Lady Macbeth Analytical Essay
Can’t Bear No Heir: A Psychoanalytic Critical Response of Shakespeare’s Macbeth in relation to Lord and Lady Macbeth’s Childlessness Leading to Feelings of Inadequacy and Ambition
In William Shakespeare’s Scottish Play, the motivations for Lord and Lady Macbeth’s actions stem from their feelings of inadequacy due to their inability to have children. This feeling of inadequacy leads the two characters to take the throne from their King, in an attempt to fill the void of being childless.
Macbeth, as a thane, has three purposes: to go to war for the King, to have a wife, and to have an heir, the last two being much intertwined. Since war is over and he is unable to have an heir, he begins to distance himself from his thus failing in the role of husband as well. Therefore, Lord Macbeth has to fill the void in his life, and reclaim his purpose and masculinity, by ambitiously reaching for the throne and becoming a sort of father figure to Scotland, as Duncan was for him. Lord Macbeth feels inadequacy because he isn’t able to integrate back into society after being in the military, he didn’t …show more content…
From Lady Macbeth’s speech, the reader can assume that the child she had died as Macduff tells Lord Macbeth that “he has no children” (Act 4, Scene 3, line 222). When Lady Macbeth got her husband’s letter she was desperate to take it and convinced Lord Macbeth to follow through and become King because she saw this opportunity to obtain power as a way of fulfilling her role as a wife by being useful to her husband by giving Macbeth power. In Lady Macbeth mind, if she cannot provide her husband an heir, at least she can find some way of providing for him in the form of helping him gain a
In William Shakespeare’s Scottish Play, the motivations for Lord and Lady Macbeth’s actions stem from their feelings of inadequacy due to their inability to have children. This feeling of inadequacy leads the two characters to take the throne from their King, in an attempt to fill the void of being childless.
Macbeth, as a thane, has three purposes: to go to war for the King, to have a wife, and to have an heir, the last two being much intertwined. Since war is over and he is unable to have an heir, he begins to distance himself from his thus failing in the role of husband as well. Therefore, Lord Macbeth has to fill the void in his life, and reclaim his purpose and masculinity, by ambitiously reaching for the throne and becoming a sort of father figure to Scotland, as Duncan was for him. Lord Macbeth feels inadequacy because he isn’t able to integrate back into society after being in the military, he didn’t …show more content…
From Lady Macbeth’s speech, the reader can assume that the child she had died as Macduff tells Lord Macbeth that “he has no children” (Act 4, Scene 3, line 222). When Lady Macbeth got her husband’s letter she was desperate to take it and convinced Lord Macbeth to follow through and become King because she saw this opportunity to obtain power as a way of fulfilling her role as a wife by being useful to her husband by giving Macbeth power. In Lady Macbeth mind, if she cannot provide her husband an heir, at least she can find some way of providing for him in the form of helping him gain a