Comparing Serena and Lady Macbeth
It is no secret that Ron Rash’s Serena is a very similar character in comparison to Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth. These two women are very much alike and only slightly different. Though Rash does not claim to base his work off of Macbeth, the two characters resemble each other in a couple different ways. Serena and Lady Macbeth are alike in the fact that they are both ambitious, malicious, and cold-blooded women who are driven by their love for their husbands. Neither of these women exhibit typical female behaviors and it causes readers to be captivated by their motives and actions.
In Rash’s Serena, the Pemberton’s are actively destroying land for their lumber business. When Serena joins Mr. Pemberton, she helps him improve his business and kills more nature than he did before he met her. She is beyond ambitious and has a mindset for business. In this way, she is willing to do whatever it takes to help advance their business and assets, even if it means taking the lives of innocent people around them. Serena also envisions ways to spread their work by going to places such as Brazil. Pemberton is impressed and awe struck because of the strong opinions and ideas of his wife, therefore he goes along with her plans regardless of the insanity of them. In the same way, Lady Macbeth and her husband are striving for English forces to re-establish order in Macbeth (Morrow).
Lady Macbeth is also very aspiring to help her husband become King. She is willing to do whatever it takes, even murder, to ensure that her husband is eventually the King because she feels that is exactly what he wants. She is more determined to make this happen than he is and it supposed to be his dream. Serena and Macbeth are both so driven to feed their husbands’ desires that it raises the question of what is in it for them. Both of these women also instruct their husbands to take the lives of others to ensure that these dreams come true. Serena tells Pemberton to murder Buchanan while Lady Macbeth instructs Macbeth to murder Duncan (Morrow).
The Essay on Women Business Association
A number of our Association’s members heard about your success in business. Women Business Association is going to conduct an annual conference this year. This is about how female entrepreneurs can get succeed in their own business. Many women entrepreneurs are taking active part in this association. A large majority of women want to start their own business in order to support their families. Our ...
These ruthless actions lead to the next very similar shared characteristic between these two – criminal.
Another prime way that these two characters resemble each other is in their acts of evil. Both Serena and Lady Macbeth are portrayed as wicked and malicious because they are so willing to do whatever it takes to reach their goals. Killing people is not a problem for either woman, innocent or not, as long as it fuels their own advancement. Readers might question why these women were so ruthless when it came to murder, but like their ambitious side, the desire to better themselves and their husbands was the driving factor. Serena wanted the business to expand and the cost of someone else’s life meant nothing to her; Macbeth wanted her husband to be King and she was also willing to get rid of anyone who could hinder that dream. Examples of this evil in Serena include her ruthlessness when it came to cutting down trees for lumber, her vicious attempts to find and murder Rachel, the murder of Widow Jenkins by slitting her throat, and the shocking finale of the murder of her own husband. In comparison, Lady Macbeth forces her husband to murder.
Though these two women are obviously very similar characters, there are some differences between them as well. Serena is definitely more ruthless in Rash’s book than Macbeth is. She commits a much more considerable number of crimes than Lady Macbeth does by her own hands. Another example of this evil in Serena is her reaction to blood; it arouses her whereas Lady Macbeth goes crazy (Morrow).
Finally, the biggest separation of these ladies is the fact that Serena has no conscience for her actions. She regrets nothing and continues to press on in her evil ways. Lady Macbeth begins to get a guilty conscience which eventually leads to her demise (Morrow).
The Term Paper on Macbeth Soliloquies Lady Murder King
Probably composed in late 1606 or early 1607, Macbeth is the last of Shakespeare's four great tragedies, the others being Hamlet, King Lear and Othello. It is a relatively short play without a major sub-plot, and it is considered by many scholars to be Shakespeare's darkest work. Lear is an utter tragedy in which the natural world is amorally indifferent toward mankind, but in Macbeth, Shakespeare ...
Though Ron Rash claims that Serena is not based off this famous prior character, there are a wide variety of reasons that these two women are comparable to one another. The most obvious reasons these women are similar are their ambitious, evil, and unsexed personalities. Neither woman knows any limits when it comes to getting what she wants. Both Serena and Lady Macbeth are equals to their husbands (Morrow).
Though the two women are not exactly the same type of person, they do clearly mirror each other, especially at the beginning of the stories. The real distinction between them is the guilty conscience that never shows up in Serena. Both books are wonderful literary works and deserve all the praise and acknowledgement they have been given.
