Women in the Elizabethan Era - Lady Macbeth

Women play a huge role in society. Even through these roles have changed over time, history is full of strong women. Lady Macbeth can be described as one of these strong women, who in fact played a very different role to other women of her time. She was determined, obsessed and ambitious. Lady Macbeth had qualities contradictory to the norms of women in the Elizabeth Era. She was dominant, manipulative and had total equality. Qualities that were completely opposite to women of her time.
Women of the Elizabethan Era were seen to be inferior to men. They were to do the housework, cook the food and produce children; Lady Macbeth has two sides to her. One that shows the qualities and actions of typical women of that time and one of that shows the complete opposite. When Lady Macbeth greets Duncan into her house, she plays the role of a typical woman. “Fair and noble hostess…” Women in this time also married not for love, but for wealth and status. In this case, Lady Macbeth contradicts this statement, Lord Macbeth and herself are in love and they do what they do for each other. Lady Macbeth and Macbeth have equality, unlike other couples in the Elizabethan Era.

In Macbeth, Lady Macbeth is a dominant and manipulative figure. She is the puppet master and Macbeth is the puppet. She does not take orders from Macbeth, she gives him orders. She plans the murder, Macbeth just commits the crime. Lady Macbeth is a very good example of a manipulative person. She uses Macbeth’s weaknesses against him. In order for her to get her husband to do what she wants, she questions his manhood and his love to her. When Macbeth decides he doesn’t want to commit the murder, she says “Was the hope drunk”. She is saying that when you made this promised to be were you drunk, because now you are breakfast it as if you were sober. She then uses this to question his love for her. Lady Macbeth’s use of manipulation through physical, mental and emotional means, gives her a way to control him.