• LMB (Lady Macbeth) thinks MCB (Macbeth) is too weak to pull off murder
    • This suggests that LMB sees herself as having more power in their relationship.
      • And, as we will see later, she does have more power than her husband despite being considered in Medieval society as being the “weaker” sex
    • She is the stronger more powerful half of their marriage.
  • She is cruel
    • uses / plans on using others for murder.
  • Cares more about her own power
  • She is determined and ambitious, more so than her husband at this moment.
  • She is quick to act but not to think things through fully.
  • Power hungry-more so right now than MCB
  • highly manipulative
  • LMB trusts the supernatural- she is not a good pious / religious woman that a Noblewoman is supposed to be.
  • *LMB doesn’t understand human emotion.
“Come to my woman’s breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murd’ring ministers”
  • From the line where LMB calls her breasts “Murdering ministers” we can assume 2 things:
    • She has given birth and breast fed babies
    • But none have lived.
      • Macbeth’s line is a barren one.
    • In Medieval times it was the Noblewoman’s main priority in life to give birth to heirs in order to carry on the family legacy. The Macbeths have no heirs, no children.
    • The only way for LMB to gain any power and agency of her own is by taking it-murdering Duncan and making MCB the king of Scotland would make her Queen and give her infinite power.
  • Breast milk is associated with children, babies, innocent, nourishment, and tender care.
    • but here LMB sees them as murderers creating a paradox—her breast milk was supposed to bring nourishment and nutrients but instead it brings death.
 “unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood;
Stop up the access and passage to remorse,”

 

  • Prays to the supernatural to make her emotionally and psychologically more masculine
    • Prays to the supernatural to make her emotionally and psychologically more masculine
      • By asking the spirits for this, it suggests that women, at the time, could not be considered cruel and powerful.
    • LMB wants to be made emotionally dead/ inhuman and removed from human empathy and remorse.
    • Women are stereotyped / seen in this time as being nourishing, nurturing, caring, and weaker than a man.
    • Men were seen as needing to be stoic:
      • stoicism = a classical philosophy which meant resignation, fortitude (strength), and the suppression of emotion.
      • The problem with stoicism (that we’ll see later on when we meet McDuff) is that it neglects the capacity to feel in favour of reason when emotions are the very thing that makes us human
    • To become strong and powerful in order to gain agency LMB feels like she must get rid of all her human emotions.
    • She feels like she must separate herself from her emotions and become more LIKE a man.