Lady Macbeth's Mental Illness

Elizabeth Wurtzel an American writer once said, “Insanity is knowing that what you're doing is completely idiotic, but still, somehow, you just can't stop it.” Insanity is something that is hard to stop. It takes over mind and causes person to give up until there is nothing left. Just like how in The Tragedy of Macbeth Lady Macbeth become insane from all the guilt and eventually suicide. Main character in this novel is Macbeth, who is captain in Scotland army. He turns into a villain from the hero. The Tragedy of Macbeth examines how the human temptation to greatness and agents of evil can easily lead person to do inhumane acts. Macbeth has a wife called Lady Macbeth, who is turning point in Macbeth’s life. Lady

Or, another cause of the schizophrenia could possibly be their passion.They stove so hard to make Macbeth king that they became totally obsessed with it. It became all the thought about and their everything revolved around it. When Lady Macbeth finds that Macbeth has been prophesized to be king, she doesn’t believe he is capable of fufilling the prophecy alone. So, she says to herseld, “hie thee hither, that I may pour my spirits in thine ear, and chastise with the valor of my tounge which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem to have thee crowned withal.” (Act 1, scene 5, lines 23-28) Macbeth becomes so passionate about becoming king that he killed anyone who could possibly take the throne away from him, even King Duncan. “ I have done the deed”, he said to his wife after killing him. (Act 2, Scene 4, line 14)

In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the title character Macbeth and his wife are both exceptionally ambitious, often taking rather radical measures to accomplish their goals. While this ruthless drive to power is seemingly prosperous at first, it quickly crumbles to naught as guilt infects their minds with grim consequences to follow. Macbeth transforms from a noble general to a guilt-ridden and despaired murderer, while Lady Macbeth’s usually stoic and masculine persona deteriorates into a pitiful and anxious shell of her former self. The feeling of remorse quickly plagues the two characters and overpowers ambition through manifesting itself through nightmares, ghosts, and paranoia, and ultimately leads to their demise.

In Macbeth, similar psychotic and mental breakdowns occur. While Macbeth is having all his thanes and kingsmen over for a feast he suffers from a break down due to all the guilt, lying and evil the has been consumed by. During this break down the sees the ghost of his best friend that he had murdered in order to fulfill his prophecies given to him by the weird sisters. At the peak of this break down the yells to the ghost “ Avaunt! and quit my sight! let the earth hide thee!/ Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold; / Thou hast no speculation in those eyes / Which thou dost glare with!” (Shakespeare 3.4.94-97). This is the peak of his break down, the is standing on the table yelling at banquo’s ghost trying to get it to leave. At this point Macbeth is almost at his lowest. His wife tries to comfort him by telling their guests that he is often like this and gets then to leave. By this point in the play Lady Macbeth has started to see the effects these actions have had on her husband Macbeth.

In the Shakespearean play, Macbeth, the manipulation by three witches take a toll on a local thane by the name of Macbeth. They have such an effect on him, he goes as far to kill the King of Forres, Scotland and becomes King. However, the memory and guilt of his deeds sends the now-King, Macbeth into a spiral of insanity into his demise. Macbeth displays positive, negative, and cognitive symptoms of the schizophrenic disease which is caused by the oppressive powers of the witches, Lady Macbeth, and the actions he committed.

Lady Macbeth is a complex and intriguing character in Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth. She is a difficult character to embody as her personality seems split between two sides, one that is pure evil, sly and conniving in contrast to her softer, vulnerable, weak and feminine side. In the play we see her in these two main ways. The reader may feel a certain animosity towards Lady Macbeth throughout the first few acts as her personality appears more and more distasteful, in spite of this towards the end she has a serious breakdown over the guilt that torments her, even in her sleep, regarding her hand in Duncan’s untimely death.

Lady Macbeth becomes a victim of mental illness as the play progressed. This was due to

William Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”, a tragedy based upon the fallen hero, by whom the play is written after, is commonly discussed with attention focused upon Macbeth’s mental health. While people in the Shakespearean era had very little understanding of the human brain, modern readers and psychologists have examined the thoughts, speech, and actions of Macbeth to determine the accumulation of his mental illnesses.

Throughout the Shakespearean tragedy Macbeth, Lady Macbeth has moments where her avarice to become Queen of Scotland took over her mind and made her lose control of herself. The greed led Lady Macbeth into developing issues in her marriage, sleeping, and sanity. Because of her belief in special powers, paranoid thoughts, and feelings of unreality, it is clear that she suffers from paranoid schizophrenia.

Macbeth, Lady Macbeth seems to be perhaps the most mentally unstable character of them all. Lady Macbeth’s mental problems have been apparent since the first time the reader is introduced to her. As soon as Lady Macbeth hears about the witches’ ‘prophecy that her husband, Macbeth, will become King of Scotland she immediately expresses her intentions to kill the current king. Her intentions are first brought up in Act 1, scene 5. “The raven himself is

There is also evidence in Lady Macbeth's characterization of a breakdown within the person. Lady Macbeth falls into a psychological hell. Her conscience drives her to madness. In the same way as Macbeth, her sleepwalking signifies an unnatural end to the day and the fact that she too, is unable to restore herself. The sleepwalking also

The play, Macbeth was written by William Shakespeare in the year 1606. At this time, mental illnesses were not diagnosed or treated. People spent their whole lives with a mental illness and did not know it. At the time that Shakespeare wrote Macbeth, he probably did not realize that he was writing the main character, Macbeth, as a person with a mental illness. Macbeth showed the most symptoms to be diagnosed with a person with schizophrenia.

As Athena proves to drive Odysseus towards vengeance, Lady Macbeth also stimulates the mindset of Macbeth. After doing a close reading of the play, it is obvious that Lady Macbeth is undergoing a mental state in the story. She seems to be suppressing a traumatic experience that has not fully been addressed. This causes her to undergo multiple hallucinations and stress. She eventually commits suicide due to having too much anxiety of what happened to her. In Act I, Scene VII, Lady Macbeth loosely indicates that she once had a child by stating “I have suckled a baby...I would dashed its brains out had I so sworn as you done this.” Lady Macbeth could be showing signs of not only hysteria (Coriat) but also signs of Postpartum Depression. Macbeth

In William Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Macbeth, Lady Macbeth’s character develops greatly throughout the play. In the opening of the play she is illustrated as a dominant, devious woman who does not have to think second about conspiring to execute the King of Scotland. Nonetheless after the dirty deed is completed, Lady Macbeth breaks down at the end of the play. She endures a nervous breakdown and commits suicide, which displays how she went from a powerful woman to a remorseful maniac.

When considering the idea of disturbed minds we are quickly drawn to an image of mental illness, brutality or social disorder but this is not always the case. There are many reasons as to why an individual might have a disturbed mind: stress, traumatic experiences, childhood problems or illness. Shakespeare’s play “Macbeth” is about a loyal warrior a “lion” and his wife being destroyed by their minds, which cannot lay at rest after killing the king, which in 1603 would be a crime against mankind, nature and God. This is because in 1603 there was a distinct hierarchy of power which was as follows. King, Man, Woman and then beast. By killing the king