![]() Some literary critics and historians argue that not only does Lady Macbeth represent an anti-mother figure in general, she also embodies a specific type of anti-mother: the witch. La Belle gives examples of "the strangled babe" whose finger is thrown into the witches' cauldron (4.1.30) Macduff's babes who are "savagely slaughter’d" (4.3.235) and the suckling babe with boneless gums whose brains Lady Macbeth would dash out (1.7.57–58) to argue that Lady Macbeth represents the ultimate anti-mother: not only would she smash in a baby's brains but she would go even further to stop her means of procreation altogether. La Belle furthers her argument by connecting the stopping of the menstrual cycle with the persistent infanticide motifs in the play. She hopes to become like a man to stop any sense of remorse for the regicide. By having her menstrual cycle stop, Lady Macbeth hopes to stop any feelings of sensitivity and caring that is associated with females. La Belle argues that by asking to be "unsex" and crying out to spirits to "make thick blood / Stop up th' access and passage to remorse", Lady Macbeth asks for her menstrual cycle to stop. The main biological characteristic that La Belle focuses on is menstruation. La Belle states that Lady Macbeth does not wish for just a move away from femininity she is asking the spirits to eliminate the basic biological characteristics of womanhood. Jenijoy La Belle takes a slightly different view in her article, "A Strange Infirmity: Lady Macbeth’s Amenorrhea". Anna Jameson's 1832 analysis of Shakespeare's heroines, Characteristics of Women ![]() Lady Macbeth's fantasy, Chamberlain argues, is not struggling to be a man, but rather struggling with the condemnation of being a bad mother that was common during that time. Lady Macbeth then personifies all mothers of early modern England who were condemned for Lady Macbeth's fantasy of infanticide. In early modern England, mothers were often accused of hurting the people that were placed in their hands. Chamberlain argues that the negative images of Lady Macbeth as a mother figure, such as when she discusses her ability to "dash the brains" of the babe that sucks her breast, reflect controversies concerning the image of motherhood in early modern England. Stephanie Chamberlain in her article "Fantasizing Infanticide: Lady Macbeth and the Murdering Mother in Early Modern England" argues that though Lady Macbeth wants power, her power is "conditioned on maternity", which was a "conflicted status in early modern England". ![]() The role has attracted countless notable actors over the centuries, including Sarah Siddons, Charlotte Melmoth, Helen Faucit, Ellen Terry, Jeanette Nolan, Vivien Leigh, Isuzu Yamada, Simone Signoret, Vivien Merchant, Glenda Jackson, Francesca Annis, Judith Anderson, Judi Dench, Renee O'Connor, Helen McCrory, Keeley Hawes, Alex Kingston, Marion Cotillard, Hannah Taylor-Gordon, Frances McDormand, Ruth Negga, Saoirse Ronan and Valene Kane.Īnalyses of the role Lady Macbeth as anti-mother The report of her death late in the fifth act provides the inspiration for Macbeth's " Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" speech. Her sleepwalking scene in the fifth act is a turning point in the play, and her line "Out, damned spot!" has become a phrase familiar to many speakers of the English language. She becomes an uninvolved spectator to Macbeth's plotting and a nervous hostess at a banquet dominated by her husband's hallucinations. Following the murder of King Duncan, however, her role in the plot diminishes. Lady Macbeth is a powerful presence in the play, most notably in the first two acts. After Macbeth becomes a murderous tyrant, she is driven to madness by guilt over their crimes and kills herself offstage. Some regard her as becoming more powerful than Macbeth when she does this, because she is able to manipulate him into doing what she wants. As the wife of the play's tragic hero, Macbeth (a Scottish nobleman), Lady Macbeth goads her husband into committing regicide, after which she becomes queen of Scotland. Lady Macbeth is a leading character in William Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth ( c. Lady Macbeth observes King Duncan ( Lady Macbeth by George Cattermole, 19th century)
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