Quotes in chronological order

1. Dearest partner in greatness 2. Human kindness 3. Unsex me here 4. Make thick my blood 5. To beguile the time 6. Face my thane is a book 7. Night’s great business into my dispatch 8. Out damned spot!

William Shakespeare’s ‘Macbeth’ and John Steinbeck’s ‘Of Mice and Men’ written in the 17th and 20th century, separated by hundreds of years of development and change within the world, both reflect the ideologies, treatment and representations of women in their respective eras. The principal feminine representatives are Lady Macbeth and Curley’s wife who throughout both texts demonstrate similarities and differences in their portrayal of their relationships with their male counterpart, the description of their tragic deaths and the conventional role of men and women and how they fit or break the stereotype. In this essay, I will refer to the aforementioned depictions, analysing the techniques the writers use to create their characters, and how a Jacobean audience, one during the Great Depression of the 1930s and a modern audience would react.

Rather than supporting her husband in a subservient manner, Shakespeare makes Lady Macbeth the ruthless mastermind of a fiendish, venal and daring enterprise aimed to ensure her husband would ‘catch the nearest way’.
In Act 1 Scene 5, when attempting to convince Macbeth to commit this necessary deed, she utters the heartless words ‘you shall put this night's great business into my dispatch’ inferring she intends to commit Duncan's murder herself. ‘Dispatch’ would lead a modern audience to believe she will only manage and oversee the murderous plan, however, in Elizabethan England, it would have meant to kill with quick efficiency; thus, Lady Macbeth prepares to slay Duncan while her husband plays the gentle host. Euphemising her homicidal actions, Lady Macbeth