The Ruthless And Manipulative, Lady Macbeth

Words: 875
Pages: 4

The Ruthless And Manipulative, Lady Macbeth

William Shakespeare’s novel, Macbeth, is a fictional story that revolves around ambition, remorse, and extreme cruelty in order to gain power. The main character, Macbeth, is a power hungry man who gullibly believes three witches prophecy that he is to be king. Macbeth gets obsessed with this idea and decides that he must take necessary steps just to ensure that the prophecy will come true. However, Lady Macbeth, Macbeth’s wife, is also in on the idea, and turns out to be much more aggressive than Macbeth himself. From a first glance, Lady Macbeth may seem to be an average wife of royalty, but underneath she is the complete opposite, specifically ruthless and manipulative.
Lady Macbeth is ruthless because she has no compassion for the lives of others, and she is so blinded by her own ambition that she will go to unnecessary levels just to achieve more power. Come, you spirits / That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, / And fill me from the crown to the toe topful / Of direst cruelty. Make thick my blood. / Stop up th' access and passage to remorse, / That no compunctious visitings of nature (1.5.47-53). Lady Macbeth is talking about how she wants to murder someone so she can get more power. She wants to be completely filled with cruelty, and to have her blood thickened so she is not capable of feeling any natural human remorse, which could cause her deadly plan for power to backfire. Because she does not want to be able to feel any regret over her actions, is a clear portrayal of the
…show more content…
Throughout the story, it becomes clear that not just Macbeth is the one with the power hungry traits, they are actually most intensely felt by Lady Macbeth, his wife. Lady Macbeth is a complicated character, whose two strongest traits throughout the story seem to be ruthlessness and