Feminist Reading and Psychology of Lady Macbeth| Shakespeare| Macbeth

1. Feminist Reading and Psychology of Lady Macbeth

2. ● Prepared by : Avani Jani
● MA Sem : 1
● 22392 Paper 101 : Literature Of Elizabethan And
Restoration Period
● Roll No : 5
● Enrollment No : 4069206420220014
● Submitted to : Department Of English, MKBU

3. Feminism:
● Struggle to achieve equal rights,
and access to social, economic, and
political spheres.
● Key Premises : Against
Patriarchy, Sex versus Gender,
Cultural stereotyping,
Objectification, Language and
Gender.
(“FEMINISM AND CULTURAL STUDIES”)

4. Lady Macbeth :
● Matriachal influence upon the patriarchy.
● Macbeth’s ambition could not be fulfilled
without the support of Lady Macbeth. (Naranjo #)
● She exemplifies a progressive dramatic
liberation of women. (Naranjo #)
● Reverses gender bias.

5. Dialogue : Lady Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 5
● “Come, you spirits That tend on mortal
thoughts, unsex me here, And fill me,
from the crown to the toe, top-full Of
direst cruelty!”
● “Come to my woman’s breasts, And take
my milk for gall, your murd’ring ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature’s mischief!” (Shakespeare)
Dialogue : Lady Macbeth, Act 1, scene 7
● “Have pluck’d my nipple from his
boneless gums And dash’d the brains out,
had I so sworn as you Have done to this.”
(Shakespeare)
Dialogue : Lady Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 2
● “’Tis the eye of childhood That fears a

6. ● Totally different from other characters.
● Contradiction between Lady Macbeth
and Lady Macduff.
● Her sexual conditioning allows her to
ignore all possible impediments to what
she, as a woman knows to be shameful.
(Naranjo #)
● Terence Hawkes argues that reading
‘Macbeth’ from a feminist perspective
would produce “A text crucially different
from the one to which most of us are
presently accustomed.” (Naranjo #)
● Lady Macbeth and Witches make the
play more interesting.

7. .
Psychology of Lady Macbeth
● It was not all at once, or without a struggle,
that she arrived at this terrible resolution.
● struggle, that she arrived at this terrible
resolution. There is the agony of inward
conflict. (MUNRO #)
● “Come, you spirits That tend on mortal
thoughts, unsex me here, And fill me, from the
crown to the toe, topful Of direst cruelty !
Make thick my blood, Stop up the access and
passage of remorse ; That no compunctious
visitings of nature Shake my fell purpose, nor
keep peace Between the effect and it! Come
to my woman's breasts, And take my milk for

8. gall, you murthering ministers, Wherever in your sightless substances You
wait on nature's mischief! Come, thick night, And pall thee in the dunnest
smoke of hell! That my keen knife see not the wound it makes, Nor heaven
peep through the blanket of the dark, To cry, Hold, hold !” (Shakespeare)
● Familiar with the personality and mindset of Macbeth.
● Wished to throw whole weight of her influence into the opposite scale.
● Taunts of Lady Macbeth made Macbeth slave of Lady Macbeth not only in
thought but in deed also.
● Not able to carry bloody burden.
● Suffered silently and alone.
● Her journey is all between confusion of thoughts and moral conception.

9. .
● Calm during the crime-
“ The sleeping and the dead Are but as
pictures; 'tis the eye of childhood That fears a
painted devil." u A little water clears us of this
deed ; How easy is it then !” (Shakespeare)
● In her sleepless night she feels that,
“all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten
her little hand” (Shakespeare)
● If there were no sleep-walking scenes,no representation of her as bowed
under the weight of her woes, she would have been no woman, but a demon.
(MUNRO #)

10. Works cited
Munro, Robert. “The Journal of Speculative Philosophy.” JSTOR, vol. 21, 1887. JSTOR,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/i25668122.
Naranjo, Esther. “The Two Sides of the Feminist Evidence in Shakespeare's Tragedies and Othello
Macbeth.” ResearchGate, University of Castilla-La Mancha, University of Castilla-La
Mancha.
Naranjo, Esther. “The Two Sides of the Feminist Evidence in Shakespeare's Tragedies and Othello
Macbeth.” ACIS & GALATEA: INVESTIGACIONES EN MITOCRÍTICA CULTURAL.
ResearchGate,
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320434451_The_Two_Sides_of_the_Feminist_Evi
dence_in_Shakespeare's_Tragedies_and_Othello_Macbeth.
Shakespeare, William. “The Project Gutenberg eBook of Macbeth, by William Shakespeare.”
Project Gutenberg, 25 April 2021, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1533/1533-h/1533-h.htm.

11. hhhv
Any question?
You can find me at
● avanijani.18@gmail.com