Lady Macbeth's Ambition Towards Power

“What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account?—Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him.”(V.I.25-30). So much blood indeed, an amount that would not wane after death. The motif of bloodshed and fatality, follows Macbeth’s action, but Macbeth’s decisions belong to his wife. Composed by Shakespeare, Macbeth portrays the ambition toward power and the ramifications of choices through the behavior of Macbeth. However, his actions are not determine by himself, but at the hands of his dominant wife, which, through her selfish desire for authority, absence of emotion and management of Macbeth creates a cycle of death.

Lady Macbeth’s initial desire for strength sprouted from her selfish ambition

The aspiration of power, transform Lady Macbeth into a person devoid of human senses to accomplish her goal, when 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!”(I.V.41-44). Lady Macbeth invokes evil to obtain the assets essential toward her seat on the throne. This idea embodies Lady Macbeth’s strong, decisive, and wicked personality, making her the foil of her husband. She admit that her womanhood is a weakness and that men are the ones who retain strength. She desires the ability to murder Duncan, a skill her husband does not possess. Lady Macbeth’s selfish ambition for power served as a catalysis for Duncan’s death. She exploits Macbeth’s submissive personality to obtain the position of

She warps Macbeth’s internal conflict, the action to murder, or not to murder, by questioning the essence of his manhood. She entices Macbeth with the notion of kingship, the belief that being king will make him a greater man. Yet, the fall of Macbeth is not as easily done as the descent of Adam and Eve. While still not convince, but conflicted by words of his wife, Lady Macbeth says, “I have given suck, and know how tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me: I would, while it was smiling in my face, Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums, And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn as you have done to this”(I.VII.55-60). As a final effort to taste the forbidden fruit, Lady Macbeth contrast Macbeth’s intention with his actions by comparing it to her baby whose brains is bashed out.