September
2009
Lady Macbeth and her guilt…3
Lady Macbeth is a naive person. However, this cannot be an excuse which makes her innocent. We can observe she is naïve because she does not think in consequences; but Macbeth knows it perfectly, for this reason he is tormented. This murder is against his sense of morality, he breaks the taboo under her manipulation, she architects everything. By this way she affirms her guilt. In the beginning of the play, it is clear Macbeth’s doubt about how can he deal with witches’ predictions. After questioning the predictions, he let the destiny decided, as we can see in his speech:
“If chance will have me King, why, chance may crown me, Without my stir” (Act I, Scene III, Lines 158-160).
This happens because he became afraid of thinking on doing something against the King
“If good, why do I yield to that suggestion whose horrid image doth unfix my hair and make my seated heart knock at my ribs against the use of nature?” (Act I, Scene III, Lines 148-151).
So, the destiny is the only agent which can make him king, without his intervention.
Lady Macbeth, after reading the letter and talking to her husband, starts showing us her way of deal with life, with ambition, power and her evil character. Furthermore, we can observe the deconstruction of the “woman model”, which means kindness, fragile against the “man model”, which means being ruthless, as we can observe in her recovery
“ 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”.
Macbeth’s wife manipulates him, because, according to her, he is too kind for it, and this idea in not the way man has to behave. So she shows him his vaulting ambition, his vanity, his “need” of the power, and from this moment on he starts to think effectively in the king’s murder. This manipulation is clear in
“What beast was’t then that made you break this enterprise to me? When you durst do it, then you were a man” (Act I, Scene VII, Lines 53-55).
She plans the murder with him, encourages him, uses their love to control his attitudes, believing, innocently, how perfect is the murder she plans.
In Act II, Macbeth starts having visions, and he also starts to become more and more afraid of killing someone whi is consider his father, admiring Macbeth’s honest, brave and honor, and believing in his fidelity and promessing him to help in his life. After the murder, Macbeth becomes more tormented. However, when he talks to her trying to explain his fears, his torment, his feeling of guilty, she proposes easy ways of forgetting the crime and she is ironic with him
“Tis the eye of childhood that fears a painted devil” (Act II, Scene II, Lines 71-72).
Other innocent words is:
“My hands are of your color, but I shame to wear a heart so white” (Act II, Scene II, Lines 81-82)
And another is:
“Retire we to our chamber. A little water clears us of his deed.” (Act II, Scene II, Lines 84-85).
Lady Macbeth is the person who turns her husband into an evil. She wakes his dark side. She manipulates, controls, plans, destructs their lives. She was the one who insists in the murder, plans the murder and destroys Macbeth’s behavior, off course with his permission. She certainly was the agent to the disastrous which starts happening after the king’s murder. They choose their path, and now the will suffer the consequences.
Macbeth starts suffering since some time before the murder. He cannot sleep, he has visions, and he becomes colder and conscious about his horrible acts, and ironically, all the murders he plans in to become safer and in “peace with his mind” that anyone can discover, destroy his life, or take out their trone.
However, the woman who looked like colder, who was naive moments before the crime, starts suffering, being tormented because of what they have doing. Her thoughts about the crime, visions, her fear of someone uncover the crime and its consequence makes her crazy, tormented and leading her to a future suicide.
Therefore, she is guiltier than her husband, because she instigates, manipulates, and plans everything. Her obsession influences him a lot, but she was not aware, conscious about the magnitude, the size of her decision. She discovers that the water could not wash their hands and their minds; that the rest, the sleep is effectively for fair people. She is guilty although she did not commit the act.
But after Duncan names his son as successor, Macbeth says “Stars hide your fires!” so he seems to be thinking of doing something very wrong at this point. Perhaps Macbeth rushes home to hear his wife’s advice, afterall, he immediately wrote her a letter telling her all.
The visions he sees is of a dagger leading him. The vision sprouts from his own mind, so it seems he was ready and willing to be led on to murder.
Yes,professor. He really did something very wrong after he said “Stars hide your fires!”, because his thoughts, and,in the future, his action are against sense of morality which everybody believes he has, and he also believes he has it. In this quotation he felt shame for the awful things that he had thought and planned.Perhaps he wants her advice or her support, corage of fueling his ambition. When she read the letter, she supported him and she let being carried away.
I think his vision of a dagger can be interpreted in 2 different ways: in the first one he was ready to practice the murder; in the second one the dagger can represent a fantasy, his imagination, an evil desire tempting, tormenting, instigating him.
I agree.