The Thin Gender Line in Macbeth Some people will do anything to get what they want. The characters in Macbeth are no exception. Shakespeare creates people who strive for authority or abuse it. The men and women in Macbeth have varying degrees of guilt, power, and integrity. To compare the genders in Macbeth, you need to understand how women were treated in Shakespeare's time. The great Queen Elizabeth I died three years before Macbeth was written, yet her reign made little difference to women's rights. “By the time of Queen Elizabeth's death, nearly everyone of both sexes agreed that female intelligence was inferior to male intelligence” (Fraser 4). Women were considered the “weakest vessel” (Fraser 4). A woman was forced to marry a man chosen by her father and was therefore under the complete control of her husband (Fraser 5). When Macbeth was written, women were expected to be virtuous, submissive, maternal, and nonviolent. However, men also saw women as temptresses and felt that they were more susceptible to the devil's influence (Fraser 5). Most women of that time had little control over their lives. Lady Macbeth is the antithesis of what a woman should have been. She is ruthless, bloodthirsty and non-maternal. He would "rip out the brains" of his son to satisfy his ambitions (1.7.64). Lady Macbeth is not content with a small part in the drama; he wants to be center stage. She almost seems ashamed of her fragile sex. “Come, you spirits, who have mortal thoughts, undress me here and fill me from head to toe, filled with the most atrocious cruelty!” (1.5.44-47). Lady Macbeth has a lot in common with the strange sisters. The...... middle of the paper... their gender and those who are the complete opposite. It shows that both genders can be ruthless and do anything to achieve their goal. The line between genders is thin and is crossed quite often in Macbeth. Works CitedFraser, Antonia. The weakest ship. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. 1984.Mahood, M.M. "Shakespeare's Puns." Shakespeare: Macbeth. Ed. John Wain.Nashville: Aurora Publishers Inc. 1970.Shakespeare, William. Macbeth. Folger Library General Reader's Shakespeare. New York: Washington Square. Press. 1959. Wait, Eugene. "Manliness and Valor in Macbeth". Twentieth-century interpretations of Macbeth. Ed. Terence Hawkes. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall Inc. 1977.Wills, Garry. Witches and Jesuits: Shakespeare's Macbeth. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.