Examples Of Patriarchy In Macbeth

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Feminist theory is a way to analyze a gender’s place in society based upon the gender roles that are given to them. One concept of feminism, patriarchy, is a society in which males are dominant and women are inferior in every occupation such as religion, politics, and economics. Women are also viewed as lacking the male organ, which is also considered a symbol of male power and other male characteristics. Women are treated with the same respect objects are treated with, the only justification being that woman are non-masculine and therefore should have no respect because they lack traits such as being strong, brave, and active. The defined female gender role of the time period consisted of traits which were identified as being timid, emotional,…show more content…
Lady Macbeth influences her husband to kill Duncan when Macbeth starts to doubt his role, he says “We will proceed no further in this business. He [Duncan] has recently honored me…” When Macbeth says he can’t kill the King, Lady Macbeth decides to kill King Duncan instead. When Lady macbeth goes to kill Duncan, she starts to gain feminine characteristics such as being timid and cannot kill the king because he resembles her father, “Had he not resembled/ My father as he slept, I’d done ‘t”(Shakespeare II.II.14-15). Since she sees her father, the feminine characteristics come back when she loses the ruthless nature she adopted when becoming masculine and succumbs to her emotional timid nature. This stresses she does not have the strength to kill the King even if she had assumed a male role at the beginning of the story. This brings back many other female stereotypes to her character. Although Lady Macbeth could have killed Duncan and gained great power from it, it shows how Sophocles and Shakespeare wanted to stress that femininity is innate and cannot be covered with male traits. lady Macbeth loses her chance at becoming a political figure which further emphasizes that females are not meant to have power which is reserved for man. In Sophocles’s Antigone, Antigone states, "I am here to say no to you, and die" this phrase really shows her true character of rebelling against Creon. Although she is
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