Analysis Of Lady Macbeth ': Hungry For AFruitless Crown'

Lady Macbeth played a large role as Macbeth’s seductress and brainwasher. Lady Macbeth persuaded her husband to kill the King not so that he would himself be King but so that she could be Queen.Although because of her involvement in this web of lies she felt guilty and drove herself insane worrying about what had happened and what would happen to her and her husband for being so dishonest. She was not responsible for the tragedy, she was only a manipulative factor in the scheme of things. Even though it does take two to tango, Macbeth tangoed on his own.

In Shakespare’s play Macbeth, Lady Macbeth’s destiny is formed by her own actions through mind and free-will. In act I, Lady Macbeth convinces her husband to murder Duncan, even though Macbeth was strongly against it. Lady Macbeth is very successful at persuading him to go against his better judgment. She entirely changes the stereotype of women being kind and caring in the first act. After Macbeth writes home telling of his murderous plans, Lady Macbeth begins talking to evil spirits. Because women often lack the ruthlessness to kill someone, Lady Macbeth asks the spirits to make her male. One of the most vivid descriptions of Lady Macbeth’s wickedness is directly after Macbeth announces to her he does not want to kill Duncan. This speech symbolizes Lady Macbeth’s evilness. She is ruthless, because of her evil accounts for the murders that occur throughout the play. Lady Macbeth convinces her husband to commit murders that will make them king

In the Tragedy of Macbeth, Shakespeare depicted the fall of a valiant general, who usurped the Scottish throne and eventually destroyed by his ever inflating ambition. During the course of regicide, his wife Lady Macbeth act as a powerful stimulant, who coaxed and pushed Macbeth to kill the beloved king Duncan. However,we can see from the play that though Lady Macbeth had a pivotal role to play in this evil deed, she did not bear chief responsibility of the murder. She was an intimidating and evil character from the beginning, while as situation developed, his husband became a much

Lady Macbeth states, “Glamis thou art, and Cawdor, and shalt be what thou art promised. Yet do I fear thy nature; It is too full of the milk of human kindness to catch the nearest way. Thou wouldst be great, art not without ambition, but without the illness should attend it” (1.5.16-21). Lady Macbeth depicts her husband as being ambitious, but he is also too kind to murder Duncan and take the throne for himself. She also says, “Come, you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, and fill me from the crown to the toe topful of direst cruelty…”(1.5.41-44). In this quote Lady Macbeth is praying to the spirits to literally deprive her from her femininity because she desires to take the initiative in seizing power for her husband. Another example of reversed gender roles is when Lady Macbeth says, “O,proper stuff! This is the very painting of your fear. This is the air-drawn dagger which you said led you to Duncan. O, these flaws and starts, impostors to true fear, would well become a woman’s story at a winter’s fire, authorized by her grandam.Shame itself!”(3.4.62-67). In this quote Lady Macbeth yet again takes on the dominant role in a relationship and tells Macbeth that he is yet again hallucinating just like he did with the floating dagger that led him to Duncan and he is also acting like a woman. This quote further connects to the thesis in which the roles of the Lady Macbeth and Macbeth is reversed in

Lady Macbeth has the power over her husband to persuade him into doing anything she requests. She manipulates Macbeth with incredible efficiency by overruling all of his thoughts and changing his perspective on the present. Even though the many tasks that need to be completed are difficult to understand why they need to be done, Lady Macbeth will always convince Macbeth to do it. Her husband often tells her that she has a “masculine soul” which is obvious due to her murderous and envious actions. When the time came to kill king Duncan, Macbeth believes that his wife has gone insane and tells her that the crime they were about to commit was a horrible idea. As a result of his questioning, Lady Macbeth says that executing the crime will show his loyalty to her. On the night of the assassination Lady Macbeth watched the guards of the castle become drunk and unaware of what was going on. Lady Macbeth sent her husband into the castle to kill King Duncan. The married couple fled the scene leaving the guards covered in the evidence. Lady Macbeth and Macbeth are stained with the blood of their victims and the feeling of guilt in their stomach.

We see her as a suppressed female clawing to power through men. The most notable scene where Shakespeare conveys this is Act 1 Scene 5. He has Lady Macbeth say, “unsex me here”, demanding elimination of all womanly attributes. She also says, “take my milk for gall”. This demonstrates she does not want to be a nurturing, mother figure. Lady Macbeth thinks her femininity is useless and that she could accomplish more as a male. In the Elizabethan/Jacobean era, women were often subjugated – made to submit to and follow men, regarded as weak and in need of protection. Given no control, women were forced to stay home and bear children. Lady Macbeth yearns liberation from these stereotypes and ideal standards of her time. Her authority cravings lead her to tell Macbeth, “Leave all the rest to me” – seeking dominance. Her husband is essential to succeed so she can be interpreted as somewhat manipulating him into committing larger crimes – namely

     Lady Macbeth progresses throughout the play from a seemingly savage and heartless creature to a very delicate and fragile woman. In the beginning of the play, she is very ambitious and hungry for power. She pushes Macbeth to kill Duncan in order to fulfill the witches’ prophecy. In Act I, Scene 6, she asks the gods to make her emotionally strong like a man in order to help her husband go through with the murder plot. She says, “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!” Also, she does everything in her power to convince Macbeth that he would be wrong not to kill Duncan. In Act I,

Lady Macbeth manipulates her husband into doing all that she wants to do, that she cannot do herself. When Lady Macbeth consults with Macbeth the witches prophecies she insinuates and awakens an evil ambitious side in him. This is very strange to see as in the beginning of the play (Act 1) Macbeth is the complete opposite. Lady Macbeth does this in such a devious way that she questions her husband 's masculinity. For instance; "What beasts wasn 't then,/ that made you break this enterprise to me?/ When you durst do it,/ then you were a man,/ And to be more than what you were,/ you would be so much more the man." (1.7.53-58). This strikes Macbeth as the unthinkable because as a woman in the Elizabethan Times (1603) Lady

As much as she tries, Lady Macbeth is still human with powerful qualities, which can be perceived as good and bad. However, even though she has powerful qualities, she does not have power over Macbeth. Before killing Duncan, Lady Macbeth wanted the “spirits that tend on mortal thoughts” to “unsex” her, which can be perceived as the gender supremacy roles that Shakespeare plays on. By doing so, she can feel more powerful, as men were thought to be the dominant gender in that era. She was the one initially wanted to commit a horrible deed to become queen, but does not have the strength to do it because if “had he not resembled [her] father as [Duncan] slept, [she would’ve] done’t.” Macbeth ends up killing Duncan and retains his manliness and proves his gender dominance as well. Lady Macbeth only believed that “when [Macbeth] durst do it, then [he] were a man.” Her belittling was not good for their relationship and Lady Macbeth doesn’t end up knowing what Macbeth has been doing and planning. She even takes her own life just before Macbeth is slain by Macduff and was not around to help or control the position that Macbeth had got himself stuck in. If Lady Macbeth doesn’t know what Macbeth is up to, there is no way she could be the main dominant

Upon this realization, Lady Macbeth indicates a newfound desire to be rid of her feminine qualities, seeking instead to replace them with masculine counterparts. Crying out, Lady Macbeth declares, “Come, you spirits. That tend on mortal thought! Unsex me here, and fill me from the crown to the toe top full of direst cruelty” (1. 5. 38-41). Her abstinence towards the limitations of gender thus set her down the road to madness.

At the very beginning of the play, Lady Macbeth is provoked by the letter she receives by Macbeth and starts plotting the murder of Duncan. She also wishes she were a man such that she could commit the murder all by herself saying so in Act 1 Scene 5, “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” (Macbeth 1.5.36-52). She appeals to these spirits to remove all aspects of her femininity and seeks to gain power through the prophecy of the witches. Her fear about the ability of her husband to commit the murder is subdued in her designated gender. Lady Macbeth manages her feminine power through her sensuality and pretended weakness through her fainting streak at the notice of Duncan’s death. Manipulation, usually through sexuality is often depicted as the source of women’s power still Lady Macbeth uses this power of hers to commit murder, a masculine demonstration of power. Lady Macbeth in her soliloquy about the planning of Duncan’s death refers to her husband as an individual who plays honestly and does not engage in wrongdoing.

With the visit to King Duncan, the King announces that his son Malcolm will be heir to the throne. In Macbeth’s mind, all he can think about is murdering the King and all that will come along with it. Macbeth sends a letter to his wife telling of all that has happened and to prepare for the King’s visit. In order to keep the murder in her mind she doesn’t want anything to get in her way, so she even goes to the point of seeking evil and not wanting to be a women-afraid of the feminine ways which will interfere in the murder. When Lady Macbeth says, “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; (I v ll. 44-47) it shows how far Lady Macbeth is willing to go to make sure her husband and herself gets to the top. She even goes to the point to call upon the spirits to unsex her and fill her with cruelty to make sure that here feminine ways don’t cause the plan to go wrong.

This tells the reader that she wishes she was a man rather than a woman to make killing and committing cruel acts bearable. Yet, she later uses her own female body to seduce MacBeth into doing what she wants. While in reality if it was not for her doing he might not have killed Duncan at all. Also she speaks of ‘spirits’ just like MacBeth does catching many people's interest on why both are able to imagine these ‘spirits’ taunting

In the play “Macbeth”, Macbeth and his wife Lady Macbeth’s imaginary changed drastically over the course of the play. Macbeth started out with a conscious, he definitely knew right from wrong unlike his wife who had no conscious at all, having no shame in any of the actions she under took during the first act of the play especially. Over time Macbeth lost his mind and therefore his actions and thoughts began to become foul, wicked and unholy. The opposite from Macbeth was Lady Lady Macbeth who gained a conscious as well as a heart and she realised her wrong doings and felt extraordinary guilt.

Traditionally, a tragic hero is a protagonist, usually of noble birth or high-standing, who possesses a flaw in character that brings about his own downfall. The tragedy Macbeth, written by William Shakespeare, has a perfect example of a tragic hero, otherwise known as Macbeth. A tragic hero must be a man who is great and admirable in various ways. He should be placed in society in such a way that everything he does affects all of the members of his society. Macbeth fits the description of being a tragic hero, displaying his strengths, his weaknesses, his tragic flaw, and how influential everything around him is. Macbeth is a tragic hero, because his physical courage is joined by a consuming ambition and tendency to self-doubt and his brutality is balanced by his guilt - a quality that enables the audience to identify with Macbeth throughout the play despite his cruelty.