Lady Macbeth Unsexed, and Gender and Power in Mid-11th Century Scotland

For Lady Macbeth and her husband, masculinity is synonymous (means the same as) with cruelty and violence. However, in the play, women are portrayed as dangerous forces that can emasculate and ruin men. Discuss why Lady Macbeth would wish to be “unsexed.”
What does this scene suggest about gender and power in Scotland in the mid 11th century?
(Respond in a mini essay with introduction and two body paragraphs).
From the day children are born, the idea of how they should behave begins to take shape in their mind. From subtleties such as giving female babies more care than their male counterparts, to more obvious signs such as the colour of the baby’s clothes and the toys they are given to play with, society never ceases in slowly but surely implementing gender roles in our minds. In the play
Macbeth, by William Shakespeare, Macbeth the antagonist and the main character, murders the
King so that he will ascend to the throne. Lady Macbeth however, is the one who manipulates her husband to commit the violent deed to serve her own desire for power, this is shown especially in
Act 1 Scene 5, in which Lady Macbeth asks to be unsexed. Through the use of language and characterisation, Shakespeare suggests to his viewers that women did not have the ability or the right to hold power in Scotland in the mid 11th century.
Lady Macbeth’s characterisation is this soliloquy begins to take shape as a woman who desires power but has been conditioned to believe that she does not have the right to hold it. This can be clearly seen throughout the second soliloquy, in which she asks for her woman’s breast milk to be replaced with gall. The very symbol of motherhood, a woman’s breast, is something that is s in today’s society, yet for Lady Macbeth, she wishes to be rid of it, for she believes that as a woman, she is mentally unable to commit acts of violence. “Make my feelings numb and incapable of pity”
This quote from Lady Macbeth reveals a woman who desires not to have any of society’s perceived womanly qualities of love and sympathy, rather she wishes to be pitiless. This is a stereotypical masculine trait that was reinforced time and time again through society, as men were constantly the people who were fighting on the battlefield and the women and children were the people left to watch, and pray for protection by men. By revealing to the audience Lady Macbeth’s desire to be sexless, Shakespeare is promoting this flawed idea of gender expectations, as Lady
Macbeth is yet another victim of the crippling weight of gender expectations for women. Lady
Macbeth simply can not believe that she has the ability or the right to take power as a woman.
Symbolism in this soliloquy is used to great effect by Shakespeare to show to the audience that women do not have the ability or the right to hold power. At the start of the soliloquy, the raven, an omen of death, is referenced.”The raven itself is hoarse from croaking the news of Duncan’s fatal entrance under my battlements.” This is symbolic of the deadly deed that Lady Macbeth is plotting, and since the raven is hoarse, this signifies that the murder that Lady Macbeth has planned is too much for even the omen of death to contemplate. Thus showing to the audience that women in
Scotland in the 11th century did not have the ability or the right to hold power. Also the fact that
Lady Macbeth chooses to call upon the night which the symbol of a dark soul, or of death is extremely significant, as for a man, this is not needed, but for a woman to take the throne, not alongside, but ahead of her husband, only the powers of death and of darkness will help her accomplish her desires. This reveals once again to the audience that women in Scotland in the
11th century do not have the ability, nor the right to hold power.
In Lady Macbeth’s opening scene, we see that she is a woman who is attempting to defy her gender expectations, but sees no way to achieve her desires without calling upon the spirits of the night to remove the very symbol of her womanhood. This reveals to the audience that a woman, in
Scotland, in the 11th century has no right, nor do they have the ability to take power