Out of the many characters that feature in Shakespeare’s various works, lady Macbeth is arguably the most disturbing. She exemplifies darkness and the evil potency of the human greed and lust for power. In this article we will be analysing her character.
Some may argue that the play Macbeth depicts women or femininity in general in a very negative manner. We first have the witches all of whom are three females and are malevolent beings without whom Macbeth would not have embarked upon the destructive trail of blood and killing that happens. They are unpleasant creatures that ignite in Macbeth what was most likely a latent and dormant desire for power and status within him but is then activated by them for deadly and tragic consequences. However Macbeth could merely have heard their prophecies and been content with being Thane of Cawdor and then perhaps felt that fate would mean regardless of whatever he did or not do that he would become king anyway if the witches prophecies are true which they indeed seem to be. However rather than a passive waiting for the prophecy regarding his future kingship to happen naturally Macbeth instead decides to actively try and realise this by his murderous and treacherous actions.
We first see lady Macbeth in Act 1, Scene 5 of the play where she receives a letter from her husband where he tells her about the witches and the accuracy of their prophecies. As the whole play is about witchcraft and the supernatural and its very real (in the mind of King James I and those who wished to gain his favour such as Macbeth) nature, lady Macbeth is not dismissive of this but takes this very seriously. She utters the now famous words in her solilqouy after reading the letter:
” Yet do I fear thy nature; It is too full o’ th’ milk of human kindness To catch the nearest way: “
What is interesting is that very ironically for a man who ends up murdering women and children such as Macbeth, he is declared by the person who knows him best – his wife – to be full of ‘human kindness’. She fears that his natural goodness will inhibit the required evil, in her mind, for him to be ruthless enough to carry out what she feels is necessary i.e. murdering the king.
She then says:
‘ thou wouldst be great, Art not without ambition, but without The illness should attend it.’
So lady Macbeth is no naive simpleton. In her mind the world is not a nice place and to be successful one is required to be ruthless and engage in dirty acts. Why does she have such a world view? Well aside from perhaps various biblical stories exhorting people to engage in virtue, the society of 11th century Scotland, back when the play is set, would have been like a lot of Europe and much of the world a tough, rough place, a male-dominated i.e. patriarchal one full of violence and bloodshed. There were no such things as democracy, humans rights, equality of citizens back then. Well not in the way we have them now.
She then says:
” Hie thee hither, That I may pour my spirits in thine ear And chastise with the valor of my tongue All that impedes thee from the golden round “
She is calling for Macbeth to come so that she can speak to him and incite him to do what is ‘needed’ to get the ‘golden round’ i.e. the crown.
We can often ascertain the importance or role of a character if we were to imagine they were not there. If there had been no witches, there simply would have been no story as Macbeth would never have dreamed of being king as he would not have felt that supernatural prophecies indicated he could be one. If Lady Macbeth had not been present or if his wife had been another sort of person, he would not have decided to kill his cousin and king of Scotland Duncan.
So why is it that Shakespeare chose Macbeth’s wife to be the main character inciting Macbeth to carry out the murder of the king? We see in other plays such as ‘Othello‘ that Iago for instance is an evil and manipulative figure. He is male, however. We can only speculate and remember in Macbeth nearly all the female characters present are bad ones.
In Christian European tradition, it was Adam’s wife, Eve who is ultimately the cause of his downfall. She is the one who eats the apple first and then followed by Adam. Later on some in Europe used this story in a misogynistic manner to say that a woman, in the form of Eve, were the cause of Adam’s expulsion from heaven and for men to be vigilant and wary of women and their potentially dangerous requests. We see in the biblical tale of the forbidden apple, a serpent, who is actually the devil. In Macbeth itself we see a reference to a serpent in the quote:
“Look like th’innocent flower, But be the serpent under’t”
It is Lady Macbeth herself, very ironically, who utters these words as she is ‘mentoring’ her husband. Lady Macbeth herself can be likened to the serpent who caused Adam to be removed from his happy residence in paradise only to fall down to the harsh realm that is this world. Macbeth himself goes from living a normal life to leading a horrible, guilt-ridden existence where he starts to kill more and more and even loses his wife.
Contained within this frequently-used quote of the serpent and in Lady Macbeth’s statements in general are a call to duplicity. A duplicity seen as characteristically ‘feminine’ as in the mindset of the masculine and violent, militaristic societies of the past a women could not use physical power to further her agenda but instead resorted to guile and also, as in the case of lady Macbeth, inciting the one who did possess physical power to do her beckoning.
However it’s not as simple as that. We cannot simply say that in the play Shakespeare is attempting to portray femininity as something evil. In fact far from it, he in fact shows Lady Macbeth’s behaviour as uncharacteristically feminine later on in the same scene where she says the words:
” 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.”
Thus the words ‘unsex’ here mean to deprive her of her femininity not to increase her in it or to accentuate it. Some argue that women in general are more peaceful and more averse to violence and miliarism than men, so therefore Lady Macbeth has to seek the aid of evil spirits to overcome her natural, and feminine’ repulsion to this sort of violence. This speech is one of the most powerful in all of Shakespeare’s plays and would definitely have had a strong impact on his audience. She continues:
” Come to my woman’s breasts, And take my milk for gall, you murd’ring ministers “
Again Lady Macbeth again very specifically and clearly references her gender. She urges these spirits to change her milk meant for sustaining life to become ‘gall’ or bile. Breast milk is a white substance used for feeding a mother’s children, whilst bile (‘gall’) is an ugly yellowy-greenish substance often released in vomitting. What is important to note is this. Both are present within women, one ‘good’ and one ‘ugly’ (thus evil by extension). Both Good and evil are present within human beings, but lady Macbeth is asking these spirits to remove all goodness including all the inherently female goodness, kindness, motherliness from her and to render it evil.
Later on in Act 1 scene 7 where Macbeth says he will abandon the idea of killing Duncan, who is sleeping in his bed, she says to him:
” What beast was ’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. “
She says that he was a real man when he resolved to kill Duncan implying that at this moment of deciding not to murder the king, Macbeth is not a man. However if he does indeed kill Macbeth he will be more of a man. She is challenging his manhood. This for a brave, battle-hardened, manly warrior like Macbeth is something that seems to be difficult to resist as we see in the end.
She then utters some totally horrific words:
” I have given suck, and know How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me. I would, while it was smiling in my face, Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn as you Have done to this.”
She refers to her readiness to commit infanticide (murder of a child) to encourage him to commit regicide (murder of a ruler). The words and the visual imagery are simply absolutely disturbing and could make some people’s hairs stand on edge. We see an image of a sweet child sucking its mother’s milk from her breasts with lady Macbeth then hurling the child causing the baby’s brains to be smashed. This is violent, psychopathic, dark, evil language and imagery. This level of evil fits with the rest of the play which is a dark, horrible one. Lady Macbeth’s child would have been the creature, person, most beloved to her and she is not merely imagining what it would be like to have suckled a baby, for she has indeed done it before. Despite that, she is saying she would have murdered an innocent baby. She says this with no shame but rather to testify to how resolute she would be. Macbeth rather than being disgusted even seems to admire her as he says a little while later ‘ Bring forth men-children only, For thy undaunted mettle should compose Nothing but males. ‘ This implying that she should produce tough manly warriors.
Lady Macbeth does not mince her words in her awful speech to her husband. She used the words ‘nipples’ an exclusively feminine part of the body and very intimate that is only revealed to loved ones or to young babies. She does not care. She has no shame, ironically there seems to be a sort of ‘honour’ in her eyes. The ‘honour’ of being resolute and committed. This ties in with what the witches say elsewhere in the play ‘fair is foul, and foul is fair’ i.e. good is bad and bad is good. Here we see it, with what should be met with complete disgust and revulsion, a woman’s willingness to carry out infanticide, being seen as a source of respect in that this is how determined and committed she is. She would carry this act out till its full end.
If Lady Macbeth had never said these words and turned on Macbeth for not wanting to kill the king then the story of Macbeth as we see it in the play would never have happened and instead merely a fairly normal story of a brave warrior respected by the king for his loyalty and who was promoted would have taken place.
However despite all of her strong words Lady Macbeth ,who is arguably a bully as she tries to coerce Macbeth in to killing Duncan, like other bullies seems to exhibit a degree of hypocrisy when she says:
Had he not resembled My father as he slept, I had done ’t.
In other words she would be able to murder her own child but not her father. She would be able to carry out infanticide not patricide whilst she herself pushed Macbeth commit regicide. Shakespeare deliberately inserted these words for us to compare. There is a great inconsistency here, why is it that the same lady Macbeth who claims she is prepared to kill her child not be able to kill her father? Both are of course morally totally outrageous, but a young baby is more vulnerable and has its entire life ahead of it. That baby would have been inside lady Macbeth’s womb whereas the father would have lived most of his life. She is inconsistent and despite essentially saying she would go the whole distance of killing someone it seems she is not ready to kill Duncan. That in itself is of course a good thing, but what is bad about it is she tells Macbeth to do something which she herself is not prepared to do. We see bullying and hypocrisy here. However we also see a degree of humanity come out from here amidst all the horrible and graphic talk of smashing babies brains, of her breast milk becoming bile and so on.
However later on in the same scene she once again adopts the persona of the firm, strong, resolute figure scolding Macbeth for his natural feelings of guilt and unease when she says to him:
Infirm of purpose! Give me the daggers. The sleeping and the dead Are but as pictures. ‘Tis the eye of childhood That fears a painted devil. If he do bleed, I’ll gild the faces of the grooms withal, For it must seem their guilt.
Macbeth once again complies with what she tells him to do. She is the one in charge. The irony is that despite being the brave, strong warrior in a male-dominated society, behind closed doors this ‘warrior’ is somewhat scared of his wife. She is the stronger, more powerful one. This ties in with a theme of Macbeth that not all is what it appears to be ‘fair is foul and foul is fair’ as the witches say.
Continuing on with the generally negative portrayal of femininity in Macbeth or the way it it seen negatively in certain contexts we later on see in Act 3, scene4, lady Macbeth telling her husband that he is hallucinating when he says he can see Banquo’s ghost with the words:
‘Impostors to true fear, would well become A woman’s story at a winter’s fire, Authorized by her grandam. Shame itself!
Again Macbeth needs to be ‘manly’ and strong and not effeminate like a woman telling a story to her grandmother for entertainment during the winter.
However despite her constant coercing of Macbeth to be manly and strong and not be deterred from decisive action by regret, the irony is that it is Macbeth who lasts longer than his wife. It is Macbeth who outlives here and does not fall to suicidal regret. The last scene which we see Lady Macbeth is Act 5, scene 1 where initially a doctor and a waiting gentlewoman are speaking about her sleepwalking and her rambling. In this scene we then see hear saying things clearly referring to the murder of Duncan and Banquo. The once strong woman who criticises her husband for seeing an ‘imaginary’ ghost, is now reduced to someone in a pathetic state walking around in her sleep. She says amongst other things:
‘Come out, damned spot! Out, I command you! One, two. OK, it’s time to do it now.—Hell is murky!—Nonsense, my lord, nonsense! You are a soldier, and yet you are afraid? ‘
She is trying to remove an imaginary bloodstain and is reliving some of the moments when she had to push her husband to murder Duncan.
Her rambling in this scene is incoherent and clearly makes reference to a feeling of guilt for her actions including in some of the quotes below:
‘The thane of Fife had a wife. Where is she now?—What, will these hands ne’er be clean?’
Clean of what? Clean of the guilt for being involved in Duncan’s death and the other killings in the play.
‘Here’s the smell of the blood still. All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh, Oh, Oh!’
Even all the perfume from Arabia will not remove the foul stench of all the blood on her hands.
Tragically Lady Macbeth ends up committing suicide after this period of mental illness.
Conclusion
Lady Macbeth is not only one of Shakespeare’s most powerful characters ever but arguably one of the most powerful female characters in the whole of world literature. From her words we can catch a glimpse of some of the sheer depths of evil that humans are capable of, with gruesome words of being ready to murder her own baby. It seems to shower the toxic allure that power and status can have on some. We cannot dismiss Lady Macbeth is merely a literary invention not representative of some types of people who really do exist in the real world, because in fact countless times in history and in life there are people who do deeply immoral things due to greed. She is a dark and disturbing character in a very dark and disturbing play. One redeeming quality she does have however is that ironically despite telling Macbeth not to have any regret over killing Duncan and others, she herself still has some humanity and starts to feel guilt which seems to haunt her ultimately resulting in her own death.