Macbeth Gender Quotes Page 5

By the play's final act, Lady Macbeth has been reduced to an enfeebled woman who sleepwalks through the castle and mutters to herself as she attempts to wash the imaginary blood from her hands (5.1.6). We're struck by the way traditional gender roles are reestablished at the end of the play (unlike the beginning of the drama, where Lady Macbeth is a domineering figure who helps drive her husband to murder and kingship). By Act iii, scene iv, Lady Macbeth doesn't even appear on stage with her husband (off stage, she's surrounded by a group of gentlewomen who tend to her in her illness) and Macbeth says he has no time to think about his wife when he learns of her death (5.5.3). Lady Macbeth, who was once so central to the action of the play, is a pretty marginal character when all is said and done.