Women and Patriarchal Power in Shakespeare’s Macbeth and King Lear: A Feminist Reading

Abstract

Shakespeare’s Macbeth and King Lear demonstrate a variety of images of women, both at the center of, and sidelined by, men’s power and influence within a male-dominated social and political system. Through a feminist reading, this essay investigates how these female characters navigate the obstacles, provoke rebellion, and are ultimately victimized by social structures governed by patriarchy and rigid notions of gender. Specifically focusing on Lady Macbeth, the three witches, Cordelia, Goneril and Regan, the essay provides an analysis of female characters, the relationship between their power, ambition, gender and social constraint, how they negotiate patriarchal authority. Lady Macbeth's rejection of traditional feminine identity and his attempt to manipulate the political machinations in Macbeth exposes how the society limits the ambition of women and her subsequent mental breakdown illustrates the dire effects of subverting expectations imposed on femininity whereas in King Lear the challenge to the traditional role of the women, which is that the authority figure has to be a man, is evident in all women, but is illustrated clearly through cordelia's rebellion to paternal order versus Regan and Goneril's manipulation of politics. The women's treatment and the decisions made through their identity is clearly dictated and affected by masculine ideals, therefore their interactions prove to us how the characters' lives differ and how these differences are a result of the patriarchal framework of society, however these plays simultaneously uphold and at the same time create doubt within the patriarchal traditions of the Elizabethan world.