THE RISE AND FALL OF LADY MACBETH
Lady Macbeth's character is one of complexity; slowly, but continuously changing
throughout the play. What begins as a struggle for power and a longing to shred her
femininity turns Lady Macbeth into what she fears most - a guilt ridden weakling.
In the beginning ( I, v, 43-54) , we see Lady Macbeth reacting to the news of her
husbands success and King Duncan's visit. This ignites her lust for power. In the quote
"...unsex me here, / And fill me from the crown to the toe top full/ Of direst cruelty!
make thick my blood;.../ Come thick night,/ And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of
hell,/ That my keen knife see not the wound it makes," Lady Macbeth talks of wanting all
of the cold blooded aspects of "manliness" so she can kill King Duncan with no remorse -
she sees herself as having these qualities more than her husband, and because of this,
in a sense, wishes to shed her womanhood. We can see this ruthless nature more in depth
in the quote "I would, while it was smiling in my face,/ Have pluck'd my nipple from
his boneless gums,/ and dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn as you/ Have done to
this" (I,vii,56-59) She is obviously a very bitter female, frequently referring to her
role as a woman, both physically and emotionally in negative ways. In the above quote,
Lady Macbeth is commenting on her husband's lack of gall, stating, that quite frankly,
she would make a better man than he.
Although still a very strong woman, we see the first signs of weakness in Lady's
Macbeth's character in Act II, Scene ii, 12-13. She says, "Had he not resembled/ My
father as he slept, I had done it." She is giving an excuse for not killing Duncan
herself. As you can plainly see, this is not the same Lady Macbeth that would bash a
baby's brains in in the beginning of the play. Throughout the play, Macbeth's character
grows stronger as Lady Macbeth's will regresses. It even gets to where Macbeth will not
include his wife in his villianous schemes, where at one time, it was Lady Macbeth who
was implementing these schemes in his head in the first place. In a sense, the two
characters switch roles; Lady Macbeth taking a backseat to her husband almost becoming
wallpaper for the rest of the play. The turning point for Lady Macbeth is when she
learns of her husband's slaying of Macduff's family. She realizes that this is all a
result of her greed for power, power that led to the corruption of her husband and
allowed her to create a monster out of a once, at least, worthy man. In this state, she
turns to sleepwalking which reveals her guilt in Act V, scene i, 37-55. "Out, damned
spot! out, I say!-One: /two: why, then 'tis time to do't... / The thame of Fife had a
wife: where is/ she now?- What, will these hands ne'er be/ clean?..." This guilt and
paranoia eventually leads to Lady Macbeth's violent death at her own hands.
What happened to the power - happy woman that L. Macbeth once was? What was it that
motivated this gradual, yet altogether drastic change in her character? The answer, I
believe, is that it was ambition that motivated her, and ultimately destroyed her also.
What Lady Macbeth and her husband wanted most in the world eventually strangled them
with its power. They are two of Shakespeare's many victims of the "ambition plague",
joining the ranks of Julius Ceasar and others. The real message here is not to place
your ambitions over the rights and lives of other people; something people must have
done quite a lot in Shakespeare's time. In today's society, Lady Macbeth would probably
have been much happier. She would certainly feel less oppressed by her womanly
attributes - she would have been able to seek as much power as she wanted without being
hindered by her less-than-ruthless husband. This theme of ambition ruining everything
still is quite evident today, however. Countless numbers of people are ruined each day
because of their own desires and wants. This is obviously an ageless problem. But the
question still goes unanswered, Is there any way to stop it?
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