| Thesis:
Lady Maceth's madness is resulted from her failure in reversing the traditional
sexual binary, in which she attempts to play a man's role by giving up her
female sexuality.
I. The traditional binaries:
A. Man/Woman
B. King/Thane
C. Good/Bad
D. Power/Powerless
II. Macbeth as a play reverses
the binaries:
A. the remark of the three
witches in the beginning of the play: "Fair is foul, and foul is
fair:/ Hover through the fog and filthy air" (I, i, 11-2)
B. Macbeth's ambition for seizing the crown.
C. Lady Macbeth's remark on moral value:
Thou wouldst be great,
Art not without ambition, but without
The illness should attend it: what thou wouldst highly,
That wouldst thou holily; wouldst not play false,
And yet wouldst wrongly win: thou'dst have [¡K]. (I, v, 17-21)
D. Lady Macbeth's ambition
for playing man's role by giving up her femininity.
[¡K] Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me, from the crown to the toe, to-full
Of direst cruelty! Make thick my blood,
Stop up th'access and passage to remorse,
[¡K] Come to my woman's breast.
And take my milk for gall, you murd'ring ministers [¡K] (I,v, 41-7)
III. Lady Macbeth's failure
in reversing the sexual binary.
A. Lady Macbeth fails in
performing a "mobile sensibility" (Greenblatt 224).
B. Her madness is resulted from her struggle between the two sexual
identities.
IV. Conclusion
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