Lady macbeth

Lady Macbeth is described as a ‘fiend like Queen’. She most often appears to be superficial and callous. However, it appears that Lady Macbeth’s quest for unrequited evil is unfulfilled. I’m not suggesting by any means that Lady Macbeth in some way is a heroine, but when she is finally driven into such a state of deterioration, she deserves at least a little sympathy.

Lady Macbeth is never actually physically involved with any crime. However, she boasts she would have killed Duncan herself, but gives the excuse that the king ‘resembled my father as he slept.’

Lady Macbeth contributes enormously to Duncan’s demise and she eventually persuades her husband to assassinate him, she is only however, telling Macbeth what he wants to hear. She herself claims that her husband is ‘not without ambition’. It is true to say though, that this royal ambition lends itself not only to Macbeth’s desire to become king, but also Lady Macbeths desire to become Queen.

It is too extreme to address Lady Macbeth as a careless and pitiless fiend, it could be said that she was a very strong woman indeed. Few could even wish to appear as stable as the Queen of Scotland appears to be. She has a lot of newly found responsibilities. As well as the responsibility of being the Queen, she must also serve as the bearer of her own as well as her husband’s guilt. She seems to be the crutch for Macbeth while he is suffering the hallucinations of his disturbed mind.

When Macbeth sees Banquo’s ghost at the banquet, it is his wife; Lady Macbeth who soothes her husband and takes control. She scolds Macbeth as though he is a disobedient and thankless child, ‘you have displaced the myth,’ and later apologises for Macbeth announcing that ‘he grows worse and worse;’ and abruptly orders their guests to leave.

What must also be distressing for Lady Macbeth is the obvious deterioration between the relationship of King Macbeth and his Queen. At the beginning of the play Macbeth describes his wife has his ‘dearest partner of greatness’ but after the butchering of Duncan the couple grow further and further apart. The pair converse less and Lady Macbeth seems reduced to calling her once beloved husband ‘Sir’.

When it is stated that Lady Macbeth has committed suicide, Macbeth merely points out that ‘she should have died hereafter;’ perhaps this is the consequence that results from Lady Macbeth’s superficial attitude towards Macbeth’s complaints of hallucinations and sleepless nights. Lady Macbeth seems unable to comprehend Macbeth’s imaginative and colourful mind. When Macbeth tries to tell her why he can’t sleep, she doesn’t understand, she inquires ‘what do you mean’? When he tells his wife that ‘Macbeth shall sleep no more!’ Lady Macbeth quickly dismisses his anxieties and tries to make him return to normal as quickly as possible; ‘wash this filthy witness from your hand’. Ironically and unfortunately, it is Lady Macbeth in the end whose vulnerability and guilt cannot be washed away.