Lady Macbeth- tragic figure or evil figure

Make no mistake: Lady Macbeth is fully suited to be a woman. Although she has the ambitions of a man, she has the character of a woman. Beauty, deceit, and manipulation are her weapons. She moves like a serpent, gracefully slithering from one dark corner of the castle to another. Even her words are laden with images of a bejeweled snake; she makes continuous references to tongues (1.5.30, 76), as she apparently views them as the heralds of a poisonous future. Lady Macbeth is presumably in her mid-30s, old enough to have a quick wit and strong mind, but young enough to be seduced by the temptations of evil. Her wicked nature was not randomly spawned by the promise of a higher status; it has obviously been in place for quite a while.

It does not seem that the Lady loves Macbeth, judging from the many insults she throws at him. She calls him a "coward" (1.7.47) and when he later expresses his fears about killing Duncan, she states that only "the eye of childhood" (2.2.70) fears a dead man. Constantly pushing him to the edge, she seems to care more about the gain of power than the perils facing her husband. An interesting theory of Lady Macbeth's motivations is that she did not marry Macbeth out of love, but only for the rewards ass

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She breathes ice and speaks stones, making every cold-hearted, evil thing she says seem like the utmost logical thing to do or believe. Macbeth erased Lady Macduff from existence, much as he eradicated his own wife's place in their relationship. 37) soliloquy signifies a change in her character. A child would represent an usurpation of her place in Macbeth's life, and this is her greatest fear. "

Not only is Lady Macbeth devilishly intelligent, she is also a wonderful actress. Further into the scene, Macbeth grieves over the red blood on his hands, and his lady returns "[my] hands are of your color, but I shame/ To wear a heart so white" (2. At every turn of the plot, she is berating Macbeth for his cowardice and manipulates him by threatening his masculinity and courage. One would think that the Lady is wholly evil, except that she states she could not kill Duncan because he looked like her father (2. Yet, in this same scene, she exhibits a vulnerability in stating that she could not kill Duncan because he looked like her father. It is likely that she even regrets her earlier decision not to murder Duncan herself, and she feels shame for that vulnerability.

Approximate Word count = 1645
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)

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