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Gender Roles In Macbeth

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Macbeth and the Great Chain of Being In the Elizabethan era, it was believed that everyone and everything had a place in the world that God and therefore fate had decided for them. This hierarchy, called the Great Chain of Being created stability in the society. Anything that did not belong in the chain or disrupted it created chaos in the world that could not be fixed until the wrong had be rectified. William Shakespeare’s Macbeth is the story of a Scottish thane whose vaulting ambition and naivety cause his eventual demise as he becomes king. With the encouragement from three witches and his wife, Macbeth achieves his goals by killing the king and others who threaten his title. Throughout the play, the Great Chain of Being is broken several times because of Macbeth’s unjust murders and as well characters defying their gender roles. To begin, according to Elizabethan society, the chain has been broken for the reason that characters do not act in way which correspond with their gender. Firstly, as Lady Macbeth learns of the witches’ prophecies that hail Macbeth as future King of Scotland, she wishes for the strength to kill Duncan. She prays to the spirits and cries “unsex me here, / And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full / of direst cruelty! Make thick my blood, / Stop up th’ access and passage to remorse” (1.5.42-45). Lady …show more content…

He looks sick, therefore he is weak as a woman would be, and he is cowardly for the reason that he doubts his actions. In this time period, it was believed that a real man was certain of his actions. Thus, Macbeth breaks the chain because he frequently displays feminine traits that are considered weak and lesser. The result is that he must also been taken out of the chain. Macbeth does not act as a man should and therefore he does not fit into the society. To conclude, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth disrupt the Great Chain of Being by displaying many traits that are not that of their

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