Fair is foul, and foul is fair...

Lady Macbeth, is her name but she is nothing close lady-like. She is capable of plotting a murder and encouraging her husband to carry it out. Her character is one that is cold, and uncharacteristic of any female Shakespeare wrote about. Being a woman isn't necessarily about being soft, mushy, and crying at ease about anything. To be a strong woman, it is sometimes necessary to be tough, rough and bold. Lady Macbeth takes this all to a new level.

 

 

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lady_Macbeth_Cattermole.jpg

"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 the access and passage to remorse,

That no compunctious visitings of nature

Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between

The effect and it!" (1.5.38)

 Lady Macbeth is wife to a Lord but wants him to be king at any cost. She upholds the renaissance expectations put upon in some ways. She is the lady of the house and to that she makes certain the King's stay will be a comfortable one.  However; women typically want to give life, as capable of such a miracle, but Lady Macbeth seems to want none of it. She practically brags about smiling at the baby in her arms while she plucked her nipple from it, depriving it of nourishment. She doesn't stop at just depriving of milk she goes to the extreme of violence against a defenseless child. "and dashed the brains out" not something a sane woman would do - a woman wouldn't hurt her own child...if in fact the child she is referring is her child.

The photo above is a visual contradiction of the role of man and wife in the renaissance. The wife is supposed to be below the husband and lesser than him in every way. In this photo Macbeth appears to have fallen in every sense of the word. Lady Macbeth stand above looking more the part of the regal leader. She is surely a transgressor, going beyond the limits of normalcy. She is as well an outcast, from women, wives and mothers in the ways they should behave as a part of their husband. Her controlling ways in the play are contradictory to the role she should play in society.