 Jenijoy La Belle assesses Lady Macbeth 's femininity and sexuality as they relate to motherhood , and witchhood as well . The fact that she conjures spirits likens her to a witch , and the act itself establishes a similarity in the way that both Lady Macbeth and the Weird Sisters from the play " use the metaphoric powers of language to call upon spiritual powers who in turn will influence physical events — in one case the workings of the state , in the other the workings of a woman 's body . " Like the witches , Lady Macbeth strives to make herself an instrument for bringing about the future She proves herself a defiant , empowered nonconformist , and an explicit threat to a patriarchal system of governance in that , through challenging his masculinity , she manipulates Macbeth into murdering King Duncan . Despite the fact that she calls him a coward , Macbeth remains reluctant , until she asks : " What beast wasn 't , then , that made you break this enterprise to me ? / When you durst do it , then you were a man ; / And to be more than what you were , you would / Be so much more the man . " Thus Lady Macbeth enforces a masculine conception of power , yet only after pleading to be unsexed , or defeminised . The Weird Sisters are also depicted as defeminised , androgynous figures . They are bearded ( 1 @.@ 3 @.@ 46 ) , ( which may also be associated with Lady Macbeth 's amenorrhea ) . Witches were perceived as an extreme type of anti @-@ mother , even considered capable of cooking and eating their own children . Although Lady Macbeth may not express violence toward her child with that same degree of grotesqueness , she certainly expresses a sense of brutality when she states that she would smash the babe 's head . 
