gender

Question 1

• metaphor
• cunning and merciless woman
• lacks feminine features
• ruthless heart views kindness as a weakness
• emmasculating macbeth
• words connote nurturing / motherhood

Answer 1

‘it is too full o’th’milk of human kindness’

Question 2

• womens role was to birth children and feed
• L.macbeth rejects as she tries to overpower’
• gall = acid -> painful -> bible = poison -> venom -> snake -> evil manifestation

Answer 2

‘Come to my woman breasts and take my milk for gall’

Question 3

Her actions contrasts from the expected gender roles as she tries to get rid of stereotypically feminine traits, from being obedient and gentle to being ruthless and violent. She believes that in order to achieve power, she needs to embody masculine traits, and must play this role because Macbeth does not.

Answer 3

‘unsex me here’

Question 4

She emasculates him and says that he would be less of a man for not wanting to kill him. So with his wife accusing him of his cowardness, he must match her ruthless behaviour, otherwise he may look weaker than a women, which would be shameful.

Answer 4

‘When you durst do it, then you were a man.’

Question 5

• macbeth orders assassins to kill banquo
• he asks if they have patience and forgiveness
• they respond:

Answer 5

‘We are men, my liege.’

Question 6

• women have cruelty but not violence or murder

Answer 6

‘Had he not resembled My father as he slept, I had done’t.’

Question 7

• lady macbeth acknowledges that it is joint guilt but the way he is acting is weak
• white has connotations of lifeless, weak, cowardly

Answer 7

‘My hands are of your colour, but I shame to wear a heart so white.’

Question 8

• macbeth
• breakdown of his relationship with LM and he is tired of this world
• briefness and pointlessness of life
• metaphor

Answer 8

‘Out, out, brief candle. Life’s but a walking shadow…It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing’