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How Is Lady Macbeth Guilty

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Lady Macbeth from Shakespeare’s play Macbeth is introduced as an incredulously ambitious woman who will do whatever it takes to seize the crown for Macbeth. However, towards the end of the play she begins to feel guilty as well as paranoid as a result from her ambitious actions. For example, at the beginning of the play she lets ambition lead her actions and delves into supernatural powers to make herself cruel as well as without remorse when preparing for the murder of King Duncan: “Come you spirits … /Of direst cruelty/Make thick my blood/stop up the access and passage to remorse,”(I, v, 41-46). Lady Macbeth is aware of her morality in the beginning and understands that in order to complete this sinful deed, she must rid herself from feeling guilt. Her actions of calling upon evil spirits shows her brutality and determination of achieving more power even if it does corrupt her morality and mental state in the future. The ambition and desire for power she carries in the …show more content…

Out, I say!...Hell is murky!- Fie, my lord, fie! A soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account?- Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him.” (V, i, 30-34). With this change of going from cruel and cunning to fearful and guilty, Shakespeare allows the audience better relate with her because one has often experienced an action they deeply regret just like Lady Macbeth. Furthermore, the decline of her mental health and her feelings of paranoia that she will be found out display just how ambition can often cause a person to feel regret just like Lady Macbeth. In total, Lady Macbeth changed from a cruel and ambitious woman to a paranoid and guilt ridden criminal as a cause from her determination at the beginning of the

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