I will construct an analysis of the two main female characters in Macbeth by William Shakespeare and The Laboratory by Robert Browning.

by sloangibsonaolcom (student)

In this essay I will construct an analysis of the two main female characters in Macbeth by William Shakespeare and The Laboratory by Robert Browning. I will reflect on the choices made by both characters and the inevitable consequences of them. Although both texts are written in different forms of literature - Shakespeare's “Macbeth” was being in the form of a play and “The Laboratory” being in the form of a poem both texts create powerful imagery and through use of language conjures powerful perceptions from the audience.

We, as the audience, are given the impression that both women are ambitious and powerful as they both successfully choose to manipulate men to make their aspirations a reality - Lady Macbeth manipulates her husband, this is portrayed malevolently when Macbeth hesitates in the murder of King Duncan. Lady Macbeth – palpably the dominant character in this scene insinuates him as a coward by ridiculing his masculinity and declares that she would also have murdered her own child while it was feeding at her breast as she would not break such a promise as Macbeth had done so. So, I have used this quote below to support this section of the paragraph:

“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.”

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“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.”

The anonymous woman in the Laboratory is beautifying her words and making the poisons she is making also beautiful as she has used a soothing appearance to ensure her plans do not reveal the true intentions of her sinister desires to cause pain to both victims of what goes on within this deranged woman’s mind, also how her schemes are organised and ready for what anguish she will cause to a girl she is jealous of because this girl was with her former lover. As the tenth stanza shows how remorseless this nameless female character is.

“Not that I bid you spare her the pain!

Let death be felt and the proof remain

Brand, burn up, bite into its grace -

He is sure to remember her dying face!”

We can see how similar these characters are, their personality traits do close in with each other as the writers still express the appearances for these two characters of being powerful and ambitious figures in these two different formatted texts. However, their personalities do differ from how they are from each other. In Macbeth, Lady Macbeth’s personality is more dominant as she has power over her husband unlike the woman in The Laboratory; as her personality is more ambitious and collides with what she set out to do.

Conclusively, we can notice these characters can be the same but with slight differences touching their personalities and along with their goals in which develop throughout the time we began to know them. The development of both effeminate characters are unusually unfeminine in a sense which brings to think that they were both scowled up in their times as people would find out by just noticing how they acted in the society they lived in. We can understand some women within the time wanted to get rid of their femininity and replace it with masculinity as they wanted to have the equality of a man.