The primary female characters in Macbeth are Lady Macbeth, Lady Macduff, and the witches. All of these female characters are strong people who are unafraid of their male counterparts and are often able to exercise power over them.
Lady Macbeth’s ambition and manipulative powers are well known. She takes a recalcitrant Macbeth and molds him into a murderous force. At one point she actually asks spirits to “unsex” her and enable her to act with...
The primary female characters in Macbeth are Lady Macbeth, Lady Macduff, and the witches. All of these female characters are strong people who are unafraid of their male counterparts and are often able to exercise power over them.
Lady Macbeth’s ambition and manipulative powers are well known. She takes a recalcitrant Macbeth and molds him into a murderous force. At one point she actually asks spirits to “unsex” her and enable her to act with the cruelty of a man.
Lady Macduff is another strong female character, although she is less well-known. When her husband flees to England to help Malcolm gather an army, she decries him a traitor. She does not simply accept his decision as right and just, and she does not consider it her place to passively accept what she considers his betrayal of his family.
The witches are the catalysts that set all the problems in motion. Although Macbeth tries to command them, they will not be directed by him. They hold him in little regard and have no qualms about leading him astray. Hecate is a female, the goddess of sorcery, and she does not seem to be answering to any male supernatural force.
Feminism was probably not much of an issue in Shakespeare's time, so it may have seemed odd to audiences that so many of his female characters were of independent mindsets. It certainly led to many interesting conflicts in his plays.
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