To what extent can Lady Macbeth be seen as a female gothic protagonist at the start of the play?

At first meeting, madam Macbeth appears to us as a ruthless predator, an emancipated cleaning woman driven by an all-consuming passion and displaying perfectly, the antithesis of womanhood. She has, it seems, acquired all the necessary requirements to fill the role of a feminine gothic protagonist. Whether or non she utilises these f turnors to the full extent and dismiss really be called the protagonist will be discussed in push detail.Her char moveer is not unveiled until Act I Scene V where, with the use of three speeches, she exposes the plant of her mind and lay it out for the audience. Her second speech displays perfectly the idea of Lady Macbeth as a ruthless predator. She calls on the supernatural to limit me here, And fill me from the crget to the toe top-full Of direst cruelty She asks them to Stop up the access and passage to remorse and to make thick her blood. Here she displays a woman incapable of whatever feelings of passion or amity, but it is important to t hink of her before she makes this request. If it is necessary for her to ask for the remittal of her remorse, whence she must film had the ability to feel such feelings beforehand. We are given no background selective information on this woman and it is therefore difficult to say if she was always like this or whether it was Macbeths letter that changed her this appeal she makes is single of few brain waves into her possible mind-set as Lady Macbeth before the play.Her status as a woman who displays the antithesis of womanhood can hardly be doubted, but Lady Macbeth would not have publicised these feelings. We know this from her relation with Duncan who refers to her as our honoured hostess. The King of Scotland would hardly encourage a woman to act the way Lady Macbeth does on the audiences initial meeting with her. Indeed, Lady Macbeth is a woman changed entirely when in the presence of people of such high status. She appears to be a domesticated woman, one happy to be at hom e while her husband goes out to war to serve as a loyal citizen. And yet, we know otherwise. In her second speech, she refers to her home as my battlements. This presumption of hers, this idea that she should own her home and not her husband would have been a farcical one.The most menacing speeches uttered by Lady Macbeth occur not just when she summons iniquity, but when she does so with a language that refutes and distorts her motherly nature. In her second speech, she speaks to these spirits and asks that they come to my womans breasts, And take my milk for gall This course of study turns this universally natural feature of womanhood into something dark and troubling. Adding to this, the innuendo of changing a mothers milk, what she feeds her children on, to poison, is a disgusting one. Further on in the play, Shakespeare manipulates this perversion of motherhood again when Lady Macbeth conveys a fantasy of infanticideI would, while it was smiling in my face, Have pluckd my ni pple from his boneless gums, And dashd the brains outThis repulsive image is so against the searing love a mother feels for her child, that it is impossible for the reader to accept that Lady Macbeth in full comprehends firstly, what she is saying and secondly, that maternal love despite her previous statement of I know how tender tis to love the babe that milks meHowever, Shakespeare has allowed the reader room for doubt. While we are certain that Lady Macbeth is a woman vitiate of all the typical qualities of a homemaker, we do see a potential insight into the Macbeths sexual relations and Lady Macbeths duty as a wife. Here, it appears she abides but it does become apparent that it is her who leads the way. Our insight into this idea is in her first speech where she talks of pouring my spirits in thine ear And chastising with the valour of my tongue. The suggestion here that Lady Macbeth can impress things on her husband through the use of sex, would have been a shocking one. So while these sexual insinuations suggest the wife side of Lady Macbeth, the knowledge that she can manipulate him as such, is once again the perfect display of the antithesis of womanhood.The gothic impact of Lady Macbeths indiscretion has less to do with her demonic entreaties, but rather more so with the reversals of her female nature, which battle array how willing she is to contemplate and fulfil her ambition for power. While certain aspects of her speech allow the reader to cypher her, for a second, as a woman happy to live and serve as a reclaimed wife, her ability to twist and distort words and ideas disallow the audience to hold these thoughts for long. This amalgamation of supernatural desires and her willingness to retract her sex create, for the reader, a potent force of evil and the perfect female, gothic protagonist.disparagingly of her husbands human kindness but she summons demonic powers with her invocation Come, you spirits, / That tend on mortal thoughts, uns ex me here, / And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full / Of direst cruelty (1.5.38-41). She continues in similar vein Come to my womans breasts, / And take my milk for gall (1.5.45-46). Her communing with the forces of darkness is expressed in terms that seek to remove the compunctious visitings of her female nature. Later, in one of the plays most disturbing images, Lady Macbeth expresses a fantasy of infanticideI have given suck, and knowHow tender tis to love the babe that milks me.I would, while it was smiling in my face,Have pluckd my nipple from his boneless gumsAnd dashed the brains outHowever, when it comes to her manipulation of Macbeth, she adopts the powerful apparatus of sexual tauntingArt thou afeardTo be the same in thine own act and valourAs thou art in desire?When you durst do it, then you were a man.Lady Macbeths evil allows her at one and the same time to deny her maternal nature and to check into her husband by invoking her sexuality. It is this capacity t odistort her female identity to gain her political ends that makes Lady Macbeth at once a potent force for evil and a transgressive figure of the female gothic.