Masculinity in Macbeth

Contradictory ideas of Masculinity in Macebeth

The Societal Concept

of Masculinity

Humanity vs. Manliness

"The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl." -Ladies Home Journal, 1918

“He responds by renouncing all humane considerations, and, when he learns that he cannot be killed by any man of woman born, this renunciation of human kinship and its moral constraints is complete” (1;10-12).

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/23/what-masculinity-means-to-men_n_6527710.html

"And to be more than what you were, you would

Be so much more the man. Nor time nor place

Did then adhere, and yet you would make both.

They have made themselves, and that their fitness now

Does unmake you."

-Lady Macbeth

Lady Macbeth

"Lady Macbeth enters and makes short work of her husband's virtuous resolution. The curious thing about her exhortation is that its rhetorical force is almost wholly negative. [S]he...cunningly premises her arguments on doubts about Macbeth's manly virtue."

The Perversion of Manilness in Macbeth

THE END

"One of the organizing themes

of Macbeth is the theme

of manliness: the word (with

its cognates) echoes and

re-echoes through the scenes,

and the play is unique for

the persistence and subtlety

with which Shakespeare

dramatizes the paradoxes

of self-conscious 'manhood.'"

-Jarold Ramsey

Humanity vs. Manliness

Article Critiques:

“...what is a man, and of what is he capable as part of his sex and of his race?” (1;17-18).

• Doesn’t explain meaning, take it to the next level
• Too much summarizing
• Deviating from main point
• No opinion

Main Points:

• As Macbeth becomes more "manly," he becomes less humane
• The twist of the "code of manly virtue" is to blame for his violent actions

“Art thou afeard/

To be the same in thine own act and valor

As thou esteem’st the ornament of life,

And live a coward in thine own esteem,

Letting “I dare not” wait upon “I would”,

Like the poor cat i’ the’ adage?”

- Lady Macbeth

Lady Macbeth

"Against Macbeth's stern but theoretical retort that he will perform only that which becomes a man, and no more, she replies that, on the contrary, by his own manly standards he will be a dull-spirited beast, no man, if he withdraws from the plot.”

"He had no [Patience].

His flight was madness. When our actions do not,

Our fears do make us traitors...

Wisdom! To leave his wife, to leave his babes,

His mansion and his titles in a place

From whence himself does fly? He loves us not" -Lady Macduff

Lady Macduff

"[Her] lament assumes a really dreadful irony in the next scene when Ross assures Malcolm in Macduff's presence that 'your eye in Scotland / Would create soldiers, make our women fight / To doff their dire distress' [IV. iii. 186-88]."

By: Jarold Ramsey

"Toxic Masculinity"

"[H]egemonic masculinity...has considerably

influenced recent thinking about men, gender, and social hierarchy...The concept of hegemonic masculinity was first proposed in reports from a field

study of social inequality in Australian high schools (Kessler et al. 1982)...The high school project provided empirical evidence of multiple hierarchies—in gender as well as in class terms—interwoven with

active projects of gender construction...

These beginnings were systematized in an article, “Towards a New Sociology of

Masculinity” (Carrigan, Connell, and Lee 1985), which extensively critiqued the “male sex role” literature and proposed a model of multiple masculinities and power relations. In turn, this model was integrated into a systematic sociological theory of gender."

-R. W. Connell and James W. Messerschmidt

Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concep

independent

non-emotional

aggressive

tough-skinned

competitive

clumsy

experienced

strong active

self-confident

hard

rebellious

SON

Was my father a traitor, Mother?

LADY MACDUFF

Why, one that swears and lies.

LADY MACDUFF

Why, the honest men.

Lady Macduff

“Lady Macduff denounces her virtuous husband to their son for what seems to her to be Macduff’s unmanly, even inhuman abandonment of his family. It is a strange twisted version of Lady Macbeth’s harangue and her husband’s responses earlier; there is the inevitable appeal to an assumed human nature[.]”

Loyalty vs. Power

“Dwelling hardly at all on the desirability of Duncan's throne, she instead cunningly premises her arguments on doubts about Macbeth's manly virtue. All of his previous military conquests and honors in the service of Duncan will be meaningless unless he now seizes the chance to crown that career by killing the king” (10;4-8).

Main Points:

• At the beginning, to Macbeth, being a good man is serving your country and being loyal to the king.
• By the end, to Macbeth, being a good man is doing whatever you can to gain power.

Nobility vs. Violence

“But, as he so often does, Shakespeare exposes with memorable clarity the dangers of such a comfortable assumption [of manliness]: the more Macbeth is driven to pursue what he and Lady Macbeth call manliness-the more he perverts the code into a rationale for reflexive aggression” (5;12-17).

Main Points:

• As Macbeth goes further to achieve true “manliness,” his actions become far more violent and irrational.

• At the beginning of Macbeth, manliness meant defending his country and king, but by the end of the story masculinity became about violence and killing to gain power.

Related to...

"What is a man?

Of what is he capable?

Where does his distinguishing worth lie?

What are his moral and metaphysical limits?"

-Jarold Ramsey

"Whither should I fly?

I have done no harm. But I remember now

I am in this earthly world; where to do harm

Is often laudable, to do good sometime

Accounted dangerous folly: why then, alas,

Do I put up that womanly defence,

To say I have done no harm?"

-Lady Macduff

Lady Macduff

"True masculinity has nothing to do with

those more gentle...these are for women alone.

“I have given suck, and know

How tender ‘tis to love the babe that milks.

I would, while it smiling in my face,

Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums

And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn as you

Have done to this.”

-Lady Macbeth

Comparing and Contrasting

Lady Macbeth

and Lady Macduff

Lady Macbeth

"[W]ith a truly fiendish cunning she goes on to...the murder of her own nursing infant. In this, of course, she re-enacts for Macbeth...the humiliating implication... that she would be more truly masculine in her symbolic act than he can ever be. And in offering to dash out the brains of "the babe that milks me," in effect she ritually murders the naked babe of pity that Macbeth has just summoned up as a tutelary spirit."

Compaing and Contasting

Lady Macbeth and Lady Macduff

Summary of

"The Perversion of Manliness in Macbeth":

Humanity vs. Manliness

“At the first of the play, Macbeth's ‘manly’ actions

in war are not contradictory to a general code of

humaneness or ‘kindness’ irrespective of gender:

but as the play develops, his moral degeneration

is dramatized as a perversion of a code of manly

virtue, so that by the end he seems to have forfeited

nearly all of his claims on the race itself” (1;4-8).

Main idea:

“The Perversion of Manliness in Macbeth” by Jarold Ramsey juxtaposes the different views of manliness.