Guilt In Lady Macbeth By William Shakespeare

“Yet who would have thought the old man / to have had so much blood in him,” says the guilt-wracked Lady Macbeth in the opening of the iconic sleepwalking scene of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, which has gone on to become one of the most important scenes of any Shakespeare piece in pop culture (Shakespeare 5.1.44-45). Macbeth follows the namesake character, Macbeth, through a twisted tale of betrayal, ambition, and supernatural meddling alongside his wife Lady Macbeth and a whole cast of other characters. However, no scene in the play stands out like Act 5, Scene 1 does, better known as the sleepwalking scene, in which Lady Macbeth must face the unintended effects of her actions and ultimately succumbs to her own guilt by the end, creating a perfect

During and after Lady Macbeth’s recalling of the brutal acts she inflicted onto various people throughout the play, we witness her mental state quickly deteriorate and crumble under the weight of her guilt and fear, shown when she claims, “What, will these hands ne'er be clean? / Here's the smell of the blood still: all the / perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little / hand,” (Shakespeare 5.1.48-59). This rapid spiral into near insanity at the hand of Lady Macbeth’s guilt is equally terrifying and hypnotic, obviously due in part to her frantic, delirious handwashing and her nonsensical statements regarding her hands never being clean again, but also because of the picture it paints for the reader. She fears that her hands, clearly a representation of her whole being, will never not carry the evidence of her crimes, which is physically represented by blood and mentally represented by guilt, and that she will continue to be plagued by all of the accompanying effects for all of her life, which is clearly something she so intensely dreads the thought of that it leads her to this uncharacteristic moment of weakness. Her use of the word sweeten is also likely important, as it shows her desire to return to who she once was before all of this occurred, notably less violent and more feminine, and thus sweeter. Lady

Most of the time in which Lady Macbeth is present in the play, she often hides behind a merciless facade, first shown in Act 1 and brought about during her monologue in which she says, “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 … look like the innocent flower, / But be the serpent under't,” (Shakespeare 1.5.40-66). Lady Macbeth frequently uses moments like this to reassure the audience, those around her, and herself that she is fearsome and ruthless, however the sleepwalking scene easily shatters this false reality and exposes the true Lady Macbeth, who is actually scared and easily fooled by the same delusions and guilt-driven episodes that she reprimands her husband for, which is one of the reasons the sleepwalking scene especially strikes readers. It is a fundamental destruction of Lady Macbeth as we knew her, and it's brought about in such a way to where it was inevitable, since she cannot consciously control her image while asleep, leading to the shocking fall of the once strong and dominating character the audience knew her