By: Jessi Walker
Lady Macbeth is one of the world’s most infamous female villains in the history of literature and she is considered to be evil and wicked by many. She is a character from William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, and she is the wife of the Thane of Glamis, who is also known as Macbeth. Lady Macbeth pushed her husband into doing terrible things by manipulating him, which pushes him ultimately down the path he took in the play. It all starts going downhill when Macbeth receives a prophecy from the three witches that he will be king which ends up driving Lady Macbeth to convince her husband to kill King Duncan. Macbeth becomes a tyrannical king that kills for security of his throne, and they both meet death’s doors by the end of the play. In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Lady Macbeth is often considered evil and wicked due to how she purposely exacerbated Macbeth, but she is not actually evil because of the state of her mental health, her signs of guilt, and how the role of women in that time period inflamed her behavior.
Lady Macbeth’s mental health certainly showed signs of deterioration, especially near the end of the play. The state of her mind is quite the counter to claims of her being evil. She seemed more normal near the start of the play, but to commit actions such as pushing her husband to regicide by comparing him to “like the poor cat i’ th’ adage” requires someone to be in poor health already (1.7.45). Her comparing her husband to a cowardly cat will invoke Macbeth to pursue his goal of killing King Duncan, and he would not have done it if it was not for her. She decides to do this from the very first letter from Macbeth that she is going to have to push Macbeth into murdering King Duncan and then she asked the spirits to “Make thick my blood. Stop up th’ access and passage to remorse, that no compunctious visitings of nature shake my fell purpose” (1.5.40-43). While this could be considered evil, an American psychoanalyst by the name of Isador H Coriat suggests that from her reaction to Macbeth’s letter, “it is her first daydream of ambition, so strong and dominating, that she believes she possesses what she really does not possess—namely, bravery. It is this imaginary wish fulfillment to be queen which later causes the hysterical dissociation” (Coriat). She had hysterical dissociation that was ignited by the prophecies of the witches that she was told about by Macbeth.
Her hysterical dissociation only gets more clear as the play progresses. To continue pushing Macbeth, she said that if she had a baby, 8“have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums and dashed the brains out, had I sworn as you have done to this” (1.7.57-58). This shows how far she is willing to do to achieve her desires of queen, and she did this in a quite demented, unwell matter. Lady Macbeth being capable of killing her own infant can be seen as quite evil, but this is still not the case. Coriat suggested that this desire of hers is “an example of a substitution, or what is termed in modern psychopathology as a sublimation or transformation of a sexual complex into ambition, a mechanism which is frequently found in hysteria” (Coriat). Lady Macbeth is not as brave as she thinks she is, as she is not willing to do it herself because “had he not resembled my father as he slept, I had done’t” (2.2.12-13). This shows the humanity in her, and her own consciousness. If she was truly evil, she would be able to commit the regicide herself, but “here the motive is far deeper—a symptomatic, unconscious substitution for her cowardice and not due to any prickings of conscience in the relation of child to parent” (Coriat). Lady Macbeth’s inaction was not simply because of her father, but because her repressed emotions that are leaking through her personality. She needed an excuse for herself, as she could not truly handle it. This will later start to come out in her sleeping state. Her dissociation is clearly fully set in by the time Duncan is murdered, as she states “the sleeping and the dead are but as pictures” (2.2.53-54). Coriat analyzed that her mental health at this moment from her quote is “indicate the beginning of a dissociation of the personality, in an attempt to cut off or repress the thoughts of the tragedy from the rest of her experience” (Coriat). Lady Macbeth just gets so much worse as the play progresses on from here.
Her mental health state has gotten so much worse that it is bothering her in her sleep. It is nearing the times of her death when she shows the greatest signs of deterioration, and the most humanity she has ever had. She gets deeply humbled to the point it should not be questioned if it is evil, as Macbeth no longer needs her the same way and she must be cared for by a doctor and a gentlewoman as she has completely changed for the worse. The doctor is not hopeful for her, as her state is “this disease is beyond my practice” (5.1.47). She is truly at rock bottom in the days before her death, and her doctor not being able to help her shows the truth of this situation. This proves that she is not actually evil or wicked. Lady Macbeth is believed to have suffered from “hysterical somnambulism,” which is evident by all of her disturbing sleepwalking attacks, and shows that “Lady Macbeth may therefore be looked upon as possessing two personalities, which appear and disappear… In the sleeping or somnambulistic state, the repression gives way to free expression and her innate cowardice becomes dominant… one could believe in the womanliness of Lady Macbeth, then her sleeping personality must be interpreted as the true one, because removed from the inhibition and the censorship of voluntary repression” (Coriat). Lady Macbeth is repressing all of her emotions around the events of the play, which shows her humanity. She can not be evil if she was so mentally unwell and guilt-ridden to the point where “ as ‘tis thought, by self and violet hands took off her life” (5.8.71-72). Her suicide is at the ultimate peak of her deterioration about all of her actions, and proves claims that she is actually an evil woman wrong. Her suicide highlighted other points as well, such as her guilt.
Lady Macbeth displays her guilt in unconventional ways throughout Macbeth. It becomes quite obvious of how guilty she really felt when she deteriorated before she killed herself. However, she showed her remorse in subtle ways before she went downhill. She seems to have anxiety and maybe traces of regret since things could go wrong for her when she drugged the guards, saying “Alack, I am afraid they have awakened” (2.2.9). She seems to have paranoia setting in her mind with the deed being done, and she seems concerned that there has been so much knocking on the door of their home. She seems very uncomfortable about how much blood King Duncan spilled in the light of his regicide, as she is uncomfortable he brought them with him, and her fixation on washing hands begins with “a little water clears us of this deed” (2.2.65). Lady Macbeth has also shown to be suicidal over her actions before she even was visibly unwell, as she implied it would be better to be dead by saying, “Tis safer to be what we destroy than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy” (3.2.6-7). This shows her doubt in her position as queen, as well as highlights her guilt. When she later meets her downfall as her hysterical somnambulism kicks in full spring, it is clear her disorder is the manifestation of her guilty consciousness. Lady Macbeth in her sleepwalking highlights how she still feel like she has blood on her hands from that night, as she says “here’s the smell of the blood still. All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand” (5.1.40-41). She recounts her time she has participated in the crimes of Macbeth or stood by his actions, and she has confessed to it in her sleep state as she desperately tries to get the spots off of her. She is so guilt-ridden here that making the case that she is completely evil does not make any sense. Her handwashing is actually a “nervous disease known as a compulsion neurosis” where the subject has a psychological need to wash their hands to be spared by contamination, and in Lady Macbeth’s case, was over her guilt for her crimes, and that Lady Macbeth “the symptom develops through Lady Macbeth transferring an unpleasant group of memories or complexes, which have a strong personal and emotional significance, to an indifferent act or symptom. The act of washing the hands is a compromise for self-reproach and repressed experiences” (Coriat). Her obsessive behavior around washing her hands of this guilt that she’s been repressing shows all the signals that while what she did was bad, Lady Macbeth at least acknowledges it repeatedly within her mind and that makes her different than someone that is evil, especially considering how society exacerbated her own issues as well.
Society pushed Lady Macbeth, similarly to how she pushed her husband, because of her having to challenge the role of women in an unhealthy matter. The first thing that may have played a role on the state of how she viewed her own self worth is something that sometimes people miss when they read Macbeth for the first time. When Lady Macbeth was trying to convince Macbeth, she said “I have given suck, and known how tender ‘tis to love the babe that milks me” (1.7.54-55). Yet, when Macduff is talking about Macbeth, he says that “[In reference to Macbeth] “He has no children” (4.3.219). This heavily implies that Lady Macbeth’s baby died when the infant was very young, especially with how much more common that was in that time period. Lineage was a huge deal to the characters in the play, as Macbeth wants to have heirs to the throne, but it seems that Lady Macbeth’s infant has died, and maybe she has had a lot of issues with pregnancy. This leaves her to feel like she has to compensate to be worthy as a woman and wife to Macbeth, and her childlessness life worsens her state of mind before the events of the play even happened. She wants to be viewed as an equal to Macbeth and not held back by the gender stereotypes of the time period, but “at the end of the play she is completely removed from the masculine world she so desperately wanted to enter and which so effectively has excluded her” (Asp). She even uses her own internalized misogyny against Macbeth by trying to insinuate he was not a man, which is sentiment that Macbeth cares about. She even begs, “Come, you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here… come to my woman’s breasts and take my milk for gall” (1.5.37-45). The time period that the play is in made it so she had to “In a society in which femininity is divorced from strength and womanliness is equated with weakness, where the humane virtues are associated with womanliness, the strong woman finds herself hemmed in psychologically, forced to reject her own womanliness, to some extent, if she is to be true to her strength. Lady Macbeth IS such a woman” (Asp). She would resort to pushing her husband to regicide if it meant he’d continue to respect her, and that she’d have some control over her situation. While the role of women in society far from excuses Lady Macbeth and barely justifies her actions, she is still not considered evil because of how far she was pushed by external factors, especially this one where she had a warped sense of her own gender.
Counter arguments can be made that evil is not exclusive to these environmental factors that triggered the events of Macbeth. Lady Macbeth is shown to be eager to murder King Duncan, and she shows absolutely no hesitation like Macbeth did as “This maternal malevolence is given its most horrifying expression in Shakespeare in the image through which Lady Macbeth secures her control over Macbeth” (Adelman). Her willingness can be viewed to make her an evil, wicked woman. She did manipulate Macbeth, as he was not even going to commit the act. Lady Macbeth had a fierce grip on him, and it could be argued she already did beforehand so she might not have needed to display her worth even as a female. She has parallels to the witches, as she is “for all of their eeriness, the Weird Sisters exist on a cosmic level apart from Macbeth’s physical world; but, by embracing evil herself, Lady Macbeth brings the psychic force of their power home” (Adelman). Lady Macbeth is an even more compelling force than the prophecies of the witches, and is viewed on some level as worse than them. She is quite similar to them in nature, especially when she is talking about murdering her own baby if she could get what she wanted, “It is characteristic of the play’s division of labor between Lady Macbeth and the witches that she; rather than they, is given the imagery of perverse nursery traditionally attributed to the witches” (Adelman). While I think this is all true, it is still a better argument that Lady Macbeth is not truly evil because her mental health state counters this idea alone. Lady Macbeth’s suffering is not by any means an excuse, but she does not display true evil traits in her character like many like to believe. It can be argued as well that no person is ever truly evil to begin with, as there are forces in the environment or in their brain chemistry that often makes them the way that they are. Lady Macbeth as a character is far from a black and white case, and there will likely never be agreement on if she could be considered evil or not because of the inherent philosophy involved in the concept of evil that can be hard to properly define. .
One of the most infamous female villains is absolutely not evil, but still a villain in the tragic play of Macbeth. While Lady Macbeth goes down in a fate she ultimately deserved, she was still pushed there and her character is not evil. The environmental factors such as her mental health, her guilt, and how society viewed women like her shaped her to become the villain in Macbeth. She is still misunderstood as a character, and overly demonized. However, Lady Macbeth is no demon or evil spirit or any kind.
Sources
Adelman, Janet. “`Born of Woman’: Fantasies of Maternal Power in Macbeth.” EXPLORING Shakespeare, Gale, 2003. Gale In Context: High School, link.gale.com/apps/doc/EJ2115507250/SUIC?u=va_s_085_0770&sid=bookmark-SUIC&xid=c241a1ae. Accessed 25 Apr. 2022.
Asp, Carolyn. “`Be Bloody, bold and resolute’: Tragic Action and Sexual Stereotyping in Macbeth.” EXPLORING Shakespeare, Gale, 2003. Gale In Context: High School, link.gale.com/apps/doc/EJ2115508860/SUIC?u=va_s_085_0770&sid=bookmark-SUIC&xid=a52014ba. Accessed 25 Apr. 2022.
Shakespeare, William. “Macbeth.” Holt Mcdougal Literature: Grade 12, edited by Janet Allen et al., Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013, pp. 350–431.
Coriat, Isador H. “The Hysteria of Lady Macbeth.” Shakespearean Criticism, edited by Laurie Lanzen Harris and Mark W. Scott, vol. 3, Gale, 1986. Gale Literature Resource Center, link.gale.com/apps/doc/H1420018780/GLS?u=viva2_vccs&sid=bookmark-GLS&xid=5ade9142. Accessed 22 Apr. 2022. Originally published in The Hysteria of Lady Macbeth, by Isador H. Coriat, Moffat, Yard and Company, 1912.