In what way has Lady Macbeth been presented as a tragic character? What methods has Shakespeare used to present Lady Macbeth in this way?
In the book Macbeth by William Shakespeare, one of the leading characters, Lady Macbeth, has a tragic story. In the book, she is portrayed as an evil person, but there is a reason for that, she was born a woman. She was born into a time when only men could rule, for some women this would not be the end of the world, but for her it was. Lady Macbeth in the book is very motivated, she wants more for herself; she wants more power. Yet, that is her flaw, her need for power, to cut herself loose from the restraints she was born with. But she must stay silent and support her husband from a distance. Lady Macbeth and her husband, Macbeth, share a great love for each other, which makes these restrictions against her more bearable. But that is only in the beginning of the book, as time goes on, and as Macbeth grows more power, the thought of the woman who created that power for him crosses his mind less and less. She created the powerful King Macbeth but was left behind once she was no longer needed. In the end, she had the power she wanted but her marriage came to this, loveless and childless. She, unfortunately, meets her end with a guilty heart, no love, and her people despise her. First, the reader can tell that Lady Macbeth is an evil manipulative woman in Act 1, Scene 5 to Act 2, Scene 2. In these scenes, Lady Macbeth easily manipulates Macbeth into doing what she wants. Following those acts, in Act 3, Scene 4, which is the banquet scene, Lady Macbeth has lost touch with Macbeth. In her eyes he is acting out, not listening to her words to calm him down, and he is rebelling against her order. In the last scenes, Lady Macbeth’s name is mentioned as she is no longer the strong, powerful Lady Macbeth that the reader saw at the beginning of the book. She was weak and sickly; it seemed that she had finally gone mad from her actions. The once great Lady Macbeth was no more, she became the mad and evil woman of Scotland.
After Macbeth meets the ‘weird sisters’, he immediately sends a letter to his wife: Lady Macbeth. As she reads the letter informing her that her husband may become a king; an evil resting within her unimpeachable body comes funneling out. She is consumed with cruel determination; a greater evil overcomes her; and she is filled with malicious intent: she will make him king. But, if her husband becomes king, she will become the queen of Scotland. Finally, the power she has wanted since birth is in front of her now. With this thought flooding her mind, she becomes corrupted by power and will do anything to get to that position, even if someone has to die. The reader’s first introduction to Lady Macbeth is in her opening soliloquy. After reading the letter, she is alone, alone to act how she wants. In the scene she is incredibly wicked, in this soliloquy especially. She reveals her true intentions and ambitions of making Macbeth king and rips off the mask of the kind Lady Macbeth. She is no longer a weak lady who acts in the role of a woman, she is powerful. However, Lady Macbeth does not believe Macbeth has what it takes to become king. In this quotation 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.” (1, 5, 15-16) And she may be right that he is not competent enough to do it. Earlier in the play, specifically, in Act 1 Scene 3, Macbeth says “If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me without my stir.” (1, 3, 145-146) This proves that he wants to be king, but does not want to fight to get that position. He will not betray his country to become more powerful, and Lady Macbeth must interfere. She calls on the spirits to make her evil.
Come, you spirits that tend on mortal thought, unsex me here, and fill me from the crown to the toe top-full of direst cruelty. Make thick my blood. Stop up the access and passage to remorse, that no compunctious visitings of nature shake my fell purpose, nor keep the peace between the effect it! (1, 5, 41-49)
In this quotation, Lady Macbeth will take on the evil forces that Macbeth needs to become king. She will let all the evil thoughts and spirits corrupt her body so that her innocent mind can become evil. Because “she knows she has to steel herself, the murder will need evil power, and evil is not naturally within her.” (BBC, Macbeth Characters) So she becomes the evil force that can not be reckoned with. As well, in this quotation, she tells the spirits to “unsex” her. For a woman to say this is very odd, she is saying such a thing to make her manlier; to make her stronger. Her words create a very dark, terrifying mood. She is calling on these evil spirits to unsex her so she can convince Macbeth to kill Duncan. Once Macbeth arrives at his castle Lady Macbeth confronts him. “Look like th’ innocent flower, but be the serpent under’t.” (1, 5, 67-68) Lady Macbeth is telling Macbeth to appear as an innocent flower with the serpent concealed underneath. She wants him to appear as a welcoming host; grateful to King Duncan for the honours Duncan has given to him. Underneath this welcoming appearance, Macbeth is secretly planning to kill Duncan for the throne. Additionally, this quotation is a simile. This simile expresses the fact that Macbeth must keep his appearance as a loyal knight to the king and not raise any suspicion as to what he is planning because now is the only chance that Macbeth will ever have to sit on the throne. Lady Macbeth will not let this opportunity go. After the murder is committed, Macbeth says “Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hand?” (2, 2, 57-58) He is riddled with guilt, he has betrayed his king and country, all things that a knight is sworn to. Despite that, Lady Macbeth feels otherwise, “My hands are of your color, but I shame to wear a heart so white.” (2, 2, 61-62) She is incredibly disappointed in Macbeth’s inadequacy to murder Duncan when he is the strongest knight in Scotland. The way he acts now only supports the fact that Lady Macbeth thinks he is too weak; they seem to have switched roles in this scene. She was the man, strong, confident, and would not let the sight of blood shake him; he was the man, weak, innocent, and weak-minded, he felt guilty of something that would make him stronger. To stab a sleeping man would not be hard for him, but Lady Macbeth could do it as well. In this quotation she says “Had he not resemble my father as he slept, I had done’t.” (2, 2, 12-13) She did not want to kill Duncan because killing him would seem as if she killed her own father and that decision would give her nightmares. During the period that Macbeth took place,
Women were expected to be silent, chaste and more or less confined to the household, their identity submerged in that of a husband, father or master.” (17th-century men made misleading gender claims, says Oxford historian)
During the Renaissance, women were considered to legally belong to their husbands. A woman's job at the time was to be the manager of the house, oversee the family, and create an heir. Anything outside of that was considered a woman rebelling against her husband or family. From the time they were born, a woman would be cultivated to catch the eye of a man; not so that they could choose what they wanted in life like today. Lady Macbeth refused to behave as dutifully as her society suggests she should as a woman, she went against the idea that women should stay silent. She is a powerful and ambitious woman who is not afraid to take control of a situation.
Macbeth and Lady Macbeth host a banquet to celebrate their recent coronation. All the Thanes of Scotland were invited. They all enjoy a hearty meal together, but a guest that Macbeth is not expecting has come to the banquet. Banquo has returned, but not in life, in death; his ghost has come to haunt Macbeth. As Banquo slowly approaches the seat meant for Macbeth, Macbeth is horrified by what he is seeing. Banquo stands on his throne and stares at him in silence, the silence is so loud that the guilt from what Macbeth has done fills his body, it drives him insane. Macbeth throws a fit, he is yelling and screaming at this ghost that no one else can see. He is causing a stir and all attention lands on him, but the Thanes are not looking at him with respect, they are looking at him with worry and fear in their eyes. They are scared because a crazed man is going to rule their country. Lady Macbeth, who is also confused, tries her best to control the situation but, Macbeth becomes more and more wild. Lady Macbeth in this scene is using his masculinity against him to calm him down, so he can snap out of the trance he is under. In this quotation, “(aside to Macbeth) Are you a man?” (3, 4, 58) Lady Macbeth is berating him for his crazed manner. He is embarrassing himself and showing a weak side of himself, which he should not be doing as king. Macbeth continues to scream and shout, and in his frenzy, he reveals that he went against her word and killed off Banquo. Her grasp around Macbeth is slipping: he is no longer listening to her word anymore. Macbeth has broken away from her manipulation and acts on his own. She asks him if he is a “man” because he is acting in a childlike way; throwing a fit over something so small. He is scared of the ghost of Banquo because he knows what he has done, yet he still can not face it. Macbeth has realized that he has already gone too far to steal the throne, and to keep he must continue. Macbeth’s fit continues, and the bloody image of Banquo haunts his mind and drives him insane. Lady Macbeth struggles to control the situation. She tells the guests to:
Sit, worthy friends. My lord is often thus and hath been from his youth. Pray you, keep seat. The fit is momentary; upon a thought he will again be well. If much you note him, you shall offend him and extend his passion. Feed and regard him not. (3, 4, 53-58)
While Macbeth is falling apart, Lady Macbeth tries to play strong. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth seem cool on the outside but are breaking internally. Lady Macbeth is terrified of what will happen if Macbeth, in his fit, were to confess Duncan’s murder. The guilt that the couple is experiencing has started to make them go crazy with sadness, and anger with the fact that they know they did something wrong. Macbeth’s fit momentarily stops, and he says to his wife “But now I am cabined, cribbed, confined, bound in to saucy doubts and fears.” (3, 4, 24-25) The alliteration of the hard c sounds reveals Macbeth's sense of constraint, in contrast to the freedom which he claims to have enjoyed previously before he became king, and killed so many people. In Macbeth, many ghosts or apparitions appear, but at the time of the play
Where witches and ghosts were concerned, it was commonly accepted that they existed and the person who scoffed at them was considered foolish, or even likely to be cursed. (Waters, Ghost, Witches, and Shakespeare)
During the Reformation, Protestants did not believe in such things as ghosts that Catholics believed in. Purgatory to Protestants was seen as something that was made up for the people who had sinned in the Catholic religion to become cleansed of their sins before they went to heaven, and if you were Protestant your sins could not be erased. If you were to see a ghost as a Protestant, it meant that it was trying to lead you away from the moral path, and leading you down a path of evil. That is exactly what has happened to Macbeth, he has seen these ghosts and they had given him ideas, evil ideas.
As the play progresses, Lady Macbeth’s guilty conscience begins to eat away at her. She and Macbeth are both consumed by guilt, though they experience it in different ways. Macbeth is unable to sleep soundly, while Lady Macbeth imagines that the king's blood is still on her hands. “Out, damned spot! Out, I say!” (5, 1, 30) Even though she has already washed the blood off her hands the night of the murder, the memories of it are still alive. The “spot” which will not go away continues to way on Lady Macbeth’s mind. No matter what she does to forget her evil deeds, the “spot” remains. In Lady Macbeth’s fractured soliloquy, she repents for everything that she has done. She admits to the planning and murdering of Duncan; she admits that she did this for power; and she admits her guilt for everything that she started. She gave Macbeth the idea to kill Duncan for the throne and it turned Macbeth into an unremorseful, evil, murderer. Her behaviour has become increasingly erratic. “What, will these hands ne’er be clean?” (5, 1, 36-37) Lady Macbeth asks a question that she already knows the answer to. She knows that though the blood is gone, it will never truly go away. She will always remember that she killed Duncan and that he will now always be dead. She is constantly reminded of this when she rests in his castle and sits on the throne with Macbeth. The guilt she feels will never go away. When she asks this rhetorical question, it seems she is asking for forgiveness from a greater good or even god. In the play Macbeth, there are many points which relate to Christianity and the Bible. Lady Macbeth’s actions greatly relate to Pontius Pilate the Roman governor of Judea who crucified Jesus. Both Pilate and Lady Macbeth are seen as cruel and ruthless, who have no remorse for anyone who got in their way. For example: after King Duncan is murdered, Lady Macbeth tells her husband “A little water clears us of this deed: How easy is it then!” (2, 2, 65-66) After allowing the crucifixion of Jesus, Pilate “took water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, ‘I am innocent of this man’s blood; see to it yourselves” (Matthew 27:24). They both thought that a little water could clean them of their actions, but it never did. They both felt guilt for what they did and eventually took their own lives. In Act V, she commits suicide, just before the castle is overrun by Macduff's army. Some part of her realizes that she and her husband are going to be defeated and punished for the king's death. The guilt from not only the evil deeds she has committed haunts her, but her husband as well. At the beginning of the play, Lady Macbeth is constantly targeting Macbeth’s masculinity to manipulate him into doing what she wants. But now, she is just an afterthought to him. He does not listen to her words anymore and has left her alone in the large castle. Rather than waiting for the army, she exits early from this life, leaving her husband alone to face the outcome of his actions, just like he left her.
Shakespeare represents Lady Macbeth as a complex character that changes drastically throughout the play. At the beginning of the play, Lady Macbeth desires to be manlier and is very manipulative to her husband; in contrast, at the end, she acts frightened, guilty and worries about her power. “She has no loyalty to any cause beyond her ambition and is willing to manipulate her husband to achieve what she wants. Her desire for Macbeth to be king does not stem from a belief he would be a good ruler; she wants him to be king because she wants to be queen.” (Spark Notes, Central Idea: Is Lady Macbeth a Villain or a Victim?) While Lady Macbeth is far from innocent for her role in encouraging her husband to take action on becoming king, she ends the play with a far more tenderhearted character than she began. She was a victim of her own ambition, and that brought on her downfall. She succumbed to her own guilt and eventually, committed suicide.
Works Cited
“English Reformation and Ghosts (The).” EHNE, https://ehne.fr/en/encyclopedia/themes/european-humanism/parallel-spaces-renaissance/english-reformation-and-ghosts. Accessed 31 October 2023.
“Macbeth - Macbeth - character - National 4 English Revision.” BBC, https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zvswxnb/revision/1. Accessed 26 October 2023.
“Macbeth - Study Guide and Literary Analysis.” Literary Devices, https://literarydevices.net/macbeth/. Accessed 5 November 2023.
“17th century men made misleading gender claims, says Oxford historian.” University of Oxford, 29 November 2016, https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2016-11-29-17th-century-men-made-misleading-gender-claims-says-oxford-historian. Accessed 26 October 2023.
Shakespeare, William. “Macbeth: Central Idea: Is Lady Macbeth a Villain or a Victim?” SparkNotes, https://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/macbeth/central-idea-essay/is-lady-macbeth-a-villain-or-a-victim/. Accessed 29 October 2023.
Shakespeare, William. Macbeth (No Fear Shakespeare). Study Guide ed., vol. 1, SparkNotes, 2003. 28 vols.
“Six 'Macbeth' essays by Wreake Valley students.” Wreake Valley Academy, https://www.wreake.bepschools.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2019/12/Macbeth-revision-material-for-English-Lit-GCSE.pdf. Accessed 25 October 2023.
Smith, Joe. “Pilate: Don't Fear the People.” Hockey Ministries International, https://www.hockeyministries.org/home-ice/blog/pilate-dont-fear-the-people/. Accessed 5 November 2023.
Waters, Howard. “Ghosts, Witches, and Shakespeare.” Utah Shakespeare Festival, https://www.bard.org/study-guides/ghosts-witches-and-shakespeare/. Accessed 31 October 2023.
“Women in the 16th, 17th, and 18th Centuries: Introduction.” Encyclopedia.com, https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/women-16th-17th-and-18th-centuries-introduction. Accessed 26 October 2023.
Holy Bible. American Standard Version, Bible Domain Publishing, 2013.
Commentaires