Beowulf: Lady Macbeth Essay example

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Lady Macbeth

Lady Macbeth is Shakespeare’s most evil feminine creation. Throughout the play, Lady
Macbeth has very manipulative powers that lead to a lot of harm the play. The harm is even felt among her husband before it is all over with. She is very selfish in the play as well because of her overwhelming wanting of power. Most of all she is evil through out the play which gets worse from the beginning to the end of her life. All that she has done to get what she wants it eventually gets to her which determines the fate of her life. In the play Lady Macbeth shows all of these character traits which makes up her life in a shell. There are three character traits played out by Lady Macbeth in the play: manipulative, selfish, and evil.
Lady Macbeth is a very manipulative woman who loves to control what goes on in her life as well as her husband’s too. She convinces Macbeth to go through with the murder of
Duncan by getting to him with her ruthless, strong, and ambitious personality. At one point she wishes she were a man so that she could do it herself. Macbeth even implies that she is a masculine soul inhabiting a female body, which seems to link masculinity to ambition and violence. Shakespeare, however, seems to use Lady Macbeth to undercut Macbeth’s idea when he says, “For thy undaunted mettle should compose nothing but males” (1.7.73-74). Lady
Macbeth uses her female method of achieving power or manipulation to further her supposed male ambitions. The play implies that women, such as Lady Macbeth, can be as

Halliday 2 ambitious and cruel as men, yet social constraints deny them the means to pursue these ambitions on their own.

Secondly, Lady Macbeth has a very selfish,yet cowardly attitude towards others. Lady
Macbeth is especially this way after receiving the letter from Macbeth about the invitation of
King Duncan coming to their home. She immediately comes up with the plot to murder Duncan just so she can finally have power and be considered royal under the eyes of the people of
Scotland. That shows just how much she does not seem to care about other’s lives when it comes to getting what she wants. Lady Macbeth says to Macbeth, “Screw your courage to the stickingplace, And we’ll not fail” (1.7.60-61) which means just kill Duncan so we can finally get what we deserve. Her actions make her a negative influence to all because of her ambitions of always getting what she wants even if it takes killing someone to do so. She also makes what she is doing to seem right by making a person feel bad about themselves if they do not help her get what is desired. I suppose that is why she likes to blame others for murder that was done by those other people or person.
Lastly, Lady Macbeth is a very evil and cold hearted woman. She loves to make Macbeth feel humiliated by telling him how she is more a man the he is all because he has feelings for doing the crime they committed as where she does not. She has so much insensitivity to murder that she states, “I have given suck, and 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...”(1.7.55-59). She says that she would rather kill her own child than to not kill another

Coleman 3 person just because she has no feelings for others but herself really. Lady Macbeth is like a witch because in the invocation scene, “wherein she calls upon evil forces to fill her heart cruelty so that she may plot Duncan’s murder”(1.5.28-33; 45-61). Elizabethan would consider a witch as one who was not only invited by supernatural forces, but who actively invited them into his or her heart. Lady
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