Lady Macbeth: Unsexed and Uncovered Lady Macbeth progresses throughout the play from a seemingly savage and heartless creature to a very delicate and fragile woman. In the beginning of the play, she is very ambitious and hungry for power. She pushes Macbeth to kill Duncan in order to fulfill the witches’ prophecy. In Act I, Scene 6, she asks the gods to make her emotionally strong like a man in order to help her husband go through with the murder plot. She says, “Come, you spirits That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full Of direst cruelty!” Also, she does everything in her power to convince Macbeth that he would be wrong not to kill Duncan. In Act I, …show more content…
The first sign of weakness comes in Act II, Scene 2 when she says that she could not kill Duncan because he resembled her father. She explains, “Had he not resembled My father as he slept, I had done’t.” The other example of some weakness in Lady Macbeth’s character is in Act III, Scene 2 when she tries to comfort Macbeth by telling him not to worry about what he has done to Duncan and is about to do to Banquo. She tells him, “How now, my lord! Why do you keep alone, Of sorriest fancies your companions making, Using those thoughts which should indeed have died With them they think on? Things without all remedy Should be without regard: what’s done is done. Perhaps the most ironic change in Lady Macbeth’s character comes at the very end of the play. Throughout most of the first four acts of the play, she has been the strongest character, always leading Macbeth and pushing him to carry out their plot, but in Act V we begin to see that she wasn’t as strong as she had appeared. First, in Act V, Scene 1 we see a troubled Lady Macbeth who is sleepwalking. She seems to be very troubled by blood, presumably that of King Duncan. Some of the comments she makes are, “Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?”, “What, will these hands ne’er be clean?”, and “Here’s the smell of the blood still. All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.” Later, we learn
Women (according to Shakespearean times) were supposed to be fragile, weak, and feminine; however, Lady Macbeth is vicious, cruel, and masculine in the play. Lady MacBeth becomes the prime mover and instigator in the entire regicide business. Revealing that she wishes to depart her feminine traits, because being a female makes her weaker, foreshadows Lady Macbeth's future actions. She has no intention of waiting for a chance of crown and prefers to take a speedy and violent action. Lady MacBeth is ambitious, driven, and full of the dark spirits. Fearing MacBeth's nature “of the milk of human kindness" calls upon the forces of the supernatural to "unsex" her (39). The mood is created through the use of the supernatural forces that create a sense of fear and uncertainty. Lady Macbeth asks to be filled with cruelty, remove all remorse, and to remove her milk which is associated with nurture and care to be replaced with bitter gall. A recurring motif is the
Although Lady Macbeth is still stronger and more ambitious than Macbeth the killing of Duncan is the point where the gap starts to narrow. She calls Macbeth a coward when he tries to back out of the plan and is the driving force that causes Macbeth to kill Duncan. She also shows strength when Macbeth returns from the murder and she tells him "These deeds must not be thought after these ways. So, it will make us mad". But when she has to go kill the guards she starts to lose some of her composure. Upon return to their room Lady Macbeth is just as shook up as Macbeth. This shows how Lady Macbeth is mostly talk and starts to weaken when the murders begin and the pressure sets in.
As the play goes on, Lady Macbeth begins to lose her fierce and intimidating persona as Macbeth becomes the more assertive and dominant one. Lady Macbeth starts losing her edge when it becomes less difficult to get Macbeth to follow through with his murderous acts. Anytime Macbeth thinks you’re interfering with his kinship, he’ll have no problem taking you down and getting you out of his way. Macbeth no longer needs Lady Macbeth to persuade him. This is very apparent when he shows no mercy planning the murder of Banquo, “There’s comfort yet, they are assailable/ Then be thou jocund: ere the bat hath flown/ His cloistered flight, ere to black Hecate’s summons/ The shard-born beetle with his drowsy hums/ Hath rung night’s yawning peal, there shall be
Macbeth starts off as a “brave” man who is physically capable of a lot, but is mentally very weak. Whereas Lady Macbeth is limited physically by her sex, but believes that she is mentally stronger than Macbeth. As the play pans out we are able to make our own judgment on each characters strengths and weaknesses. In the “unsex me” scene Lady Macbeth tells us that she wants to be changed from being a weak woman so that she can replace Macbeth who is mentally weak with her own mental strength in order to successfully become the king. After the killing of Duncan Lady Macbeth accidently hints that she was unable to kill Duncan herself and at this point shows her first signs of mental weakness. After this point they basically change places, Lady Macbeth becomes and insignificant and weak character in the play, who spirals downwards into insanity. She grows so ill that the doctor says there 's nothing he can do to help her. "The disease," he says, "is beyond" his "practice," and what Lady Macbeth needs is "the divine" (a priest or, God), not a "physician". On the other hand Macbeth steps up and plans for himself to murder many more people as his mental strength has significantly grown. Lady Macbeth’s transformation from that of a powerful and "unnaturally" masculine figure into an enfeebled woman reestablishes a sense of "natural" gender order in the play. In other words, Lady Macbeth is put in her place,
William Shakespeare’s Macbeth is a play which depicts the tragedy of Macbeth. This play also shows that the process of Macbeth losing everything in his life such as trusts from the people who protect him such as Banquo, by having too much desire to become a king. In this play, Macbeth is always centered, but the readers have to remember that Lady Macbeth, who is a wife of Macbeth is one of the most interesting characters in the play. Lady Macbeth is often said that she is evil, and also she was much stronger and brave, ruthless than Macbeth. However, she is not actually evil and stronger and brave, ruthless as people say. This paper will be focusing on the reason why Lady Macbeth was not actually evil and strong, by focusing her characterization.
The first trait that Lady Macbeth exhibits is manipulation. After Macbeth receives a prophecy from three witches who tell him he will become King, he sends a letter to Lady Macbeth. When he returns home, Lady Macbeth attempts to convince him that the only way to gain the throne is to kill the King. At first, he agrees, but after careful consideration, he retracts his earlier promise and decides not to proceed. When Macbeth refuses, Lady Macbeth blows up and makes several crude remarks. The first, being, “Which thou esteem´st the ornaments of life, and live a coward in thine own esteem,¨ (annotation!) She plays on his self-esteem and tells Macbeth that if he does not go through with the murder, He will live his life
In Shakespeare’s play Macbeth, Lady Macbeth begins as a bloodthirsty woman, transforms into a heartless, brutal man, and then ultimately uncovers her true self, a juxtaposition of everything she portrays to the outside world, a vulnerable and guilty woman. As Lady Macbeth sets her sights towards her ambition of becoming Queen, she yearns to become more like a man. She wants to be stripped of her nurturing and motherly qualities and hopes to become: ruthless, strong, aggressive, and strong-willed. She believes that in order to be able to convince Macbeth to kill King Duncan, and to carry out the plan, she must be stripped of any emotion or kindness, which she hopes will be replaced with an empty-heart and thick
First, in Act One, Lady Macbeth is an insane person who will risk everything to gain power for herself. First, Lady Macbeth’s true colors are revealed when she says in her soliloquy, “That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, and fill me...of direst cruelty” (ⅰ.ⅴ.41-42). Lady Macbeth claims that ladies shall not kill, therefore she must become a man
While it has been confirmed that numerous characters view Lady Macbeth as a “gentle lady” (2.3.96), she is, however, a woman who desires to live a luxurious life. After receiving the message that Macbeth will soon become king, Lady Macbeth is shown to be in a forward-looking attitude and praises her husband that she cannot wait to be Queen of Scotland. Lady Macbeth’s greediness can be demonstrated as she says, “Glamis thou art, and Cawdor, and shalt be/ What thou art promised. Yet do I fear thy nature;/ It is too full o’ th’ milk of human kindness...Which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem/ To have thee crowned withal” (1.5.15-17.32-33). These lines of the speech establishes that Lady Macbeth is the dominant partner in the relationship, and her plan of helping Macbeth to become king, will also have her as queen undoubtedly. Lady Macbeth is a clever woman, who can organize plans that everything will go her way. The wickedness of Lady Macbeth is shown as she fears of her femininity and invites evil “[s]pirits/ That tend on mortal thoughts…[to] unsex [her], And fill [her] from the crown to the toe top-full/ Of direst cruelty” (1.5.47-50). After Lady Macbeth has been informed of King Duncan’s arrival to her castle, her thoughts shortly turn to murder because she wishes Duncan murdered without any remorse. Since Lady Macbeth had opened her mentality and body to
In the beginning of the play, Macbeth is a very noble and worthy man. Throughout the play, he starts to murder people just to get what he wants, even if it means killing his best friend. He turns into a nervous wreck, trying to cover up all the murders with lies so that nobody starts to be suspicious of him. He turns into a completely different person. On the other hand, Lady Macbeth is a psychotic character right from when she is introduced. She was the one who persuaded Macbeth further into killing King Duncan. She tells him he isn’t a man
Just like Macbeth, she is also evil and overly-ambitious but she is overcome by guilt. She is not included in Banquo’s murder by Macbeth and as Macbeth grows to be more evil, Lady Macbeth becomes more passive and stops being a ringleader in his actions. She then transitions from her evil nature to her guilt-ridden nature that Shakespeare shows us in act five. Shakespeare stops using iambic pentameter for her speech, unlike her dialogue in previous scenes, signifying this personality change and the mental stress she is in. Her speech also is unorganized, often jumping from one topic to another.
Karin Thomson from the Shakespeare Institute in the University of Birmingham states very well in her analysis of Shakespeare’s Macbeth that Lady Macbeth is not so much a criminal as she is a “victim of a pathological mental dissociation upon an unstable daydreaming basis”. Thomson continues to mention that this is “due to the emotional shocks of her past experiences”, which of course is the loss of her child. Lady Macbeth’s mentally unstable state ultimately ends with with a tragic conclusion, death.
When Lady Macbeth is informed with a Macbeth meeting with the witches, her lust for power grows greater than Macbeth. Lady Macbeth is aware of Macbeth’s ambition, but fears that he is “too full o’ th’ milk of kindness”(Shakespeare 30) to have what it takes to seize the crown. When Macbeth arrives, Lady Macbeth convinces her husband to kill Duncan. “Come, you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, and fill me from the crown to the toe top-full of direst cruelty”(Shakespeare 32). In this quote, Lady Macbeth puts her natural femininity aside so that she can accomplish the bloody deeds necessary for this plan. Lady Macbeth persuades her husband again when Macbeth decided to call off the plan. “Art thou afeard to be the same in thine own act and valor as thou art in desire? Wouldst thou have that which thou esteem’st the ornament of life, and live a coward in thine own esteem, letting “I dare not” wait upon “I would, ”like the poor cat i' th' adage?” (Shakespeare 42). She urges Macbeth to stay strong and reassures him that their plan will work out. Even after the murder of King Duncan, Macbeth still had his innocent character filled with concern and fear. However, Lady Macbeth holds him tight by saying, “My hands are of your color, but I shame to wear a heart so white” (Shakespeare 60). Later in the story, the readers can realize that the roles of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth have changed. Macbeth allows his wife to manipulate his ambitious desires which grow until he became numb to
just says that she wants her husband to be King, she doesn't go in to
In contrast to the typical standards of Elizabethan times, Macbeth appears to be submissive and obedient compared to Lady Macbeth’s dominant, manipulative personality. When the couple discusses their plot to kill the king, Macbeth is initially hesitant and attempts to do away with the morbid plan several times. However, when he voices his thoughts to Lady Macbeth, she is quick to use the account of her own love to guilt him into carrying out the murder. Not only does she threaten to cease her love for him (1.7.39), but she also insults his character by saying that he “live a coward in thine own esteem” (1.7.43). Lady Macbeth reveals an ultimate distaste for cowardice and weakened virtue, and she uses this, as well as her irrefutable bond with Macbeth, to