Lady Macbeth Redemption Essay, Research Paper

Lady MacBeth

Lady MacBeth is one of Shakespeare’s greatest and most intriguing female

characters. She is evil, seductive, and witch-like all at the same time. However, during the

play we see her in two different ways. At the time when we first meet her, she is a brutally

violent, power wanting witch, and later on she turns to a shameful suicidal grieving woman.

At the beginning of the MacBeth, Lady MacBeth is very savage and vicious. She

thinks nothing of killing King Duncan. She has no sense of what is wrong and right, and

believes that it is perfectly moral to do the deed of murder. She states that to not go

through with the deed would be horrible to yourself, and that you would be a coward in

your own eyes.

“Wouldst thou have that which thou esteem’st the ornament

of life, and live a coward in thine own esteem,”

She states that if she was MacBeth and did not jump at this perfect opportunity, that if a

child, being fed at her breast, where as Duncan is, king, she would tear it from her and

“dash’d the brains out” to have the opportunity MacBeth does. This shows how mad and

sadistic she was. She had absolutely no self-conscience, and thought nothing about the

wrong they were soon to commit.

Later on, after the murders, she, unlike MacBeth, still shows no signs of a

conscience. She is very cool and collected, while MacBeth hallucinates and goes

temporarily mad. Lady MacBeth on the other hand, takes everything calmly. She takes

the daggers back to the King’s room, smears blood on the drunken guards, and attempts to

destroy all evidence of MacBeth ever being there. She knows what needs to be done and

does it without any hesitation or fear.

However, it is later on in the story, that it is revealed to us that Lady MacBeth’s

conscience is strong. When sleep walking one night, Lady MacBeth (seemingly somewhat

insane) begins blabbering about spots of blood on her hands.

“Out damned spot! out, I say! One; two: why, then ’tis time

to do’t Hell is murky! Fie, my lord – fie! a soldier and

afeard?”

When at first she believes that “a little water clears us of this deed”, and now she can smell

the blood on her hands still, and “all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little

hand”. She now realizes the consequences of what she has done. She knows that the sin

will be on her soul forever, and that nothing will be able to cleanse it. She realizes “What’s

done cannot be undone”.

But this can not be redemption. She has done the deed and must expect the

consequences. Her wrong doing has been too much, she has committed the mortal sin.

Though she now realizes it (even this is skeptical, since she was sleep-walking at the time),

she has still the deed on her soul. It can never be totally cleansed, therefore Lady MacBeth

can never have total redemption.

Lady MacBeth is a complex character. She is seen as two totally different people

as the play progresses. At first, she is crazy about getting the power of the King. She is

brutish and sadistic in both the things she says and does. But as the play progresses, she

begins to understand the consequences of her actions, and goes slightly mad from these

thoughts. She can never be totally redeemed of her mortal sin, and realizes this. It is

perhaps this, that gives her the most redemption of all.