The play Macbeth by William Shakespeare has many different characters with many different emotions. In the play, the main themes of the play are guilt, fate, and allegiance. The character that shows the most guilt is Lady Macbeth. She is Macbeth’s wife and deals with a large amount of guilt and remorse. Macbeth receives a prophecy from a trio of witches that one day he will become King of Scotland. In order to become king, he has to murder the current king with the help of his wife. Lady Macbeth is a very cold-blooded, strong character that also has a weak side to her. Throughout the course of the play, Lady Macbeth goes through quite a few emotions including fear, anger, and unhappiness.To start off, fear was one of the emotions that Lady …show more content…
She was scared that the guilt she had would never go away. “Out, damned spot, out, I say” (Shakespeare 5.1.31). When Lady Macbeth says “Out, damned spot, out,” she is saying how she wants the blood off her hands. Meaning she is feeling responsible for killing Duncan. Therefore, Lady Macbeth has her downsides in the play also. Parts where she genuinely feels guilty. Even though Lady Macbeth is a strong, cruel, and cold-blooded character in the play, she does feel remorse. In Act 3, Lady Macbeth starts to feel guilty of what she has done to Duncan. She pulls Macbeth from dinner and tells him how guilty she is feeling. As a result, Lady Macbeth starts the play out feeling confident and she is perfectly fine with the plan of murdering Duncan with her husband. After Lady Machbeth starts feeling afraid, she eventually gets diagnosed with insomnia and eventually dies. To sum it up, Lady Macbeth goes through a hard time that results in a remorseful …show more content…
“Naught's had, all's spent, Where our desire is got without content” (Shakespeare 3.2.5-6). Lady Macbeth isn’t as happy as she thought she would be as the queen. She’s disappointed with how her life is turning out to be. Secondly, she is unhappy about being a female. In Act 1, Lady Macbeth states that she wants to be unsexed. “Come, you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here” (Shakespeare 1.5.39-40). Lady Macbeth asked her spirits to unsex her. She wants the “weakness” associated with being a female to go away. She much rather be in control than her husband that is scared to kill. She wants to be a man so she can feel stronger. To conclude, Lady Macbeth definitely goes through a lot of unhappiness throughout the play and she goes through a little bit of a depressive
In reference to her previous wish in Act 1 where she said, “unsex me here”, it become evident that she has been, as she acts more ‘like a man’ than Macbeth does after Duncan’s murder. Additionally, the fact she says only a ‘little water’ will wash away her deeds, in contrast to Macbeth who says not even Neptune’s oceans can wash his hands clean, brings attention to her lack of remorse and cold-hearted nature, due to the promise of power of Macbeth and her being
The tragedy of Macbeth arguably has some of the most complex and interesting characters, and it is certain that this is because Shakespeare wanted to show the effects of guilt and the toll it takes on different people. However, it is unequivocal that Lady Macbeth is beyond the idea of complexity and by far the most interesting in my opinion. He carefully crafted the ‘power couple’ of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth as constructs for the idea of guilt, but while Macbeth is drowning in this feeling from the offset, his wife is fueling with ambition as she knows 'what's done is done" and cannot be undone’ as she moves on with her life. What is most interesting is the fact that Lady Macbeth flips her whole mentality as she slowly fades from an ambitious
Lady Macbeth has lost her ambition from the start of the play and has become scared of the acts she has done. She became regretful in her doings while participating in the killings which scared her mentally. If Lady Macbeth is the queen of Scotland nothing good will come out of
Lady Macbeth is wishing to become masculine. This request is going against the great chain of being, because this was very uncommon, as well as not accepted in this time period. In the play, Lady Macbeth plays the role of the man a few times , and is wanting to be unsexed. “Come you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here.” (The Tragedy of Macbeth 1.5 391)
Lady Macbeth's remorse appears nonexistent when she convinces Macbeth to kill King Duncan. She also requests spirits to ‘un-sex’ her so all the weaknesses she had of being a female can vanish from her, forming her to be stronger. She quotes “Come, you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here. Fill me from the crown to the toe, top-full of direst cruelty. Make thick my blood, stop up th’access and passage to remorse, that no compunctious visitings of nature shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between rh’effect and it.”
In William Shakespeare’s tragedy Macbeth, Macbeth was loyal to everyone he knew, but then became a murderous monster after his wife kept shaming him for not being able to do something evil, labeling him as not a man making him a dynamic character because of his wife’s manipulation. Macbeth’s experience with Lady Macbeth is what influenced his future decisions. Lady Macbeth’s wish was to be queen. She would have done whatever it took to be queen.
As the story unfolds, however, one can observe that Lady Macbeth slowly loses the power and authority she seemed to originally radiate. At some point in the story, Lady Macbeth’s conscience gets the best of her and therefore ultimately leads her to her somewhat accidental death. What happened to the unruly and driven woman that first appeared? Was it a guilty conscience? Was she scared her husband because of the power he had obtained?
Bryce Hamilton Ms. Ratay English IV 10 March 2023 Character Analysis on Lady Macbeth In William Shakepears play, Macbeth, Lady Macbeth undergoes a transformation from a ruthless woman, to a woman filled with despair due to her actions throughout the play. Specifically I will examine three parts to her character change that illustrate her evolution from an ambitious, manipulative figure in the beginning to an unstable, guilt ridden one in the end. Her character change is an interesting twist from good to bad, unlike how Macbeth's character changes. There is a reason for this change.
In her initial portrayal, Lady Macbeth is a strong, determined woman who is willing to use her influence to help her husband achieve his ambitions. However, as the play progresses and the consequences
In the beginning of the play, we get to see Lady Macbeth as a masculine, manipulative, and cocky person. She is also the one who is telling Macbeth who to kill and how. Lady Macbeth wishes she would be a man so she whould have the strength kill King Duncan. We can see this when she says “Come, you spirits That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, And fill me from the crown to
Although Macbeth commits murder to achieve his goal of taking the throne and may appear masculine, his mind is battling his inner femininity. Furthermore, Lady Macbeth goes from unaffected to killing herself from the overwhelming amount of guilt her conscience possesses. Even before she killed herself she confessed her sins and her emotions towards the murder while sleep-talking. Overall, their change in masculine and feminine characteristics lead to a redirection of the
When we first see her, she is as of now plotting Duncan's homicide, and she is more grounded, more merciless, and more aspiring than her better half. She appears to be completely mindful of this and realizes that she will need to push Macbeth into submitting murder. At a certain point, she wishes that she was not a lady with the goal that she could do it without anyone else's help (Act 1 Scene 5): "come, you spirits that tend on mortal contemplations, unsex me here". This quote demonstrates that Lady Macbeth is telling "spirits" to expel her female emotions with the goal that she would be less minding like a man and feel no blame of slaughtering the King. Be that as it may, in this scene her familiarity with having done wrong, her sentiments of disgrace and lament are self-evident.
Lady Macbeth could not handle the guilt and loneliness accompanied with her actions and killed herself. Throughout the play Lady Macbeth slowly becomes less and less of a central character, and barely has any lines past the banquet. Her fading into the background is representative of the isolation she feels from her husband. While she had origional ly started him on this path with hopes that she would rise to power with him, he has left her behind and she is left to clean up his messes. It seems as if her husband has become too obsessed with power and no longer cares for her.
Women were typically only viewed as submissive and nurturing. Lady Macbeth completely changes this way of thinking because she commits various malicious acts. Since sex (or gender) was a key factor of societal norms back then, it would have been more socially acceptable to commit murder if she were a man. This is precisely the reason why Lady Macbeth wishes she were a man. Lady Macbeth claims, “Unsex me here, and fill me of direst cruelty.
After hearing that her husband, Macbeth, had the opportunity to become king of Scotland, she herself was ready to do anything for the throne, including being stripped of her femininity. Lady Macbeth said: “That tends on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,/ (...) /And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,”. (Macbeth 1.5.44-51) In other words, she states that she wishes to be stripped of all of her feminine qualities, as well as later on asks to replace her breast milk with bile.