Masculinity Quotes Flashcards
Lady Macbeth criticising Macbeth
“My hands are of your colour but i shame to wear a heart so white”. Suggests lady Macbeth is equally responsible for the murder. This metaphor shows how Lady Macbeth’s ashamed of Macbeth’s lack of ruthlessness and ambition. Colour white is symbolic of purity and innocence which symbolises Macbeth’s weakness. Highlights the contrast between lady and Macbeth - tension between ambition and conscience (lady Macbeth does whatever, Macbeth struggles with guilt and morality)
“A woman’s story of winter’s fire” - when Macbeth talked about his hallucination of floating dagger. Suggests that Macbeth is more like a woman imparting a scary dream to her friends at the fireside rather than the brave man he appears to be. By emasculating Macbeth, she bends her proud husband to her will as Macbeth could not endure being called womanly by his wife. This both fits and contradicts the stereotypes of women in the Jacobean period. She is manipulative (typical) but also powerful (atypical)
“When you durst do it, you were a man” - insults his manliness. Shows power of lady Macbeth has it persuades Macbeth to kill Duncan since she says that he will be even more of a man when he’s king.
Her power and violence
“Come to my woman’s breasts and take my milk for gall” swapping milk - a symbol of nurturing and femininity to fall, a symbol of
“I have given suck…have plucked from my nipple its boneless gums and dashed the brains out” if she promised to Macbeth that she would do something - so significant that to a Jacobean audience who believed a woman’s primary role was to nurture a child, seeing Lady Macbeth willing to abhorrently kill their own child is shocking, positioning them to see Lady Macbeth as villainous
Lady Macbeth being masculine
“Bring forth men-children only, for thy…will produce male children only” -shes manly enough to only give birth to male children
“O gentle lady…the repetition in a woman’s ear would murder as it fell” - Macduff is so tied with the Jacobean notion of female gentleness
