Macbeth and Feminism

Shakespeare's Macbeth is a tragedy that embodies the polarities of male and female power, a play which seems to dramatize the deep divisions that characterize male-female relationships in all his plays. As Janet Adelman writes, "In the figures of Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, and the witches, the play gives us images of a masculinity and a femininity that are terribly disturbed." At the same time, critics have tended to discuss the relationship between Macbeth and Lady …

…predicts the complete eradication of female power which will ensue at the end of the play, with Lady Macbeth and Lady Macduff dead. Now widowed, Macduff, who was born by caesarean section, is a man with no mother, especially since a caesarean birth in Shakespeare's time inevitably led to the death of the mother. In the end, it is in the divide between male and female worlds in Macbeth that the nucleus of tragedy lies.