“All hail, Macbeth, that shalt be king hereafter!” (Mac. 1.3.53)

Well, that didn’t end well, did it?

Macbeth has always been one of my favorite Shakespeare plays. It’s got magic, it’s got blood, it’s got patriarchal undertones so intense I’m one second away from combusting if I don’t talk about them. While Shakespeare was arguably more progressive on gender than some of his contemporaries, let’s be honest – he was still several hundred years off from writing anything close to a feminist icon. So, it’s no big surprise his female characters sometimes get the short end of the stick. One in particular, has always stuck with me. Not just for her drive or her iconic monologues, but because of how quickly she gets flattened into “the villain.” Despite being one of Shakespeare’s most layered and fascinating characters, she’s often misunderstood, or villainized without context. So, this essay will try to give Lady Macbeth her due complexity from a feminist perspective, digging tino all the reasons she’s been unfairly condemned as a “Bad Woman.”

To summarize the play for the unfamiliar: three witches prophesize the titular character Macbeth’s rise to the Scottish throne. Thrilled, he relays the news to his wife, Lady Macbeth. She is far more decisive than her husband, and immediately encourages regicide as the most direct route to power. After some convincing, a hesitant Macbeth obeys. Once king, he spirals further into violence and murder to maintain control, this time without his wife’s prompting. Both he and Lady Macbeth are eventually consumed by guilt and begin to unravel. Lady Macbeth eventually dies by suicide, while Macbeth falls in battle against a rebellion soon after.

With that foundation, let’s talk about Lady Macbeth. Not as a plot device or antagonist, but as a deeply gendered character. The clearest example is herer “unsex me here” soliloquy, which makes it clear  she believes womanhood is incompatible with the bloodshed she wishes to orchestrate. Once she finds out about the prophecy, she calls on the spirits of the house:

“Come, you spirits / That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, / And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full / Of direst cruelty. Make thick my blood. / Stop up th’ access and passage to remorse, / That no compunctious visitings of nature / Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between / Th’ effect and it. Come to my woman’s breasts / And take my milk for gall, you murd’ring ministers, / Wherever in your sightless substances / You wait on nature’s mischief.” (Mac. 1.5.47-57)

She rejects her femininity and everything tied to the female body, wishing for those parts of her to be replaced with cruelty instead. This way, her status as a woman won’t be a weakness to her. In the same scene, she accuses her husband of being “too full o’ th’ milk of human kindness,” using maternal language to frame kindness as frailty (Mac. 1.5.17). When he hesitates in killing the king, she mocks his masculinity saying “When you durst do it, then you were a man,” (Mac. 1.7.56) Again and again, her gender – or, rather, her subversion of it – is at the core of how the play presents her.

Yet, Lady Macbeth’s femininity isn’t just background noise. It’s weaponized. Her ambition is seen as deviant, her power unnatural. Shakespeare doesn’t merely punish her for orchestrating a murder – he punishes her for being a “Bad Woman.” Not just bad, but bad at being a woman by the era’s standards: Childless, ruthless, assertive, and unwilling to let power remain in male hands.

Let’s take a closer look.

At the time of Macbeth’s writing, a woman’s moral worth was tied directly to her ability to have kids. As the book Gender in Early Modern Europe explains, motherhood was “central to female virtue,” and infertility was often interpreted as a spiritual failure or a sign of divine disfavor (Wiesner-Hanks, 67). Within this framework, Lady Macbeth’s lack of an heir makes her seem incomplete, even dangerous. She’s a wife, yes, but not a mother. She lacks one of the few key traits that could soften her, and make her socially redeemable. In a culture that associated womens’ bodies with their moral compass, Lady Macbeth’s childlessness simply reads as one more sign of her monstrosity. It strips her of sympathy, of nurture, of any claim to femininity. It takes away anything that might anchor her to the title of a Good Woman (someone who has a blossoming family and possesses strong maternal instincts like Lady Macduff)  and, in doing so, makes her easier to condemn.

On the same note, her absence of children doesn’t just intensify Macbeth’s desperation to secure his power, it subtly shifts the responsibility for the “fruitless crown” onto her (Mac. 3.1.66). The play never questions whether Macbeth himself might be infertile, nor does it explore the laundry list of other reasons the couple might be childless. Instead, Lady Macbeth becomes the scapegoat for the violence that follows. She failed to provide him an heir, so the actions he takes to secure their legacy must be her fault by association. 

Additionally, early modern conduct books like The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstruous Regiment of Women warned explicitly against women taking on authority, calling female rule a type of social disorder (Knox, 38). The domestic ideal for women was rooted in silence, obedience, and moral restraint. Lady Macbeth is absolutely none of those things. She manipulates her husband, controls the pace of their plot, and labels emotional hesitation as weakness. When she mocks Macbeth for being “green and pale,” or asks “Are you a man?”, she’s exercising the very dominance a virtuous woman was never supposed to have (Mac. 1.7.41; 3.4.70). According to another book titled The English Gentlewoman, women were expected to exercise influence indirectly, through grace and submission, not overt control (Oh Behave). Lady Macbeth flagrantly touts all of that. Her ambition is on full display for the audience. And as fun as that is to watch, it’s the audacity of that visibility that damns her. She’s not just acting out for the sake of it, she’s purposefully seeking power and influence, defying every possible social norm in the process.

Which brings us to the final reason Lady Macbeth is a Bad Woman. It’s that her power destabilizes both Macbeth as a character and the patriarchal systems surrounding them. See, in addition to all those standards mentioned above, a wife wasn’t just her husband’s companion. She was his moral mirror. Her lack of virtue was seen as evidence of his own. The Book of Proverbs – the cornerstone of domestic Protestant Christian expectations – even says “A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband: but she that maketh ashamed is as rottenness in his bones,” (Proverbs, 12:4). In this cultural context, Macbeth marrying and staying loyal to Lady Macbeth – a controlling, cold, Bad Woman – could easily be read as a sign that he is already spiritually compromised. Her influence is proof of his weakness.

It’s not just that Macbeth commits murder. That would be horrifying on its own, yes, but it could still be framed as masculine or even kingly (see: Hamlet). The real sin is that he allows a woman to convince him to do it. That single fact subverts the natural order, the moral hierarchy, and gender norms all at once. The husband is supposed to be the head of the household. The protector. The leader. Macbeth? He’s a man who bends to his wife. Who lets her call him a coward. Who lets her drive the narrative.

So, her villainy becomes contagious. It bleeds into him. He’s guilty not just of ambition, but of letting a woman take the wheel. That’s more than indecisiveness, it’s social collapse. It threatens the whole idea of patriarchal control and Shakespeare knows this. That’s why the specter of gender lingers over every scene Lady Macbeth is in. That’s why she dies suddenly and offstage. Why her suicide is mentioned offhandedly in Act V almost as an afterthought. She must be destroyed in a way that ultimately uplifts the patriarchy in order for the audience to feel safe again. 

That’s her entire narrative: a woman who wanted, and therefore, a woman who must fall.

The tragedy, then, isn’t just her demise. It’s in the framework that offers her no escape from villainy. The play gives her no room to be complicated, no way to be ambitious without being condemned. She’s not portrayed as a woman navigating a patriarchal system with limited options for upward mobility. She’s not portrayed as a tragic character like her husband. She’s not even explored in the context of the broader political violence Macbeth unleashes.

And the worst part? Lady Macbeth seems to understand these limitations. When she begs the spirits of the house to “unsex her,” she’s not asking to become a man, per se – she’s asking to become other, to be stripped of her socially scripted femininity so she can step into a role that isn’t available to her otherwise. She sees no path to power that includes her womanhood. That is bleak. That is ritualistic self-erasure on a fundamental level so she can do what she views as necessary work. Yet neither the text nor society leaves any room for pointing out how horrifying a request that is. She’s simply a Bad Woman. Not nurturing enough, not feminine enough, too willing to mirror the cruelty of men.

But if Shakespeare’s messaging is so dated, why am I still talking about it? The text is 400 years old. Surely, we’ve collectively moved on.

Not even close.

Shakespeare’s fingerprints are all over modern media. He invented over 1700 words, his characters echo across centuries. Over 50% of the world’s population studies Shakespeare in school at some point, and Macbeth, being short and thrilling, is an educator favorite (Paul). These narratives don’t gather dust in library collections, they live in our culture, resurfacing again and again. Thus, each time someone fails to interrogate Lady Macbeth, the Bad Woman archetype gets a new lease on life.

This character trait isn’t confined to Elizabethan drama, either. She just gets a costume change from time to time. 

Take Claire Underwood (House of Cards). She’s poised, intelligent, merciless – and almost immediately framed as cold and unloving. Her ambition is portrayed as a mask that hides emotional sterility. When she seizes power for herself – which was, by the way, only in the final season because Kevin Spacey was fired amid sexual misconduct allegations – she’s not celebrated; she’s feared (Willimon).

Cersei Lannister (Game of Thrones) is another textbook example. She’s fiercely political, brilliant at manipulation, and constantly derided as a “bad mother” despite doing everything in her power to protect her children. Her arc shows her increasing power, but also her increasing isolation, madness, and ultimate downfall. She commits atrocities, yes, but so do her male counterparts. Male counterparts who are given redemptive arcs and fandom praise. She, on the other hand, is unceremoniously crushed by falling rocks (Benioff).

Carmela Soprano (The Sopranos) is more complicated, but still shows traces of the Bad Woman. She is complicit in her husband’s crimes while feigning moral superiority. As a result, she walks a tightrope: powerful behind the scenes, but denied real agency over her life. Her punishment? A life of existential dread and familial problems (Chase).

And Hela from Thor: Ragnarok? She’s exiled for being too good at war. For being too powerful. She literally embodies death and destruction, but her crime is essentially the same as Lady Macbeth’s: she wanted to rule. With a legitimate claim to the throne, no less. She gets stabbed (Waititi).

Across all these examples, the pattern is clear. Women who seek power outside traditional norms are vilified, and they are rarely allowed the moral complexity of their male peers. Ambition makes them dangerous, not human. Even when they’re right.

But the real problem lies beyond the screen. These messages about power and who should wield it seep into real life. 

A 2023 study from Women Of Influence+ – a global organization aiming to advance gender equity in the workplace – found that 86.6% of women experienced a phenomenon called Tall Poppy Syndrome. The term refers to when someone is “attacked, resented, disliked, criticized, or cut down because of their achievements and/or success,” resulting in lower confidence, stress, and mental health issues. A shocking 67.8% of respondents began looking for new employment as a result of Tall Poppy Syndrome, a shift that impacts both the individual and the job they are leaving negatively (Ambitious Women).

Even more telling, a 2025 study by leadership advisory firm Russell Reynolds Associates revealed that women CEOs were simultaneously twice as likely to be described as too ambitious and not ambitious enough compared to their male counterparts (Combe et al). To subvert the patriarchy and take on traditional ‘male’ traits makes a woman unnatural, and hard to stomach. To lean into that system, to play into a more ‘feminine’ performance of gender is to be weak, and weakness has no place in the workforce. Whether you are a Good Woman or a Bad Woman is irrelevant. In either case, a woman in power is a woman in power. And that is fundamentally unacceptable.

In politics, the trope of the “ambitious woman” is practically a genre. Think of Hillary Clinton or Kamala Harris – constantly dissected, mocked, and vilified in ways their male counterparts simply are not. Research from the Barbara Lee Family Foundation shows that American voters are more likely to question a woman’s motives for seeking office, whereas male candidates are assumed to be doing it out of civic duty (Politics is Personal).

Sound familiar? 

That’s the modern echo of Lady Macbeth. A woman’s ambition isn’t just ambition. It must be pathologized, and then punished.

That’s not to say our Lady is without hope. There are reimaginings that offer Lady Macbeth her due complexity. The Florence Pugh-led film Lady Macbeth reframes its central character with a nuanced lens, giving her depth, agency, and contradiction (William). In the recent David Tennant and Cush Jumbo staging of the play, gender presentation is subverted. Lady Macbeth is the lone white dress amid a sea of androgynous grey kilts. Her femininity is not erased, but emphasized, made powerful and central (Kellaway).

So maybe it’s time we let go of Lady Macbeth as one of Shakespeare’s ‘greatest villains.’ Maybe Lady Macbeth was never the architect of her husband’s downfall but rather, another casualty of it. Maybe the real tragedy isn’t what she did, but what she was never allowed to become. Maybe we should finally let her take the stage in her own right, and speak the lines she was never given:

“All hail, Lady Macbeth, that shalt be queen hereafter!”

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Refrences

“Ambitious Women: Almost 90% Globally Are Penalized at Work.” Women of Influence, 14 April 2025, http://www.womenofinfluence.ca/2023/03/01/tps-press-release/. 

Combe, Emma, et al. “Time to Tell a Different Story.” Russell Reynolds Associates, 7 March 2025, http://www.russellreynolds.com/en/insights/reports-surveys/ceo-talk-time-to-tell-a-different-story. 

Game of Thrones. Created by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, performances by Emilia Clarke, Kit Harington, and Peter Dinklage, HBO, 2011–2019.

House of Cards. Created by Beau Willimon, performances by Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright, Netflix, 2013–2018.

Kellaway, Kate. “‘I Studied the Play in School – I Hated It’: Cush Jumbo and David Tennant on Playing the Macbeths.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 3 December 2023, http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2023/dec/03/macbeth-cush-jumbo-david-tennant-donmar-warehouse-interview. 

Knox, John. The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstruous Regiment of Women. Edinburgh, 1558.

Lady Macbeth. Directed by Oldroyd William, performances by Florence Pugh, Cosmo Jarvis, Paul Hilton, and Naomi Ackie, Samuel Goldwyn Films, 2016. 

“Oh Behave! Conduct Books for Women.” Trinity Hall Cambridge Library, 8 March 2021, http://www.trinhall.cam.ac.uk/library/oh-behave-conduct-books-for-women/.

“Politics Is Personal: Keys to Likeability and Electability for Women (2016).” Barbara Lee Family Foundation, 29 August 2024, http://www.barbaraleefoundation.org/research/likeability/. 

The Holy Bible. King James Version, American Bible Society, 1999.

The Sopranos. Created by David Chase, performances by James Gandolfini and Edie Falco, HBO, 1999–2007.

Thor: Ragnarok. Directed by Taika Waititi, performances by Chrus Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, and Cate Blanchett, Marvel Studios, 2017.

Shakespeare, William. Macbeth. Edited by Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine, Folger Shakespeare Library, 2003.

Smith, Paul. “Shakespeare Lives.” British Council, November 2015, http://www.britishcouncil.org/research-policy-insight/insight-articles/shakespeare‑lives.

Wiesner-Hanks, Merry E. “Body.” Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. 61–156. Print. New Approaches to European History.