lady macbeth

Femme fatale archetype

Manipulative, villainous women who use feminine wiles to accomplish their own goals, seen as a threat

(Used to show danger of unrestrained women)

Eve and fall of man

Archetype where they’re tempted by sin and lose happiness as a result, often responsible for man’s failure too

Gender

Demonstrates perils of being female and portrays women as wicked when too powerful

Pivotal role in MB: perception of masculinity

Unconventionally given many soliloquies, develop characters voice

ambitious

Much more intense, violent and decisive than MB but despite brutal words, relies on MB to act

→ strategic or emotional (“Had he not resembled / My father as he slept”)

Ambition 2

Commits herself entirely to ambition, sees it as a sacrifice and abandons morality, salvation and natural order

Supernatural

Speaks in rhyming couplets + rhetorics + manipulation = like witches

→ subverted expectations + accused of witchery

Guilt

Punished by insanity, mental torment and eventual death

“little water” → “will these hands never be clean?”

Language at end

Speaks in prose which is typically reserved for lower class characters

Internal monologue is spoken aloud - random - disjointed

Words / phrases

Amoral

Removed from humanity and compassion

Unreliable

Paranoia / consumed

Overall

Arguably the antagonist

Alt: tragic heroine + fall from grace

→ uses gender to escape blame while puppeteering murders

Arguably a good supportive wife

Alt: way of furthering her own ambition