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What Are Gender Stereotypes In Macbeth

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In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Macbeth is visited by three witches who tell him it is his destiny to become king, and him and his wife, Lady Macbeth, plot to kill King Duncan in order to fulfill that destiny. Once the king is assassinated, both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth each go mentally insane in their own ways, and not in the way that the stereotype of their gender typically states. Each of the Macbeths’s traits do not match the stereotypical traits of males and females, and this causes an extreme amount of confusion for both of them. Gender stereotyping can lead to uncertainty of one’s true identity in society.
Firstly, both sexes have stereotypes placed on them. A gender stereotype is, as said by The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, “a generalised view or preconception about attributes or …show more content…

This article discusses what gender stereotypes are, the groups of people they affect the most, and the laws that are to prevent gender stereotyping. The typical male is seen as emotionless, manipulative, intelligent and violent, while the typical female is seen as emotional, kind, helpless and fearful. These gender stereotypes do more harm than good, as often when people do not fit a stereotype, they become confused as to where they truly belong in society. As stated by Robert Kimbrough in his article “Macbeth: The Prisoner of Gender”, people who follow their respective stereotype completely “are prevented from attaining and maintaining a full range of human character traits because of cultural attempts to render some exclusively feminine and some exclusively masculine” (176). In this article, Kimbrough

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