Cara Iskra - 5th hour

Cara Iskra

Mrs. Wood

English 11 A - 5th hour

19 February 2016

Characterization of Lady Macbeth

Lady Macbeth is at the beginning of the play a horrible, vicious and heartless person, but at the same time she knows how to manipulate the people around her, in this case mostly her husband Macbeth. She wants him to be king, so she can be queen, and she is putting their love on the same level with the murderer of King Duncan. When Macbeth does not want to kill Duncan, she tells him she would kill her own baby, showing that she is not afraid of killing Duncan like Macbeth is. Later, when she achieved her goal and Macbeth is talking and acting like the murder she wanted him to be, she starts being afraid. Although it is lady Macbeth’s evil greed that leads her with her husband to do the unthinkable, it is her compassion that leads her undoing.

Lady Macbeth is showing her evil character in a few different ways, for example she does not fear to talk Macbeth out of his bad conscience.  “That which cries, “Thus thou must do” if thou have it; and that which rather thou dost fear to do than wishest should be undone. Hie thee hither, that I may pour my spirits in thine ear, and chastise with the valor of my tongue” (1:v, 21-24).

Also she is not happy with herself and wants to be “top-full of direst cruelty” (1:v, 41) and “no compunctious visitings of nature” (1:v, 43)can stop her evil plan of killing Duncan, “nor keep peace between th’ effect and it!” (1:v, 44-45). This shows that she has no problems to use cruel ways to achieve her goal. When Macbeth is showing fear about killing Duncan, she starts talking him into a bad conscience against her. “I have given suck, and known how tender’tis to love the babe that milks me: I would, while it was smiling in my face, have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums, and dashed the brains out, had I so sworn as you have done to this” (1:vii, 54-59).

When Macbeth is fighting with his conscience, she is manipulating him with her actions. She is bringing their love up and is putting it on the same step with him killing King Duncan. “From this time such I account my love. Art thou afeard to be the same in thine own act and valor as thou art in desire? Wouldst thou have that which thou esteem’st the ornament of life, and live a coward in thine own esteem, letting “I dare not” wait upon “I would,” like the poor cat i’th’ adage?” (1:vii, 38-45). Also she is telling him to look like “th’ innocent flower, but be the serpent under’t” (1:v, 63-64) so no one can read in his face what he is going to do. Besides from that she is manipulating other people too, to make her plan work. She manipulated the servants drinks, she “drugged their possets, that death and nature do content about them, whether they live or die” (2:ii, 5-8), so her husband can kill Duncan without witnesses.

Although she has all these evil characteristics, she is not that evil inside. She has compassion and starts being afraid when she does not have to talk Macbeth into evil actions anymore, because he is doing it on his own. She also was not able to kill Duncan because he “resembled my father as he slept” (2:ii, 12-13). This shows that she has a conscience. Also Macbeth started copying her characteristics from the beginning and tells her, that they have to look innocent. Her reaction to that is, that he “must leave this” (3:ii, 35) acting. Later at the end of the play, before she died, she is sleepwalking. She says:”What, will these hands ne’er be clean? No more o’ that, my lord, no more o’ that!” (5:i, 38-39). So she wants to clean her hands from the blood of Duncan and all the people Macbeth murdered. That she is showing this during she is sleeping, tells, that it is moving her, that she is feeling guilty and wants to be free of the evil, guilt and  blood on her hands.

Lady Macbeth seems to be an evil and heartless character at the beginning, but throughout the play there are allusions and little actions of her showing that she has compassion. She said, she would kill her own baby, but she couldn’t kill Duncan because he looks in his sleep like her father did. Also she is afraid of Macbeth when he starts acting unconscionable and she tells him to stop. Referring to the fact that she manipulated Macbeth, she shouldn’t be surprised that he is copying her methods and his character is changing from brave and faithful to cruel and heartless.

Would Lady Macbeth live in our time, she would be the perfect character for a reality TV show like Big Brother. You could see her manipulating the people around her and then slowly breaking under it.

Under all her hate from the beginning she is a compassionist who shows there’s good in every vicious person.