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Lady Macbeth's Guilt Analysis

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21 April 2015 Lady Macbeth Lady Macbeth is one of Shakespeare’s most famous and frightening female characters. At one point even, her husband implies that she is a masculine soul inhabiting a female body. However Lady Macbeth's mental and emotional makeup begins to disintegrate as the story plot progresses, eventually leading to her sudden mental collapse in act in the final act. Lady Macbeth’s ambition affects her more strongly than Macbeth before the crime, but changes to guilt plaguing her more strongly after the crime. Immediately from the beginning, Lady Macbeth shows unwavering ambition in her plot to assassinate king Duncan and have Macbeth seize the throne. Lady Macbeths strong …show more content…

She seems fully aware of this and knows that she will have to push Macbeth into committing murder. Lady Macbeth manipulates her husband with remarkable effectiveness, overriding all his objections; when he hesitates to murder, she repeatedly questions his manhood until he feels that he must commit murder to prove himself, as she manipulatively tells Macbeth, “You do unbend your noble strength, to think so brainsickly of things” (2.2.44-45).In this quote Lady Macbeth is manipulating her husband Macbeth by speaking of his manhood. She gains more and more control over Macbeth as the play goes on. Lady Macbeth questions Macbeth's manliness, knowing that this is the greatest insult she can say to him. Because Lady Macbeth and Macbeth are so close at the beginning of the play, she knows exactly how to manipulate him into committing murder, as she promises that"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" (1.7. 49-51).While Macbeth is unsure what he is about to do. Lady Macbeth is not going to let him back out. Her tactics of persuasion is mainly to manipulate Macbeth she starts playing on Macbeth's insecurities. She does this by calling him a …show more content…

Just as ambition affects her more strongly than Macbeth before the crime, so does guilt plague her more strongly afterward. By the close of the play, her mind has disintegrated by guilt, now reduced to sleepwalking through the castle, as "Infected minds To their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets" (5.1.26)While sleepwalking, Lady macbeth desperately tries to wash away an invisible bloodstain , Lady Macbeth has gone insane because she keeps seeing the blood stain that cannot be cleaned because“What’s done cannot be undone… my hands will never be clean”. (5.1.36 Lady Macbeth's conscience constantly haunts her by guilt and also keeps reminding lady Macbeth of her misdeeds, She continuously rubs her hand to get rid of the blood, which will never be washed away. Lady Macbeth’s incessant rubbing of her hands leads to insanity and eventually to suicide When Macbeth believed his hand was irreversibly bloodstained earlier in the play, Lady Macbeth had told him it can be cleansed. Now, however, she now too sees blood. Her mind is completely corrupted by guilt, as she becomes consumed into madness, as “hell is murky” She will be hopelessly tortured forever by guilt, “ (5.1.42) She eventually kills herself in the end, unable to kko with the haunting memories of her

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