Lady Macbeth Analysis (choices/consequences)
Essay Preview: Lady Macbeth Analysis (choices/consequences)
Report this essay
Lady Macbeth, a respected woman, married to the noble man Macbeth, a noble war hero of Scotland who is in the army commanded by King Duncan. After receiving a letter from Macbeth of him telling her of the witches he met a night before, her intentions for the rest of the play come out. She commands Macbeth to invite Duncan to their house for a banquet. King Duncan calls her “our honoured hostess”. The ambitious woman inside her is shown as she shows her immediate ambition as she sees the “fastest way” for Macbeth to become king, is by killing Duncan.
Her immediate persona may show her to be cold and ambitious, but this is not so. She believes the only way that she could agree with the murder is to call upon the evil spirits to “stop up th access and passage to remorse” in order to be the vindictive woman she must be, otherwise her conscience would stop her being able to commit the act.
Furthermore, she believes that Macbeth is too kind; this is why earlier she called upon the spirits. At first Macbeth agrees is to do the deed, but he later backs out, until Lady Macbeth questions his manhood, and reassures him that this is in the best of both their interests; she is successful in her plan as she persuades Macbeth to carry out the murder even though its against his conscience.
Maybe Lady Macbeth thought that the guilt would just disappear, but the couple have been having sleepless nights, and when they do rest, they experience the terror of the night, all over again. Lady Macbeth is still able to contain her terrors in the day, unlike her husband, whom she urges to be light hearted and merry. When Macbeth sees Banquos ghost at the banquet, she practically save him from the on edges conscience he possesses. She tries to anger Macbeth by again questioning his manhood, after the first scare being complete, when the second strikes, she quickly ushers the lords from the house.
Soon after though, the burden of her conscience becomes too great and her mental and physical health starts to deteriorate, the cracks are starting to form. A woman, who had been observing her for a few nights, calls in a doctor to co-observe with her, at night. They see the worst of her sleepwalking as this shows her cleansing her hands, trying to get rid of the blood of Macduffs family and of the late king. Still in her sleep, she asks, “what will these hands nere be clean?” She also retells events of the day Duncan was killed. The woman later tells the doctor that, Lady Macbeth needs spiritual health and not physical help.
Her Condition worsens and she starts to have delirious visions. Macbeth asks the doctor to cure her or erase the troubles she has, but the doctor replies that he cannot cure moral problems. Later as the battle of Dunsinane, by unspecified means, Lady Macbeth commits Suicide.
At the beginning Lady Macbeth finds the strength to carry