How Is Lady Macbeth's Guilt

The Correlation Between Guilt, Greed, and Personality Change Who an individual was yesterday may not be who they are today, and who they are today may not be who they are tomorrow. Everything is always evolving, and this includes people and their personalities as well. In the play, Macbeth, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are no different. Due to Macbeth’s lust for power and position, he changes from someone with high status who everyone had admired to an individual who’s only path leads to warranted destruction.

Lady Macbeth who had strengthened her will and hardened her heart by ‘’ murdering ministers’’ influences Macbeth to murder Duncan by challenging him to prove his worth as a man. Conflicted Macbeth sees no real reason in killing Duncan, apart from ‘’Vaulting Ambition’ ’ Macbeth’s conscience is deeply troubled, he decides not to go ahead with the murder ‘’We will proceed no further in this business’’ but following his wife’s condescending interventions he resolves to murder, showing weakness in his character and how easily swayed Macbeth can be. Just like with the witch’s prophecies he is eager to find out what lies ahead. With this we learn that Macbeth is a feeble character who is easily persuaded emotionally by his wife, who knows of Macbeths insecurities and hence targets them.

Possibly one of the most influential characters of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Lady Macbeth takes the definition of female dominance to an entirely new level with her ability to manipulate, yet love her husband, and her ability to accuse, yet reassure him of his actions. Though Lady Macbeth is not well described anterior to her introduction, it is immediately apparent that she holds her dominance using her cunning skills, fuelled by ambition, which makes her one of the cruellest characters in Macbeth. Her portrayal of cunningness, upon Duncan’s arrival to Macbeth’s castle, is shown when she allows the king to “Have theirs, themselves, and what is theirs, in compt, / To make their audit at [his] pleasure” (1.6.31–32), in order to give him a false sense of security, when in reality, she wants to ensure that “[her] keen knife see not the wound it makes” (1.5.55) on Duncan. As a result, Lady Macbeth is able to let the king into their castle without hesitation, just like a serpent underneath an innocent flower. While her cunningness is a character trait to fear, it is what fuels it that gives Lady Macbeth her power; ambition.

Macbeth calls her his “dearest partner of greatness”, which indicates they have a close relationship, and he considers her equal to him. “Lady Macbeth must act and think "like a man" because good women are by definition subservient, and can exert no recognizable authority.” When there is the idea of murdering King Duncan, she takes control of the situation. She calls on the evil sprits saying, “unsex me here, and fill me from the crown to the toe top-full, of direst cruelty.” She needed to be male in order to kill Duncan because it was believed only men could commit murder, since women were too dainty to do

Lady Macbeth tried and attempted to fasten onto Macbeth’s inner feelings and attacked his level of masculinity. He is a easy person to manipulate once the future queen questioned his manliness. Macbeth tells Lady Macbeth that he cannot go through with killing King Duncan, she proceeds to tell him that he is a coward. To further convince her husband to kill Duncan is the utmost importance she said that she “would, while (her unborn child) was smiling in my face, have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums and dashed his brains out.” (Act 1, Scene 7, Lines

With this in mind, if a man couldn’t do something a woman can, he was a disgrace; Lady Macbeth is taunting Macbeth with the gender gap, which makes him want to prove he’s more masculine and can keep it together. Even though, Lady Macbeth is viewed as a manipulative character, towards the end, she changes and shows signs of remorse/regret, which is not like her character. Lady Macbeth begins to feel remorseful because she has made an outright killing machine out of Macbeth. Lady Macbeth starts to ask herself “The thane of Fife had a wife. Where is she now?

She is malicious not only in words but also in her intent. Her sole object is to obtain power and wealth, with its attendant treasures. Lady Macbeth lacks humanity and regrets that she was not born as a man. She understands that power and violence are synonymous with manhood and bravery. Additionally, Lady Macbeth interests’ and ambition, override her love for even her husband, Macbeth.

She is a loyal though misguided wife, not without tenderness and not without conscience. Lady Macbeth’s willingness to sacrifice her femininity exposes her loyalty towards Macbeth. After reading the letter regarding the witch’s prophecies, she decides she must do whatever it take to make Macbeth King: 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 presents Lady Macbeth as a power hungry and vindictive women, whose character is against the stereotypes of a Jacobean woman.

When the play Macbeth starts, Lady Macbeth is the strongest force in her marriage to Macbeth. She had such an influence on him that she was able to convince Macbeth to kill King Duncan, even though he didn’t want to. After Macbeth killed Duncan, Lady Macbeth acted as though everything was okay and calmed Macbeth’s nerves, because she knew that now she would become queen and Macbeth would

Although introduced as a thoroughly hardened, ambitious woman, Lady Macbeth’s seemingly unbreakable character shatters when she is consumed by the demon of guilt. The guilt of Lady Macbeth seems nonexistent when she persuades Macbeth to kill King Duncan, but the heinous acts she and her husband commit throughout the play strain her slowly. Eventually, the guilt Lady Macbeth harbors emerges from her subconscious and crumbles her. The downfall of Lady Macbeth reveals that even the toughest, strongest, and most powerful people can succumb to guilt.

Guilt Is Like Shackles William Shakespeare’s tragedy Macbeth tells the tale of Macbeth, a scottish soldier who had been foreseen with the crown atop his head by three witches. The story is a gruesome tale of lies and bloodshed. As a result of the prophecy, Macbeth stays in power through greed, ambition, and violence. His wife, Lady Macbeth, first began his use of violence by plotting the murder of King Duncan.

Lady Macbeth questions her husband’s maleness throughout the play in hopes of driving his actions. Her decision to exert this pressure on her husband helps set into motion the tragic events. She devises a plan for Macbeth and even plants the knife on the sleeping guards. Ultimately however, Lady Macbeth’s treachery leads to immeasurable guilt. She is seen washing her hands over and over again trying to clean herself of the evil deeds she has committed.

Lady Macbeth is overcome with her role in the murders that she sleepwalks and in sleep she is cleared of any pretenses. “The thane of Fife had a wife: where is she now?—What, / Will these hands ne'er be clean?”(5.1.34-35). Her expression of concern for the wife of the man she murdered is an honest reflection of her gender and caring about those who share her status. Yet, she is so entrenched by her lies and masks that she has to kill herself to truly be unburdened. Throughout the entirety of the play Macbeth accumulates many faces and masks in the name of his gender and at the conclusion of the act everyone sees him as he truly is, “We'll have thee, as our rarer monsters are, / Painted on a pole, and underwrit, / '

In the Tragedy of Macbeth, Lady Macbeth exhibits a greater capacity for evil than Macbeth. For example when Lady Macbeth is speaking to Macbeth after he starts to reconsider the plan, she says, “Art thou afeard/ To be the same thine own act and valor/As thou art in desire” (I,vii,39-41). In this scene Lady Macbeth tries to manipulate her husband to kill Duncan by calling him a coward. As a man, Macbeth takes her comments very harshly and gets manipulated to continue the assasination plot.