Lady Macbeth

 

 

 

 

         

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Content:

Overview of Lady Macbeth

Character Analysis

Analysis of Quotations

The Sleep Walking Scene

Further Links

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Overview of Lady Macbeth:

    Lady Macbeth, the wife of protagonist Macbeth, enters the play in Act 1 scene 5.  Lady Macbeth comes off as an ambitious woman who gets what she

wants, and as the play proves, this is a good representation.  She is reading Macbeth's letter about his encounter with the three Weird Sisters and his

predicted promotions.  Almost immediately after hearing the prophecy of Macbeth's assention to king she asks to be "unsexed" so she can act cruel

enough to plan and follow through with the murder of King Duncan.  Throughout the play Lady Macbeth constantly has the power in her relationship with

Macbeth and repeatedly needs to convince him to have the strength to follow through with her plan of murder.  Lady Macbeth is presented as impenetrable,

however her downfall occurs after the death of Duncan as her guilt weighs too significantly on her conscience.   In the later parts of the play, Lady Macbeth                                 

begins to sleep walk and experiences delirious visions, showing the first signs of her increasing weakness.   Not long after, the once powerful Lady

Macbeth is defeated by the weight of guilt and finds the only way to escape is death.  Her part in the play ends when she commits suicide. 

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Character Analysis:

   Lady Macbeth is portrayed as a strong, independent, and ambitious woman as well as wicked, selfish, and ironically weak. She leads Macbeth to murder Duncan in an attempt to make herself successful, expressing her truly wicked temperament. Her facade shows a remorseless woman, but inside she struggles with the guilt, which ultimately leads her to commit suicide. From her first appearance in the play her strength and yearning for prosperity are evident with her plea to be unsexed in order to follow through with murder. Lady Macbeth has accepted that in order to be Queen, Duncan must be murdered and does not let Macbeth weaken under the pressure. After Macbeth has killed Duncan, but forgotten to strategically place the murder weapon, his wife fixes his foolish mistake. Interactions with her husband show her in the more masculine role by her quick and decisive action. There is another side to Lady Macbeth that stays hidden for most of the play and appears only at the end of her life. In her act of suicide she shows her weakness and inability to deal with her actions. The guilt of her wicked deeds overwhelm her and she becomes the antithesis of the character she was in her first appearance.

     Lady Macbeth's character, along with the Weird Sisters, represents how strong women were seen in the time of Shakespeare. Lady Macbeth cannot attain power and success herself because she is a woman, so she must rely on her much weaker husband to gain power for the both of them. The Weird Sisters, who are incredibly independent, and not reliant on men, are portrayed as vagabonds. Although they can make predictions, they have nothing of importance in the physical world and no obvious signs of success, showing their weakness without men. These characters are also seen as unnatural. The Weird Sisters play with fate and their unnaturalness is quite apparent, while Lady Macbeth's unnaturalness is only apparent by her lack of children. Women at the time were expected to do two things: bear children and take care of the home, certainly not plot the murder of king. Her wicked characteristics remain hidden from all of the characters, except Macbeth.

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Created by Shannon McCool and Meghan Greenfield

That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here

And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full

Of direst cruelty!

[...]

Come to my woman's breasts

And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,

Wherever in your sightless substances

You wait on nature's mischief. Come, thick night,

And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,

That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,

Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark

To cry, 'Hold, hold!' " (Act 1, Scene 5)  

This is the first appearance of Lady Macbeth in the play; it shows her at the height of her ambitious strength. She knows that she and her husband must kill Duncan in order to attain power and pleas for the strength to feel no remorse. She realizes the unnaturalness of her actions, but remains too selfish and wicked to abandon the bid for power. She wishes for her actions to be concealed by the "dunnest smoke of hell" so as not to be punished in the afterlife, or by her God-given conscience.

"A little water clears us of this deed ." (Act 2, Scene 2)

This quote comes when Macbeth and Lady Macbeth meet after the murder of Duncan.  Shortly before Macbeth told himself that no ocean could wash the blood, or guilt, from his hands, showing that Macbeth knows he will never escape the death that is now embedded into his hands.  Lady Macbeth expresses her character traits of cruelty and persistence by saying that they can easily wash the guilt away and move on as king and queen.  If you can clean your hands of blood then you can be rid the guilt that the murder has brought upon you.

"Out, damn'd spot! out, I say!—One; two: why, then 'tis time to do't. —Hell is murky. —Fie, my lord, fie, a soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our pow'r to account?—Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?" (Act 5, Scene 1) 

This is the point in the play when Lady Macbeth reveals her ironic break down, truly showing her emotions.  She shows small signs of being nervous before, but now, during her sleep walking incident, her true guilt and weakness is shown.  The guilt of planning and participating in Duncan's murder has defeated her 'unsexed conscience' and she no longer can handle the haunting of the blood that lingers on her hands.  In reality there is no blood but rather she is attempting to clean off the guilt that is now too much to handle, even for the powerful Lady Macbeth.

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Further Links: 

http://shakespeare.about.com/od/characterprofiles/p/LadyMacbeth.htm

http://www.thelandofmacbeth.com/ladymac.htm