Lady Macbeth

English

Etymology

From the character in William Shakepeare's Macbeth.

Noun

Lady Macbeth (plural Lady Macbeths)

1. A determined but ruthless or unscrupulous woman.
   • 1833, [Anna Brownell] Jameson, Characteristics of Women, Moral, Poetical, and Historical. […], 2nd edition, volume II, London: Saunders and Otley, […], page 309:

     True it is, that the ambitious women of these civilized times do not murder sleeping kings: but are there, therefore, no Lady Macbeths in the world? no women who, under the influence of a diseased or excited appetite for power or distinction, would sacrifice the happiness of a daughter, the fortunes of a husband, the principles of a son, and peril their own souls?

   • 1961, John Alden Thayer, Italy: The Post-Risorgimento and the "Great War", Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin–Madison, page 246:

     Fear of blood has become the incubus of modern men who are pursued like so many women, little nineteenth century Lady Macbeths, by the spectre of death ... the principle of right to life is utterly without justification.

   • 1987, New Scientist, volume 114, page 82, column 3:

     With the cuts in government expenditure, heads of research councils rage round their castles like demented Lady Macbeths looking for blood with which to stain their hands as evidence of their administrative worthiness, apparently oblivious of the fact that what they cut today can never be recreated as the costs of new building and recruitment escalate with the size of their administrations.

   • 2010, Anne P. Rice, “White Islands of Safety and Engulfing Blackness: Remapping Segregation in Angelina Weld Grimké’s “Blackness” and “Goldie””, in Brian Norman, Piper Kendrix Williams, editors, Representing Segregation: Toward an Aesthetics of Living Jim Crow, and Other Forms of Racial Division, Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, →ISBN, page 95:

     The silent men, women, and children streaming down the center of Manhattan instead carried signs reading: “Mother, Do Lynchers Go to Heaven?”; “Pray for the Lady Macbeths of East St. Louis”; “Mr. President, Why Not Make America Safe for Democracy?”; and “Give Us a Chance to Live.”

   • 2015, Mark Hollingsworth, Von Kemedi, Against the Odds: President Goodluck Jonathan, the Rise of Nigeria as Africa’s Economic Superpower and the Threat of Boko Haram, Susquehanna Press, →ISBN, page 32:

     The president’s wife, Turai [Yar’Adua], acquired the image of a Lady Macbeth hungry for power and determined to loot the country’s coffers while she still had the chance.

   • [2017, Brian Sweeney, “High School Monsters: Designing Secondary English Courses”, in Adam Golub, Heather Richardson Hayton, editors, Monsters in the Classroom: Essays on Teaching What Scares Us, Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company, →ISBN, part III (Disrupting Systems: The Monster Attacks), page 204:

     As we did with Medea and the “Modern Medeas,” we were able to see multiple instances in which real life female politicians were described as “Lady Macbeths.” Given that Lady Macbeth herself clearly views the monstrous acts she is going to commit as more male than female, it seemed strange to the class that those who call scheming politicians Lady Macbeths associated that scheming, plotting cruelty with the worst traits of women. […] On the day we were studying this text in class, Hillary Clinton had just made headlines, and we were able to see and then analyze how the term “Lady Macbeth” was used to describe her in multiple articles published mere hours before class had started.]

Derived terms

• Lady Macbethian

Further reading

• Lady Macbeth on Wikipedia.Wikipedia