Lady Macbeth and the Witches

This week, throughout the readings assigned, I chose to focus much on what we talked about in class which was Lady Macbeth’s transformation from a strong, dominate role to a weak, grief ridden role. Throughout the entirety of the first and second acts, Lady Macbeth convinces Macbeth that they must do whatever necessary in order to reign and control the people as King and Queen. She treats him as weak and spineless when he is horrified that he went as far to kill Duncan in order to gain this power. She tells him to wipe his hands clean in order to rid himself of the blood, both literally and figuratively. We find in the end that this is very ironic as Lady Macbeth cannot stand the blood on her hands that she cannot wipe clean, no matter how much scrubbing and washing she attempts. One theme of the play is that no one can do horrible things for power without consequences. Unlike Macbeth who takes up the place as the head of the mission, Lady Macbeth’s conscience gets to her, showing her true humanity. Is this simply a coincidence? Or is it on purpose that Lady Macbeth, the woman and wife who is typically portrayed as weak or caring, is the one to break in the end?


In addition to my analysis of Lady Macbeth, I also find the witches to be extremely interesting characters. As I have mentioned in a few of my discussion questions, I’ve been contemplating how the play would have been different if the witches had not given Macbeth the prophecies. Would Macbeth still been led to kill many and be killed himself? I feel that this is not the case. In Act V, he says he cannot be killed and marches into battle, unafraid. I do not believe he would have been this arrogant if it had not been for the prophecies. I also do not believe he would have been led to kill anyone as, from the beginning, he was timid when considering killing and Lady Macbeth received these wild ideas from the letter Macbeth wrote to her about the witches.

Comments

  1. Cassie MckenzieOctober 13, 2017 at 7:03 PM

    I really like what you had to say about Lady MacBeth first being portrayed as powerful and then seeing her transition into what we could say was the stereotype for women at the time, which was scared, crazy and weak. I actually said something very similar about Lady MacBeth in my own blogpost. Despite that Lady MacBeth was trouble from the beginning, she at least played a very powerful character. But then she basically disappointed me at the end when she chose to commit suicide, as this affirms the stereotype of that time.

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