Essay Analysis Macbeth

Essay Analysis 1: Central Idea: Is Lady Macbeth a
Villain or a Victim?
Essays Central Idea: Is Lady Macbeth a Villain or a Victim?
When audiences first encounter Lady Macbeth, she seems a very forceful and dominant
personality, and we can assume that she is the villain, or antagonist, of the play. Unlike
Macbeth, who deliberates over whether or not to kill Duncan and who wrestles with loyalty
to his king, Lady Macbeth is single-minded in her lust for power. She has no loyalty to any
cause beyond her own ambition, and is willing to manipulate her husband to achieve what
she wants. Her desire for Macbeth to be king doesn’t stem from a belief he’d be a good
ruler; she wants him to be king because she wants to be queen. As a woman, queen is the
most powerful role she can hope for in the court. Unlike Macbeth, who hopes there’s a way
he can become king without taking action himself, Lady Macbeth immediately accepts that
murder is necessary to achieve her goals, and prays for the resolve necessary to commit the
act: “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.”
However, if we look more closely at the difference between who Lady Macbeth is and who she
wants to be, we begin seeing a different side of Lady Macbeth, suggesting that she is not as
villainous as we might have thought. While her boast to Macbeth that, if she had promised to kill
her own child, she would have “dashed its brains out” without hesitation is certainly blood-chilling,
she is only saying what she would do, not telling us about something she has actually done. In the
lines before this shocking claim, she admits, “I have given suck, and know/How tender ’tis to love
the babe that milks me.” In reality, she is capable of tenderness and warmth. Her wish to be
“unsexed” and request that the spirits to “take my milk for gall,” so that she can act without
remorse, indicate that, rather than lacking compassion, she fears she has too much. In fact, it may be
Lady Macbeth, not her husband, who may be “too full o’ th’ milk of human kindness.”
Another contrast between what Lady Macbeth says she would do and what she actually does comes
on the night of Duncan’s murder. While waiting for Macbeth to kill Duncan, she admits “Had he
not resembled/ my father as he slept, I had done’t.” Again, she is portraying herself as ruthless and
violent, but her action (or lack of action) tells a different story. Maybe she would have killed
Duncan if he didn’t look like her father; maybe not – all we know is, given the opportunity to kill
the king, she couldn’t go through with it. Her previous wish that her blood would “stop up th’
access and passage to remorse” has not come true. When Macbeth announces Duncan’s death, she
faints. One reading is that her faint is faked to distract from Macbeth’s shaky story. But if the faint
is real, it suggests she just now realizes the truth of what they’ve done, and is overwhelmed by her
husband’s ability to kill not only Duncan but also the attendants, and lie so easily about it.
After Duncan’s murder, Lady Macbeth’s role is of comforter and protector of Macbeth,
rather than instigator of murder, and her character becomes more sympathetic. Immediately
after the murder, Macbeth says, “to know my deed, ‘twere best not know myself,” and the
rest of the play sees him becoming further estranged from himself and his essential
humanity. Lady Macbeth, in contrast, stops pretending to be someone she’s not, and begins
admitting who she actually is. She recognizes the error of their actions, saying, “’Tis safer
to be that which we destroy/Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy.” They’ve killed
Duncan, but the murder only made them miserable, and in some ways they’d be better off
dead. However, she continues to put on a brave face for her husband, encouraging him to
put the past behind him (“what’s done is done”) and stop worrying. When Macbeth sees
Banquo’s ghost at the banquet, Lady Macbeth again covers for him. But, sensing her regret,
he hides his plans to kill Lady Macduff and her children. Not only has Macbeth become a
stranger to himself, he is also a stranger to his wife, who now has no ally and is isolated in
her guilt.
The last time we see Lady Macbeth she is raving about blood on her hands, signaling that
she is a victim of her husband and her own overwrought emotional state. Over the course of
the play we’ve seen her evolve from a crafty manipulator to a guilt-ridden casualty of her
husband’s ambition who has lost all agency over her own life. “The Thane of Fife had a
wife. Where is she now?” she asks, in what sounds like babble but is actually a poignant
acknowledgment of her own irrelevance. Her husband is off murdering more innocent
people in his quest to hold onto his ill-gotten crown, while Lady Macbeth, who hoped to
share in his glory, has been abandoned. Her obsession with cleaning the phantom blood off
her hands signals that she has been just as tainted as Macbeth by his murders, even though
she did not commit them herself, nor has she benefitted from them. While Lady Macbeth is
far from blameless for her role in inciting her husband to action, she ends the play a far
more sympathetic character than she began.
Source:
https://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/macbeth/central-idea-essay/is-lady-macbeth-a-villain-or-
a-victim/
Essay Analysis 2:
The Relationship Between Cruelty and Masculinity
Characters in Macbeth frequently dwell on issues of gender. Lady Macbeth manipulates her
husband by questioning his manhood, wishes that she herself could be “unsexed,” and does
not contradict Macbeth when he says that a woman like her should give birth only to boys.
In the same manner that Lady Macbeth goads her husband on to murder, Macbeth provokes
the murderers he hires to kill Banquo by questioning their manhood. Such acts show that
both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth equate masculinity with naked aggression, and whenever
they converse about manhood, violence soon follows. Their understanding of manhood
allows the political order depicted in the play to descend into chaos. At the same time,
however, the audience cannot help noticing that women are also sources of violence and
evil. The witches’ prophecies spark Macbeth’s ambitions and then encourage his violent
behavior; Lady Macbeth provides the brains and the will behind her husband’s plotting; and
the only divine being to appear is Hecate, the goddess of witchcraft.
Arguably, Macbeth traces the root of chaos and evil to women, which has led some critics
to argue that this is Shakespeare’s most misogynistic play.
While the male characters are just as violent and prone to evil as the women, the aggression
of the female characters is more striking because it goes against prevailing expectations of
how women ought to behave. Lady Macbeth’s behavior certainly shows that women can be
as ambitious and cruel as men. Whether because of the constraints of her society or because
she is not fearless enough to kill, Lady Macbeth relies on deception and manipulation rather
than violence to achieve her ends.
Ultimately, the play does put forth a revised and less destructive definition of manhood. In
the scene where Macduff learns of the murders of his wife and child, Malcolm consoles
him by encouraging him to take the news in “manly” fashion, by seeking revenge upon
Macbeth. Macduff shows the young heir apparent that he has a mistaken understanding of
masculinity. To Malcolm’s suggestion, “Dispute it like a man,” Macduff replies, “I shall do
so. But I must also feel it as a man” (4.3.221–223). At the end of the play, Siward receives
news of his son’s death rather complacently. Malcolm responds: “He’s worth more sorrow
[than you have expressed] / And that I’ll spend for him” (5.8.16–17). Malcolm’s comment
shows that he has learned the lesson Macduff gave him on the sentient nature of true
masculinity. It also suggests that, with Malcolm’s coronation, order will be restored to the
Kingdom of Scotland.
Source:
https://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/macbeth/themes/

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Essay Analysis 1: Central Idea: Is Lady Macbeth a

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