Lady Macbeth Flashcards
(7 cards)
Look like the innocent flower, / But be the serpent under’t
Look like the innocent flower, / But be the serpent under’t
look like the time
Reveals to Macbeth how she emulates more innocent characteristics to manipulate and hide her true intention
Shakespeare further reveals how women use their appearance to gain power and manipulate
- impossible to know the true intentions of people
- wants James to be weary of nobles / advice to
- wants to make sure that they are “welcome “ any positive feelings she has a merely surface level - incapable of forming meaningful relationships - her public persona is superficial (attempts to replicate genuine emotions - perhaps this is a result of the isolation of women }
Take my milk for gall
- milk connotes the idea of a mother hood, implies she is in grief of the death of her child
- Duty woman is unfulfilled to provide an heir in a Jacobean society
- she compensates this by rejecting femininity; compassion and instead possesing masculine traits
- Her attempts to gain power in a society where women are marginalised + their only recognition is through childbirth
- but as it turns to “gall” it is symbolic of her curroption of the malign powers and her full submission to evil
- A pivotal point + arguable the beginning of her moral decline
come you spirits unsex me here
- completely renounces feminity → her attempts to eradicate the ainima in herself by divorcing her feminine
- the imperative signifies her desperation - her unrepressuble need to become masculine, it amplifies her detestation of being a woman.
- And the anger she feels towards her position in society,
- it is important to take into account that she is grieving and just lost a child she still seems to have “milk”
- Perhaps he has her embody the 1 of the 5 stages of grief - anger to further amplify this effect.
- Perhaps Shakespeare attempts to justify her spiritual Malpractice as a coping mechanism to her grief
- Interestingly lady Macbeth believes needs to be “unsexed”
- conventional interoperation → to embody bitterness and immorality you must possessive masculine traits → twisted notion of manhood is only brute strength and disruption
- Her perception of men allows Shakespeare to criticise males behaviour in society
- deeper level - when the death of her new born is taken into account it is possible that shakespeare uses her inclination to witchcraft as his ulterior motive to Gian favour of King James and prove his daemonologie as credible by confirming women’s spiritual and emotional weakeness - easier suspectible to possession
too full of the milk of Human kindness
Psychological misunderstanding of Macbeth,
- compkeelty renounces feminity
- Imposes her own immorality to Macbeth -
make thick my blood
wants to be changed to a biological level wants to be completely change her to become unfeeling
pivotal moment as she decided to dedicate her life entirely to witchcraft which is arguably the reason for her demise
she begins to experience paranoia int he play it is symbolic of the futility and the powerless the spirits the ominpotence God has over malign forces — overcome by moral conscience
christians audience - preached a religious lesson
when you durst do it then you were a man
- masculine traits are evil and psychopathic
- reconsideration of self worth → bullying is a form form of psychological and interllcutal superiority she has over macbeth → posses great insight into the male psyche → aware her only form of power in a society where women are deterministic losers, attempts to correct injustice by using martial associations to gain power
- mainpulates the archetype of mother and son. Expression of diaapsoiontmern is a manipulation tactic
