Lady Macbeth: Multifaceted Character

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2nd June 2017 | English Macbeth Essay | Callan Gallias 10F

Topic: “Whether Lady Macbeth is presented as evil, a more multifaceted character, or both.”

Lady Macbeth is presented as a multifaceted character in the play for throughout the play Lady Macbeth shows multiple aspects of her personality that depict her as a character with more than one side to her personality.

Lady Macbeth certainly portrays characteristics of an evil character the play, especially when it comes to manipulating other characters such as Macbeth. Lady Macbeth is the one who drives Macbeth to frame King Duncan’s guards of the murder of King Duncan by getting the guards highly under the influence of alcohol and then placing them in a scenario that makes the guards look …show more content…

Not only does Lady Macbeth aggressively push Macbeth but she also says “When you durst do it, then you were a man”, and by saying this to Macbeth, Lady Macbeth is questioning Macbeths manhood. This certainly manipulates Macbeth to a certain extent but is not fully convincing.

Lady Macbeth uses her femininity and sensuality in order to drive Macbeth to go through with the evil deed of killing Kind Duncan. At the end of Act One Lady Macbeth seductively manipulates Macbeth into thinking that nothing will go wrong in the plan that she has produced. Near the ending of Act one, Scene 7 Macbeth is evidently been swayed by all of Lady Macbeth’s manipulative tactics which leads to Macbeth agreeing to commit the evil deed.

Individuals that are purely evil don’t find anything wrong with malicious acts of evil such as murders, purely evil individuals tend to find wicked acts of murder part of normal life. This is how we can tell that Lady Macbeth is not an entirely evil character for after Macbeth commits the evil deed of killing king Duncan, Lady Macbeth starts to descend into a downwards spiral into insanity for in earlier scenes, Lady Macbeth shows signs of insanity by unwillingly sleep walking during late hours of the night, constantly washing her hands even when they do not need cleaning and lastly Lady Macbeth imagines that she cannot get rid of a “damned spot” that is on herself.

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