However, because Lady Macbeth has ambition beyond her status, she wants him to become King as soon as possible. The only problem for Lady Macbeth is she feels Macbeth is too nice to kill Duncan. She says “it is too full o’ the milk of human kindness”, which shows Lady Macbeth thinks of her husband as a coward. The soliloquy used by Shakespeare truly shows the disturbed mind of Lady Macbeth; creating an unsettling affect on the audience through his representation of her as a scheming and dangerous character. The use of imagery reveals that witchcraft was a fascination of Elizabethan England.
Guilt is constantly seen throughout the play Macbeth driving the characters to question their morals. To the responder it appears that Lady Macbeth is the driving force behind the initial killing of King Duncan influencing her husband Macbeth to commit the evil deeds by threatening him with his man hood by saying “when you do it, then you are a man”. Her tone portrays her dominant nature and her hunger for authority and demonstrates to the responder her strength as a character. However her over confident traits and clear and concise thinking is diminished once the guilt of the crime poisons her conscience. This is demonstrated by her imagining her hands stained by blood and her constantly trying to clean the “damned spot” away and rid her sole of the guilt.
The Anglo-Irish feminist, intellectual, and writer Mary Wollstonecraft has stated that, “No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.” This is evident in Shakespeare’s play “Macbeth”. The evil that occurs in this play begins when the witches deliver Macbeth his prophecy. The evil deeds dominate over the happiness that Macbeth may have been searching for in hopes of fulfilling his prophecy. Many themes in “Macbeth” deal with the consequences that followed the terrible acts he performed. Three major themes Shakespeare exposed are: greed for power can corrupt human behaviour; feelings of guilt can burden the human mind and cause mental breakdowns; receiving a position that is undeserved would cause the human mind to feel uncomfortable.
Throughout the play Lady Macbeth is the driving influence behind Macbeth and the immoral path that he chose to follow. To put it simply Lady Macbeth started the rot and persuaded the hesitant and indecisive Macbeth to “be a man” and do the deed of killing Duncan. Macbeth initially decided to “proceed no further” in the matter of killing Duncan because he had been kind to him of late bestowing the position of Thane of Cawdor on him. She responds to this by saying that if he can lose his ambition so readily, his love for her must also be changeable. Then she insults his masculinity and questions his courage.
Macbeth hatches the plan, as he is in conversation with Lady Macbeth, he states, “When we have marked with blood those sleepy two”. Sleepy contains connotations of vulnerability and no use of self-defence, therefore meaning that the guards are helpless moreover Macbeth planning to frame them whilst at this vulnerable stage, infers the tyranny within. Aristotle’s theory on a Tragic Hero states that persuasion soon follows the self-indulgent of greatness. In this instance, his own wife, Lady Macbeth, convinces Macbeth to kill his best friend, Duncan. She insults his masculinity greatly, by calling him a coward.
This forebodes the death of Macbeth and also Lady Macbeth by suggesting that they will not be able to kill the King and live a normal, guilt free life afterwards. Lady Macbeth then creates irony as she mocks Macbeth for thinking this way, she refers to him as a ‘coward’ and insists that this murder is necessary. This part of the play is extremely significant as we realise just how harsh Lady Macbeth is and how far she would really go. She removes any maternal characteristics that she may have had by explaining that her lack of pity would extend so far, that she would murder a baby. “Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums and dashed the brains out”.
A Jacobean audience would not approve of Lady Macbeth as she becomes a threat to the patriarchal society by emasculating the men of the play. Lady Macbeth is first introduced in Act One, scene five where she is reading a letter she has received from Macbeth. She calls for the dark spirits to visit her and take control. She could be doing his for two reasons, because she herself is evil and seeks the help of her natural allies, or because she sees her human weaknesses and needs to be strengthened from outside. In this scene, she claims ‘unsex me here’.
In the critical essay, Be Bloody, bold and resolute: Tragic Action and Sexual Stereotyping in Macbeth, Carolyn Asp states “Lady Macbeth consciously attempts to reject her feminine sensibility and adopt a male mentality because she perceives that her society equates feminine qualities with weakness” (Be Bloody 2). This stereotype is very popular nowadays as well. Many women are stereotyped as being weaker than men. Lady Macbeth proves this stereotype as the opposite the first time she is introduced in the play. As she reads Macbeth’s letter he has sent her, her mind is already planning ways of gaining more power to become queen.
Those endowed with it may perform very good or bad acts; all depends on the principles which direct them.” In reference to the aforementioned quote Lady Macbeth’s principles are cemented by evil that necessitates her manipulative misdemeanor in the play. We first find out about Lady Macbeths intention to become queen when Macbeth her husband sends her a letter describing his encounter with three witches that prophesied he would become King. In response, Lady Macbeth believes the prophecies will come true, but she fears that Macbeth lacks the rigor and tenacity to lie, cheat and deceit his way to become king for Macbeth was not naturally inclined to commit evil deeds. Though he was a brave general and a powerful lord Lady Macbeth was far from subordinate to Macbeths will. Unlike Macbeth she understood that to achieve something you have never done before you must become someone you have never been.
When she says "Come you spirits that tend on murderous thoughts, unsex me," and "make thick my blood, stop th'access and passage to remorse," she is already calling on evil spirits to take away her feminine nature, and to stop her feeling any pity, remorse or compassion; Lady Macbeth is determined to assist Macbeth in murdering Duncan. From this early point, it is already evident that she is contemplating, and intends to take part in a murder so that her husband could have the status he had always wanted, but had been too weak to obtain. When Macbeth enters, Lady Macbeth replies: "O never shall sun that morrow see." When Macbeth informs her Duncan will be leaving the following day. Here, she blatantly reveals that she intends to murder Duncan, saying he won't live to see another day.