Lady Macbeth is one of Shakespeare's most memorable characters. Ambitious, persuasive and initially terrifying in her determination, she appears to possess the ruthlessness that Macbeth lacks.
Yet the woman who calls upon supernatural forces to make her capable of murder eventually becomes overwhelmed by something she believed she could suppress: guilt.
Her transformation from the driving force behind Duncan's murder to the haunted figure of the sleepwalking scene forms one of the most powerful character arcs in Macbeth.
Who Is Lady Macbeth?
Lady Macbeth is Macbeth's wife and becomes Queen of Scotland after Duncan's murder.
When she first appears in Act 1, Scene 5, she is reading a letter from Macbeth describing his encounter with the Three Witches.
The prophecy immediately captures her imagination.
But unlike Macbeth, who hesitates between ambition and morality, Lady Macbeth quickly begins thinking about what must happen for the prophecy to become reality.
She fears that her husband is:
“too full o' the milk of human kindness”
to seize the crown through violence.
From her first scene, Shakespeare therefore establishes an important contrast.
Macbeth possesses ambition but fears its consequences.
Lady Macbeth initially appears willing to accept those consequences.
What Does Lady Macbeth Want?
At the beginning of the tragedy, Lady Macbeth wants Macbeth to become king.
She understands that Duncan stands between her husband and the crown, and she doubts Macbeth has the ruthlessness required to remove him.
Her response is one of the darkest speeches in the play.
She calls upon supernatural spirits to strip away the qualities she associates with compassion and weakness:
“Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here.”
The speech is often interpreted as Lady Macbeth attempting to reject the expectations associated with femininity in Shakespeare's world.
She wants cruelty without hesitation.
Power without pity.
Action without remorse.
But Macbeth ultimately demonstrates that human emotions cannot be discarded so easily.
Why Does Lady Macbeth Manipulate Macbeth?
Macbeth initially decides against murdering Duncan.
He recognizes that Duncan is both his king and his guest. Duncan has also been a good ruler, giving Macbeth even fewer reasons to justify killing him.
Lady Macbeth responds by attacking the quality Macbeth values most strongly: his courage.
She questions his masculinity and suggests that refusing to act would reveal cowardice.
Her strategy works.
But an important detail is sometimes overlooked: Lady Macbeth does not physically force Macbeth to commit murder.
Like the witches, she influences him.
Macbeth still chooses.
This makes their relationship particularly interesting. Lady Macbeth encourages the ambition already present within her husband, while Macbeth's later violence grows far beyond anything she initially planned.
Lady Macbeth and the Murder of Duncan
Lady Macbeth designs much of the plan.
Duncan's guards will be drugged. Macbeth will kill the sleeping king. The guards will then be framed for the murder.
Yet when the moment comes, Lady Macbeth reveals an unexpected limit.
She explains that she would have killed Duncan herself:
“Had he not resembled
My father as he slept, I had done't.”
For a moment, the apparently ruthless Lady Macbeth recognizes something deeply human in her intended victim.
The detail foreshadows what will happen later.
She can suppress her conscience temporarily.
She cannot destroy it.
“A Little Water Clears Us of This Deed”
After murdering Duncan, Macbeth returns horrified by what he has done.
He stares at the blood on his hands and imagines that even an ocean could not wash them clean.
Lady Macbeth responds very differently:
“A little water clears us of this deed.”
At this stage, she believes guilt can simply be dismissed.
Wash away the physical evidence, and the crime disappears with it.
Shakespeare will later transform this statement into one of the play's most devastating ironies.
The blood can be removed from Lady Macbeth's hands.
The memory cannot.
How Lady Macbeth Changes
After Duncan's murder, something surprising happens.
Lady Macbeth gradually becomes less important to Macbeth's decisions.
Before the murder, they operate almost as partners.
After Macbeth becomes king, he increasingly acts alone.
He arranges Banquo's murder without telling her the details.
He returns to the witches independently.
He orders further violence without seeking her approval.
The power dynamic reverses.
Macbeth becomes increasingly comfortable with violence while Lady Macbeth begins collapsing under the psychological consequences of their original crime.
The woman who once demanded ruthlessness becomes haunted by memory.
The Sleepwalking Scene
Lady Macbeth's final major appearance comes in Act 5.
A doctor and gentlewoman observe her walking in her sleep. She repeatedly rubs her hands as though trying to clean them.
Then comes perhaps her most famous line:
“Out, damned spot! out, I say!”
There is no actual blood on her hands.
The stain exists in her mind.
The woman who once insisted that water could erase their crime now discovers that guilt cannot be washed away.
Fragments of the past return through her speech: Duncan's blood, Banquo's death, Lady Macduff.
Events she tried to suppress have become impossible to control.
What Does Lady Macbeth Symbolize?
Lady Macbeth can support several interpretations, and reducing her simply to an “evil woman” misses much of what Shakespeare creates.
Ambition
She initially represents ambition freed from moral hesitation.
The crown appears valuable enough to justify almost anything.
Manipulation
Lady Macbeth understands Macbeth's insecurities and knows how to use them to influence his decisions.
Gender and Power
Her “unsex me here” speech challenges contemporary associations between masculinity, violence, femininity and compassion.
Guilt
Her eventual collapse demonstrates the psychological consequences of actions she initially believed could simply be forgotten.
The Limits of Control
Lady Macbeth believes she can control Macbeth, the murder and her own emotions.
Eventually she controls none of them.
Is Lady Macbeth Responsible for Macbeth's Downfall?
Lady Macbeth clearly plays an important role in Duncan's murder.
Without her encouragement, Macbeth might not have acted at that moment.
But Shakespeare does not make her responsible for everything that follows.
Macbeth already possesses ambition before she persuades him.
Later, he chooses violence independently.
Banquo's murder, the slaughter of Macduff's family and Macbeth's growing tyranny cannot simply be attributed to Lady Macbeth.
Their trajectories actually move in opposite directions.
Macbeth becomes less troubled by violence.
Lady Macbeth becomes more troubled by it.
That reversal is central to the tragedy.
Why Lady Macbeth Remains So Fascinating
Lady Macbeth's power comes from contradiction.
She is ruthless yet vulnerable.
She calls for cruelty yet cannot kill Duncan herself.
She dismisses guilt yet is ultimately destroyed by it.
She appears extraordinarily powerful at the beginning of Macbeth, but much of that power depends upon her belief that human emotions can be controlled through will alone.
Shakespeare gradually dismantles that belief.
By the sleepwalking scene, the confident woman of Act 1 has disappeared.
What remains is someone trapped inside memories she cannot escape.
Lady Macbeth in Gothic Illustration
Few Shakespearean characters lend themselves as naturally to Gothic imagery as Lady Macbeth.
Candlelight, darkness, blood, sleeplessness and psychological terror surround her story.
Her transformation also creates a striking visual contrast: the commanding Lady Macbeth who invokes supernatural forces early in the tragedy and the isolated figure wandering through darkness later in the play.
Macbeth — Gothic Illustrated Edition by Evergreen Classics brings these moments and other iconic scenes from Shakespeare's tragedy to life through original Gothic illustrations.
Rediscover Macbeth through a darker visual interpretation of ambition, prophecy, murder and guilt.
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