Lady Macbeth- tragic figure or evil figure

A detailed Summary of Lady Macbeth- tragic figure or evil figure

Make no mistake: Lady Macbeth is fully suited to be a woman. Although she has the ambitions of a man, she has the character of a woman. Beauty, deceit, and manipulation are her weapons. She moves like a serpent, gracefully slithering from one dark corner of the castle to another. Even her words are laden with images of a bejeweled snake; she makes continuous references to tongues (1.5.30, 76), as she apparently views them as the heralds of a poisonous future. Lady Macbeth is presumably in her mid-30s, old enough to have a quick wit and strong mind, but young enough to be seduced by the temptations of evil. Her wicked nature was not randomly spawned by the promise of a higher status; it has obviously been in place for quite a while.

It does not seem that the Lady loves Macbeth, judging from the many insults she throws at him. She calls him a "coward" (1.7.47) and when he later expresses his fears about killing Duncan, she states that only "the eye of childhood" (2.2.70) fears a dead man. Constantly pushing him to the edge, she seems to care more about the gain of power than the perils facing her husband. An interesting theory of Lady Macbeth's motivations is that she did not marry Macbeth out of love, but only for the rewards ass

In Act 2, Scene 2, the deed of killing Duncan has been done and Macbeth returns to his wife who is waiting anxiously but is shocked when she discovers Macbeth has made a terrible mistake by carrying the murder weapons with him. She feels empowered by the murder, proclaiming "[what] hath quenched them [the servants] hath given [her] fire" (2.2.3). She thrives off the sin, strengthened by its daring and cunning. Yet, in this same scene, she exhibits a vulnerability in stating that she could not kill Duncan because he looked like her father. This is the first sign of any human morality in her character, but it is immediately rebuked by her other words and actions. Lady Macbeth grows troubled when Macbeth states that he heard someone crying "Murder!" but her worries stem from the fear of being discovered guilty, not from the stigma of the act. She quickly regains her composure. More confident in her natural state of precise control, she directs Macbeth to wash his hands and when he refuses to return the misplaced daggers, she proclaims him the equivalent of a coward and takes it upon herself to return them on her own. Every time that Macbeth voices a concern, Lady Macbeth counters with a statement of his fault. In this case, Macbeth stated that he is "afraid to think what [he] has done" (2.2.66) and Lady Macbeth retorts "[the] sleeping and the dead/ Are but as pictures. 'Tis the eye of childhood/ That fears a painted devil" (2.2.69-71). Further into the scene, Macbeth grieves over the red blood on his hands, and his lady returns "[my] hands are of your color, but I shame/ To wear a heart so white" (2.2.82-83). At every turn of the plot, she is berating Macbeth for his cowardice and manipulates him by threatening his masculinity and courage. She knows that she shares in the sin of the greed, but unlike Macbeth, she carries no remorse for it. In fact, she takes the opposite stance, and only feels ashamed that she could have such a weak resolve to carry through the killing. It is likely that she even regrets her earlier decision not to murder Duncan herself, and she feels shame for that vulnerability. She makes light of the act, claiming that "[a] little water clears [them] of this deed" (2.2.86), as though the sin can be erased by destroying all evidence of its committal. She even goes so far as to declare it "easy" (2.2.87).

On the other hand, it is not wholly believable that Lady Macbeth truly cares about her husband. Her des

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Approximate Word count = 1645
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English