Lady Macbeth Character Analysis

Character Analysis

Lady Macbeth can be said to be one of Shakespeare's most famous and frightening female characters. She fulfills her role among the nobility and is well respected, like Macbeth. She is loving, yet very determined that her husband will be king. At the beginning of the play, when she is first seen, she is already plotting the murder of Duncan, showing more strength, ruthlessness, and ambition than Macbeth. She lusts after power and position and then pressures her husband into killing Duncan. Upon receiving the letter with the witches' prophecies from her husband, she begins to think and knowing that Macbeth lacks the courage for something like this, she calls upon the forces of evil to help her do what must be done. Her immediate thoughts might make people believe she is irreligiously cold but she only calls upon the spirits to help her, otherwise her conscience would not let her act.

The raven himself is hoarse

Under my battlements. 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! Make thick my blood;

Stop up the access and passage to remorse,

That no compunctious visitings of nature

Shake my fell purpose nor keep peace between

The effect and it! Come to my woman's breasts

And take my milk for fall, you murd'ring ministers,

Wherever in your sightless substances

You wait on nature's mischief! Come, thick night,

And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,

That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,

Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark

To cry "Hold, hold!" (lines 38-54/act 1, scene 5)

She knows what must be done and will do anything to achieve her goal. She wishes that she were not a woman so that she could do it herself. I think there is a connection between gender and power and here, that is true. Many people don't view women and power together as one but here, Shakespeare shows Lady Macbeth, along with the witches, using certain female methods of achieving power, which would include manipulation, to achieve certain male powers or ambitions. Lady Macbeth manipulates her husband with such effectiveness and overrides all his objections.

She repeatedly questions his manhood, courage, and his love for her. She knows he is too weak to kill Duncan so she has no choice but to manipulate him to win him the title of King. She does this until he feels that he has no choice but to commit the murder to prove him to her.

Was the hope drunk

Wherein you dressed yourself? Hath if slept since?

And wakes it now to look so green and pale

At what it did so freely? From this time

Such I account thy love. Art thou afeard

To be the same in thine own act and valor

As thou art in desire? Wouldst