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Macbeth essay

Can someone please give me a mark out of 30 for this essay :smile: (Its only half an answer -1 paragraph out of 2- so please keep that in mind)
Explai n how Shakespeare presents Lady Macbeth and Macbeth's relationship in Act 1 scene 7. (Extract lines 36- 60)

Shakespeare presents Macbeth and Lady Macbeth's relationship as a toxic one, with a power difference between the dominant Lady Macbeth and Macbeth, who holds less power.

By questioning Macbeth in the quote "Art thou afraid to be the same in thine own act and valour", lady Macbeth contrasts her bold and risk-taking demeanour to Macbeth's coward-like one. This insulting gesture emasculates him, and strips from his power over her, making her more controlling in their relationship. The imbalance in the relationship hints that it's unhealthy and may be toxic. Additionally, using language such as "durst" in the quote "when you first do it then you were a man" further supports the fact that Macbeth is not in a position of power compared to Lady Macbeth and what she believes. This foreshadows conflict between the two figures, as Lady Macbeth might use Macbeth's weakness to her advantage. To a Jacobean audience, this concept would be very obscure and intimidating, as the expectations of that society was that men were in positions of control over the women. As a result, the audience may feel hostile towards Lady Macbeth, because of her unnatural behaviour.

Additional evidence of Macbeth's incapability were shown in his question "If we should fail?" , which implied hesitancy and uncertainty. By suggesting that he is not trusting to his competence, Macbeth indirectly admits that he hold elements of instability, which puts him at a lower portion than Lady Macbeth. This would result in disappointment from a Jacobean audience , or even redicule, who would expect a man to be confident and have high self-esteem, as well as not consider the possibility of failure. However, a modern audience may empathise with Macbeth's moment of unclarity, as they would be more accepting towards men who show signs of weakness. By displaying Macbeth as a character with with elements of fear and doubt, Shakespeare would've wanted to show that a character who later commits blasphemous acts such as treason, was not worthy of respect. By developing an early bias against him, he ensured that the audience would mostly agree with this concept. In addition to that, by associating Lady Macbeth and Macbeth's relationship with negativity and toxicity, he would've wanted to imply that a relationship where one encourages the others to perform sacrilegious acts would end in the downfall of both.

(Btw I'm only at the start of year 10 so I'm aware this isn't the best essay 😂 but any feed back is helpful 😊)
I’ve never marked an essay really so I won’t give you a score, but I have to say I think it’s very good, especially for a year 10. I think your understanding is good but in the first half of the essay, I think you could have developed on your points a bit more. Since I have done Macbeth when I was doing my gcse’s, I understood what you were trying to say but always keep this tip in mind: pretend the examiner has never heard of Macbeth before. I thought your second part was excellent, you were 100% on the right path to talk about historical content, and you have some very good and what I would say unique ideas in this essay, definitely what separates the grade 6+ students from the grade 5 and below students. Touching on the idea that Shakespeare may have intended to write Macbeth as a dislikable character so that the jacobean audience wouldn’t feel sympathetic at his downfall was just perfect to me, and also touching on the idea that the moral of Macbeth really is to be wary of oneself and those around them. People who egg each other on and encourage each other to do bad things will both fall.

But yeah I’m terms of developing the first half of your essay more. You are right to say that lady Macbeth emasculates Macbeth when she calls him a coward. But how? How is that quote emasculating? The answer is it emasculates Macbeth as he has his masculinity questioned. During the Jacobean time, men were supposed to be courageous and posses traditionally masculine characteristics, and so for lady Macbeth to not only question her husbands masculine but also display masculine characteristics herself, emasculates and de-powers Macbeth as it leaves him questioning his own position and abilities as a man during his time. You really need to just hammer in everything you say. You’ve probably heard of PEE for structuring paragraphs, I prefer to think of it as PEE for structure a sentence. If you make a point and use a quote, then explain and then expand before you make your next point etc. I just find it flows better. This is coming from someone who got an 8 in English lit and Lang, very close to a 9 as they wanted to remark my paper but I said no.

Good luck and I thought this was really good for the stage your at so far. Keep it up and you’ll no doubt get a great grade when you do your real gcse. :wink:
Reply 2
Original post by Anonymous17!
I’ve never marked an essay really so I won’t give you a score, but I have to say I think it’s very good, especially for a year 10. I think your understanding is good but in the first half of the essay, I think you could have developed on your points a bit more. Since I have done Macbeth when I was doing my gcse’s, I understood what you were trying to say but always keep this tip in mind: pretend the examiner has never heard of Macbeth before. I thought your second part was excellent, you were 100% on the right path to talk about historical content, and you have some very good and what I would say unique ideas in this essay, definitely what separates the grade 6+ students from the grade 5 and below students. Touching on the idea that Shakespeare may have intended to write Macbeth as a dislikable character so that the jacobean audience wouldn’t feel sympathetic at his downfall was just perfect to me, and also touching on the idea that the moral of Macbeth really is to be wary of oneself and those around them. People who egg each other on and encourage each other to do bad things will both fall.

But yeah I’m terms of developing the first half of your essay more. You are right to say that lady Macbeth emasculates Macbeth when she calls him a coward. But how? How is that quote emasculating? The answer is it emasculates Macbeth as he has his masculinity questioned. During the Jacobean time, men were supposed to be courageous and posses traditionally masculine characteristics, and so for lady Macbeth to not only question her husbands masculine but also display masculine characteristics herself, emasculates and de-powers Macbeth as it leaves him questioning his own position and abilities as a man during his time. You really need to just hammer in everything you say. You’ve probably heard of PEE for structuring paragraphs, I prefer to think of it as PEE for structure a sentence. If you make a point and use a quote, then explain and then expand before you make your next point etc. I just find it flows better. This is coming from someone who got an 8 in English lit and Lang, very close to a 9 as they wanted to remark my paper but I said no.

Good luck and I thought this was really good for the stage your at so far. Keep it up and you’ll no doubt get a great grade when you do your real gcse. :wink:

Thank you for your reply :smile:
It was really helpful👌

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