and the blood on her hands is a symbolic stain of guilt that
deprives her of sleep - the contrast between A2S2 + A5S1 shows the longevity of the burden that
Lady Macbeth attempts to survive
, Form:
1. A5S1 - fragmented, disorganised nature of her somnambulant ramblings reflect her
fractured psyche as she relives the horror of Duncan's murder - irregular verse form
(broken lines, unusual repetitions and contradictions)
2. A1S5 - violent, visceral language "spirits" to "unsex her and fill her from the crown to
the toe top-full of direst cruelty" conveys her extreme, imbalance state of mind -
portrayed through her soliloquy - she rejects her femininity in pursuit of her power
which underscores her moral disequilibrium
Context: By subverting traditional expectations of women as nurturing and emotional,
Shakespeare suggests that the upheaval of the moral order will have terrible consequences -
explores the repercussions of going against your position in the Great Chain of Being, and
describes the process of following ambition in the nonexistence of morality
Critical Quotes:
1. The play is a victory of masculine over feminine, with Lady Macduff and Macbeth dead,
being a totally masculine world - Marilyn French
2. Macbeth is a tragedy that embodies the polarities of male and female power saying that
in this world, femininity is not an attribute to be equated with power - Caroline
Cakebread
Key Interpretation:
● femme fatales uses her feminine wiles to exploit men + accomplish her own goals -
Shakespeare highlights the perils of femininity or androgyny -
● LM’s anagnorisis (when she makes a critical discovery) is when she realises Macbeth
has killed Lady Macduff + her children - she realises she cannot nurture anyone into
good - she will always be a failure in Jacobean society
● LM is linked to Eve and the ‘Fall’ - she is responsible for the fall of an honourable,
Renaissance man - because she doesn’t conform to gender - she rejects motherhood
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