Role of Women in Macbeth

«LS2»The purpose of this research is to examine the role of women in Macbeth. The plan of the research will be to set forth the context of social history in which issues surrounding the characterization and action of women in the play can be addressed, and then to discuss the functioning and importance of the major and minor women's parts in that play, as well as in other of Shakespeare's works, from a feminist perspective, with a view toward showing how the modern feminist critical approach appears to differ from that of traditional dramatic criticism.

In order to appreciate the positioning and dramatic functioning of the women characters in Macbeth, it may be useful to explore the position and function of women in the society that was in the background of the play when it was written in 1606. Women in Renaissance England, particularly during the Elizabethan period, must be considered in light of the social structure of the time on one hand and in light of the extraordinary figure of Elizabeth I on the other. Kegl sees evidence of a certain peculiarity or contradiction in the social position of Elizabethan women, owing to what she terms Elizabeth's claims for a paradoxical double existence, together with the fact that Elizabethan society developed in the context of a tightly structured monarchy. Citing Elizabethan courtly literature, in particular George Puttenham's The Arte of English Poesie, K

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ered unitarily. Indeed, it is arguable that Shakespeare's manipulation of female characters is connected at least as much to the means by which he elaborates dramatic themes in general as to some particular opinion or evaluation of women as sentient and moral beings. A number of plays illustrate this point. To discuss Julius Caesar is to be bound by the facts of history. Shakespeare's principal source was undoubtedly Plutarch, and the core of the story is undoubtedly the assassination conspiracy and the civil war that followed it. All this is the stuff of melodrama and action-adventure stories, which is to say the stuff of men's stories. Even the personal tragedy that befalls Brutus in the wake of the assassination and the ignominy of defeat can be seen as the tragedy of a flawed individual. The fact that Cassius is initially motivated to lead the conspiracy as much by evidence of Caesar's imperial ambitions against the republican governmental structure of Rome is the stuff of politics, military strategy, and the vicious irony that, in the end, Octavius confirms the imperial rather than republican structure of the Roman state. These are historically the concerns of men, who are associated with the larger-than-life issues of polit
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Approximate Word count = 10698
Approximate Pages = 43 (250 words per page)

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