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Lady Macbeth: Victim Or Monster

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Lady Macbeth: Victim or Monster Lady Macbeth is an extremely unusual character as she is by far, the most complex and domineering female role in all of Shakespeare’s plays. She first appears in the play, plotting the king’s murder but the audience last sees her sleepwalking and drowned in guilt. This suggests that Shakespeare portrays her as a character who cannot be classified as any of the two categories (as a victim or as a monster), but rather as an ambitious woman prepared to go any lengths to achieve what- she believes- she and her husband deserve, but could not handle the consequences of her actions in the end. Lady Macbeth is depicted by Shakespeare as a lady filled with her dangerous desires, in Act 1 Scene 5; after reading Macbeth’s …show more content…

Lady Macbeth herself mimics the way they speak, “Which shall to all our nights and days to come, Give solely sovereign sway and masterdom”, thus makes the readers associate her with these supernatural entities and therefore giving her a monstrous aura. Or, another explanation would be that this is a sign that the witches have possessed her or using her to act as puppeteers within the Macbeth’s lives; making her, once again a victim of the …show more content…

This might suggest that Shakespeare is telling the audience that Lady Macbeth identifies everything with disease or illness which can either mean that she (as queen) is a sickness that plagues Scotland, or that she herself is ailing. In act 4 scene 3, Macduff personifies the land of Scotland to “bleed” as “another gash is added to her wounds”, Macduff might be indicating that now that The Macbeth’s have turned away from God and killed the king (according to the Divine Right of Kings), they are unfit rulers and are therefore causing an illness to spread through the country. On the other hand, Lady Macbeth is said to be diseased herself: when in act 5 scene 3 Macbeth begs the doctor to cure her mind and tend to her with “some sweet oblivious antidote”, and the Doctor referred to her as a “patient”. Illness and disease have connotations of suffering and pain which connote that she is in deep anguish and in deep need of help, almost at the mercy- which Shakespeare has shown in act 5 scene 1, in her sleepless and almost insane state- she hardly seems capable of harming anyone else but

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