The Role of the Sexes in Shakespeare's Macbeth

Lady Macbeth isn't your typical seventeenth century wife. First of all, Macbeth refers to her as his partner ("my dearest partner of greatness," Act I, Scene 5) - unheard of in those days. She lacks those traditional feminine inclinations, such as a true maternal instinct. Both times she refers to the nourishment of a child at the mother's breast, there is nothing nurturing about it. She says, "Come to my woman's breasts,
And take my milk for gall, your murdering ministers;" gall being acid from the gall bladder. She is, in essence, detesting her role of woman and its functions. Consider the next passage, suggesting that she would be capable of infanticide if she had given her word:

"I have given suck, and know
How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me:
I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums
And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn as you
Have done to this." (Act I, Scene 7)

One of Lady Macbeth's most famous lines also fits this theme and cannot be neglected:

"unsex me here;
And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full
Of direst cruelty!"

Lady Macbeth wishes that her feminine attributes such as compassion and feelings could be erased in favor of becoming a warrior.

In fact, throughout the play there are references to it taking a masculine quality, complete manliness (being a man) in order to possess the faculty to 'get things done,' especially those things that are difficult or, for lack of a better word, unsavory (in matters such as war or murder, or revenge). At the end of Act I, Macbeth tells Lady Macbeth that he will do "all that may become a man."

After Macduff's family is killed, he is told to be a man and turn his grief into revenge. He replies that he must also feel it like a man. This is one of the few instances in the play where a man reports real emotion.

It is also a curious thing that the witches, who are women, would be bearded. It suggests that in order to have great power and will to carry out deeds, that one must have masculine qualities.