Feminist Reading of Lady Macbeth

 In Shakespeare’s play Macbeth, he presents the conflicting character of Lady Macbeth. Upon receiving her husband’s letter about the witches’ prophesies, she attempts to be like a man to exude the strength needed to gain additional social status as royalty. Lady Macbeth appears to be very influential in planning – deciding when and how they should kill King Duncan – and chiding her husband for not acting more like a man; yet, despite these capabilities, she is the main reason for the revealing of Macbeth’s part in the usurpation of the throne.

Lady Macbeth is unique among the tragic heroines of Shakespeare. Her character is far more complex than that of Desdemona, Ophelia, and Cordelia. She is much more vocal than the rest three. Her role in the murder of Duncan fills us with awe and astonishment. In the first half of the play, she dominates the scene and is more powerful than her husband. The first half of the play gives us the impression that Macbeth is only a half-hearted cowardly criminal whereas Lady Macbeth is a wholehearted fiend. 

Lady Macbeth’s role in the earlier part of the tragedy sometimes leads us to think that she is the “fourth witch.” While the three witches are busy, tempting Macbeth with the prospect of the crown of Scotland, Lady Macbeth exerts the ultimate deciding influence on the action. She has Herculean courage and firm determination which hold her feeling and conscience completely in check. To her prophecy immediately becomes a tangible possibility. 

“Glamis thou art and Cawdor and shalt be 

What thou art promised” 

To her, there is no difference between desire and deed. The moment she wishes her husband to be the king of Scotland, she is sure to make him that. 

“The raven himself is hoarse 

That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan 

Under my battlement” 

When Macbeth rejoins her, she goes straight to her purpose and plan show to get rid of Duncan and clear the way for her husband. Here she takes the superior position and directs the whole affair herself. She knows the weakness of her husband who hesitates 'to catch the nearest way to the object she desires. So, she animates him by picturing the deed as heroic, ‘this night's great business, ‘our great quell’ but he ignores the cruelty and inhumanness underlying it. She overcomes his resistance with her logic than with her taunts and rebukes. She calls him a ‘coward’. Her eyes are fixed on the ‘Golden round’ and the means to it, she does not think of the consequences.

Even in the presence of overwhelming horror and danger, she controls perfect, as in the murder scene and the banquet scene. Thus, in the first part of the play, she seems both invincible and inhuman. There is no trace of pity for the kind old king, no consciousness of the treachery and baseness of the murder, no shrinking even from the condemnation of the world. It is for all these reasons that she has often been called the fourth witch of the drama. 

On closer scrutiny, however, Lady Macbeth has certain redeeming features in her character. Whereas the three witches stand for only cruelty and meanness, Lady Macbeth symbolizes some of the positive aspects of human nature as well. She is not totally devoid of feminine weakness and human feelings. She utters the famous words which show her filial affection: 

"Had he not resembled my father 

As he slept, I had done't." 

Though she speaks these words impatiently as if she regrets her weakness, it is there. Similarly, her appalling invocation to the spirits of Evil to unsex her and fill her from the crown to the toe top-full of direst cruelty tells the same tale of determination to crush the inner protest. 

 "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! make thick my blood,..."

Like any other woman, Lady Macbeth is a devoted wife. The fire of ambition that is burning in her mind is only an echo of what is there in her husband's mind. She wants the crown of Scotland not for herself but for her husband. She is very prompt and active during Duncan's murder only because she knows her husband's weakness-that he is 'too full of the milk of human kindness to carry out the plan. Her care for Macbeth is apparent in the following words: "You know the season of all nature's sleep". 

She is, indeed, a perfect wife. She urges appeals reproaches, for a practical end. She never recriminates. The harshness of her taunts for her husband is free from any personal feeling or more than momentary consent. She despises what she thinks is the weakness that stands in the way of her husband's ambition but she does not despise him. 

The greatness of Lady Macbeth lies in her indomitable courage and force of will. Her intellectual side is comparatively weaker. She shows immense self-control but not much skill. Her plan of laying the guilt upon the chamberlains is invented on the spur of the moment and simply to satisfy her hesitant husband. Her passionate courage sweeps Macbeth off his feet and he commits Duncan's murder. Even when passion has quite died away, her will remains supreme. Even during crises, no word of complaint, scarcely a word of her own suffering, escapes her lips. She helps Macbeth but never asks for his help. In this way, we see that from the beginning to the end her will never fails her. She never betrays her husband or herself by a word or even a look, save in the sleep-walking scene. Thus, however appalling she may be, she is sublime. Her selfless sacrifices for her husband is redeeming feature of her character. 

Lady Macbeth has a complex character. She is a tragic heroine of a particular type... She combines in herself villainy and sublimity, weakness and kindness, 'the fair and the foul'. Hers is a dynamic character who undergoes a metamorphosis in the course of the play. In the beginning, she fails to understand even herself. Her facile realism that 'a little water clears us of this deed' is one day answered by herself." Will these hands never be cleaned?" 

Similarly, the fatal commonplace that 'what is done is done' makes way for her last despairing sentence: "What is done cannot be undone". 

With the shock of a sudden disclosure of the deed in the banquet scene, Lady Macbeth begins to sink down. Even when she is the queen of Scotland, she remains disillusioned and weary for want of sleep. Henceforth she retires into the background. She is not at all interested in the action that follows. She has no part in Macbeth's tyranny over Scotland. She cannot bear darkness and has light by her continually. The sleep-walking scene shows the beginning of her madness. And finally, she dies a pathetic death. Thus, from the banquet scene onwards we begin to think of her less as the instigator of Duncan's murder or as the veritable fourth witch than as a woman with much that is grand and sublime in her. There is a deep pathos in her stoical suffering. Her character as a whole excites awe, grandeur, and pity at one and the same time.