Lady Macbeth - repulsive or sympathetic?
A monster or flawed human being fundamentally evil?
A woman who attempts to turn her back on
her conscience and humanity for the sake
of ambition. She suffers terribly as a
consequence of this and ends the play a
traumatised and tormented figure.
Our first impression of Lady Macbeth is a
very disturbing one. She appears to be a
cold hearted, cruel, amoral, callous and
viciously ambitious character who pushes
and persuades Macbeth to commit murder
against his better judgement.
Unlike MB she shows little or no moral
sense and gives no thought to the moral
consequences or aspects of the murder.
When she receives word of the witches'
prophesies she immediately starts to plan
the murder of Duncan. She appears to
relish the idea and shows no hesitation or
reservation. she does not give it a second
thought but just starts thinking about how
she can make sure that Duncan is
murdered.
She is obsessed with the idea of MB
becoming King and is determined that he
should win the "golden round." She fears
that MB although ambitious will be
prevented by his conscience and decency
from "catch (ing) the nearest way." She
sees morality as a weakness, all that she
cares about is seizing power and status.
The audience recoils from LMB as she
turns entirely to evil and asks the evil spirits
to possess her. She wants to become pure,
unadulterated evil and is equally
determined to rid MB of his conscience so
that he may commit evil deeds as well.
At the start of the play she is the dominant
figure and the driving force behind the plan
to murder Duncan. She says " Hie the
hither that I may pour my spirits into thine
ear and chastise with the valour of my
tongue all that impedes thee from the
golden round" She is fixated and focused
on power and is instrumental in
pressurising MB and planning what will
happen.When he arrives the first words
she speaks to him are about her hopes that
he will become King in the future. When
she asks him when Duncan will leave and
Macbeth says in the morning she makes it
clear that she wants Macbeth to murder
him when she says " o never shall he that
morrow see." She instructs Macbeth to
"look like....." which means to put on a false
display of loyalty while he plans treachery.
She then tells Macbeth that she will plan
everything, "you shall put ...." . She is the
driving force behind the murder at this
stage and her focused rush to have the
deed done is contrasted to Macbeth's
doubts and uncertainties. The audience
feels little sympathy for her in the early
parts of the play and she appears to be a
ruthless and amoral villain. She even
comes across as somewhat monstrous in
her appeals to the forces of darkness to
possess her so that she can do what she
wishes without remorse. However the fact
that she must appeal to pure evil spirits to
help her indicates that she is not
fundamentally evil but rather corrupted and
blinded by intense ambition.
(read through her speech between lines 39
and 52 - she asks the spirits to come and
do 4 things - what are they)
The audience is shocked and disturbed by
her wish to have all compassion and
conscience removed from her nature but
this hints at the existence of a conscience
that she attempts to suppress but which
will return to haunt and torment her.
Another sign even at this stage of the play
that she is not a simple and fundamentally
evil character is that she refers to the
ruthlessness that Macbeth lacks as a
"disease." this suggests that's she has a
moral sense of right and wrong but
chooses to ignore it in order to satisfy her
ambition to seize the crown for her
husband.
In act 1 scene 6 we see her deceitful and
deceptive nature when she acts as a dutiful
and loyal servant and hostess. We can see
her cunning and calculating character and
this adds to the unattractive image of Lady
Macbeth that is put across in the opening
acts of the play.
In act 1 scene 7 Lady Macbeth proves that
she was right to have confidence in her
ability to aggressively manipulate and
persuade her husband. Macbeth, following
a soliloquy where he lists all the reasons
why he should not murder Duncan, tells
her firmly that he has decided against the
plan to murder Duncan. She then shows
her strong will and single minded
determination as well as her skills as a
manipulator. She works on Macbeth's
weaknesses which were his manly pride as
well as his love for her. She taunts him and
asks if he is a coward. She tells him he
was a man when he was prepared to carry
out the murder and that he would be a
greater man should he do it. She turns it
into a test of his courage and masculinity
and she also turns it into a test of his love
for her. (Learn quotes - p 34 and 35)
She also appeals to his sense of honour by
saying that he would be breaking a
promise if he failed to murder Duncan. In a
chilling image that would lead the audience
to feel disgusts for her she tells him that
she would kill a new born baby if she had
promised to do so. The audience would
feel that she was quite a despicable and
odious character after witnessing her
performance in this scene.
In Act 2 scene 2 Lady Macbeth's character
is softened somewhat before she again
shows an apparent chilling composure and
lack of concern for the morality of their
actions. As she waits for Macbeth she says
that she had to take some wine to calm her
nerves before she drugged the guards and
she also confesses that she could not have
killed Duncan herself since he resembled
her father. This humanises Lady Macbeth
and is another sign that she is not the vile
monster that she wishes herself to be. After
a distraught, shaken and remorseful
Macbeth returns she takes charge again
and shows a level head and steely resolve.
She remains practically focused and she
appears callous and cruel hearted when
she casually tells Macbeth to stop thinking
about what he has done. She tells him " a
little water clears....." and again taunts him
for cowardice when he refuses to go back
to the chamber to dispose of the daggers
and implicate the guards. She again
inspirers great revulsion due to her
apparent lack of feeling. However there is a
hint once more of a deeper and more moral
person beneath the remorseless surface
when she tells Macbeth that thinking about
what they have done could lead to
madness. A truly amoral person would not
consider that they could be tortured by
thoughts of their immoral actions.
As the play progresses we watch as Lady
Macbeth proves the truthfulness of these
worse and she is consumed by a powerful
and tormenting sense of guilt. She finds no
satisfaction or peace through their action to
gain power and the audience realises that
she is not the vile and vicious character
that she appeared to be. In Act 3 scene 2
we see that she is beginning to wish she
were dead rather than live with the
knowledge of her treachery. She envies
Duncan the peace he has found in death
and she says " Tis safer to be......" despair
and disillusionment are beginning to
dominate her thoughts but she keeps such
thoughts to herself. We also see her
becoming less important to her husband as
he grows more violent and more at ease
with carrying out evil acts without her
encouragement or prompting. She is losing
influence on an increasingly unhinged
Macbeth and is filled with self doubt. The
attempt to suppress her humanity is failing
and the audience starts to feel some
sympathy for what she has done to herself.
Macbeth now plans murder without her,
she seems disturbed by his hinting at
having Banquo killed and she pretends not
to understand his intentions. We can see
that she is feeling increasingly hopeless
and helpless as her husband becomes a
violent tyrant.
In the banquet scene she makes one last
effort to protect the future that she had
hoped to win for themselves. She covers
for her hysterical husband as he suffers
guilty hallucinations and comes close to
revealing to all what they have done. She
explains away his behaviour and dismisses
the thanes before Macbeth can incriminate
them. However at the end of the scene she
seems a broken woman. All her formidable
strength seems exhausted and she says
little to Macbeth whereas before she would
have " chastised him with the valour of
(her) tongue." While Macbeth rants and
raves and commits himself to further
bloodshed Lady Macbeth barely responds.
In the sleep walking scene we see that the
pressure of trying to suppress her
conscience has led to the disintegration of
her mind. Macbeth later says that her mind
is full of "rooted sorrow" but it also seems
overwhelmed by guilt and remorse. She
appears a vulnerable, broken and
mumbling wreck whose mind is constantly
reliving the horrors of what she has done
and what Macbeth has become. She talks
about her shock at the amount of blood
that had lured from Duncan's body and she
rubs obsessively at an imaginary spot of
blood that she cannot wash away. This
symbolises the guilt that she could not
prevent from rising up in her and she goes
on to say that all the "perfumes of Arabia"
could not remove the stench of blood from
her nose. She also expresses remorse at
the deaths of Banquo and Macduff's family.
When she says that " Hell is murky," she is
expresses her belief that her soul is
damned. The audience who felt only
revulsion for Lady Macbeth and was
horrified by her actions now feels some pity
and sympathy for this tormented and
traumatised and unbalanced woman.
Conclusion - journey - denial of humanity
leading to her self destruction. Eventually
eaten up and consumed by the conscience
and humanity that she tried to suppres and
turn away from for the sake of her intense
ambition for her husband. Our sympathy
for her is increased by Macbeth's growing
detachment from her and by his casual and
unfeeling response to news of her suicide.inevitable or inconvenient " she should
have died......." we realise she was not
purely evil or just a "fiend like Queen" as
Malcolm calls her at the close of the play.