In William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, lady Macbeth plays a key role in the murder of the king. Lady Macbeth is the wife of the main character Macbeth. She not only plans the murder of the king, but participates as well. One can see the change in Lady Macbeth after the murder. She starts to have reoccurring thoughts of the incident and basically loses her mind. Lady Macbeth can be diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder and borderline personality with the symptoms she shows throughout the play.
Lady Macbeth starts to struggle with the guilt of killing the king as the book progresses. Post traumatic stress disorder symptoms include, “ reoccurring thoughts of an incident, nightmares, and flashbacks”. (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) Things that may
cause
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a soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account?--Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him.(5.1.31-36)
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This shows that she is filling guilty of the incident and thoughts of the crime keep haunting her. By witnessing and participating in the crime of killing the king she is having nightmares because she cannot get it off her mind. With these symptoms lady
Macbeth can be diagnosed with a post traumatic disorder.
Lady Macbeth is involved in some risky behavior and has some mood swings.
Symptoms of border line personality are, “ Impulsive and risky behavior…” (BPD Mayo
Clinic) One can see that lady Macbeth is a very risky person. She not only has the idea of killing the king but also wants to kill him in her own house. Symptoms are also, “marked by unstable and shifting moods”. (BPD Funk & Wagnails) Lady Macbeth’s mood can change in an instant at times. When the murder is about to occur she is ruthless, but after she covers the evidence she feels guilty. Lady Macbeths risky behavior and mood swings are key symptoms that can diagnose her with a Borderline personality
comes to attack them in order to even the score for the killing of her son. Then she leaves taking
William Shakespeare’s Macbeth is a play read by high school seniors across the country.In The play, macbeth and his wife, lady macbeth a man named macbeth become in many situiations that are devious . The planning on king duncan's murder begins with lady macbeth plotting to kill the king. She accomplishes this goal by telling macbeth to get two guys very drunk till they black out and blame the murder on the two intoxicated guys knowing that macbeth killed the king.
Lady Macbeth Mental Illness William Shakespeare tragedy in Macbeth. Macbeth was a Thane, which is a noble. Lady Macbeth wants to be Queen of Scotland. Lady Macbeth wants to be king no matter what it takes, Lady Macbeth was going to be king and Lady Macbeth was going to be queen. Lady Macbeth was a very strong person.
In Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, Shakespeare has created a terrifying couple fuelled by the need for power, which causes them to commit treacherous acts. Given that Macbeth was first performed in 1606 shortly after the famous gunpowder plot to overthrow the monarchy, this play, which included regicide would have excited the Jacobean audiences. However, the message that the excessive ambition leads to terrible consequences is clear, as both Macbeth and his ‘Dearest Partner of Greatness’ suffer and die as a result of their heinous crimes. As the title would suggest, it is Macbeth’s rapid rise and great fall which ultimately drives this tragedy. However, it is the character of Lady Macbeth, with her single minded sense of purpose coupled with her ability to dominate Macbeth, who would have engaged the
Her choices triggered the rise of her status, but also began the recession of her mental health. For a majority of the play, Lady Macbeth constantly reminds for Macbeth to ‘be a man’ and to overcome his emotions. Soon after the murder of King Duncan, Macbeth comes to her, full of guilt and trauma. She mocks him, stating that “tis the eye of childhood /that fears a painted devil,” (II, II, 70-71) in an attempt to belittle him, reducing him from a man to a child. Lady Macbeth tries to minimize the guilt of herself and Macbeth’s murderous deed by belittling his emotions, forcing him to repress his guilt in the name of manhood. A common trait of hypermasculinity is the suppression of emotions, and both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth soon express this. As Lady Macbeth settles into the role of queenship, she soon expresses discontent, lamenting that “nought’s had, all’s spent. / Where our desire is got without content” (III, II, 6-7). But when Macbeth enters, she quickly hides her unhappiness and reclaims the role of the sensible advisor, immediately ridiculing his “sorriest fancies” born of guilt (III, II, 11). But, unable to quiet her emotions no matter how deeply she hid them, Lady Macbeth was overwhelmed with guilt, and soon loses control over her behaviour in her sleep. Unable to talk about her guilt and feelings while awake, she laments over her, and Macbeth’s, choices while unconscious. Lady Macbeth, unable to personalize a trait of manhood she so strongly pressed on Macbeth, she soon becomes unable to live with her emotions, and ultimately prompts the ultimate consequence, suicide. As an after-effect of renouncing her femininity earlier in the play, and learning to internalize her emotions, Lady Macbeth personalizes a harmful effect of exaggerated hypermasculinity that deeply affects her mental health and does nothing but cause her
At the beginning of the play, Macbeth is a trusted soldier, who is honest and noble. Unfortunately, he meets three witches who tell him three prophecies; that he will become thane of Cawdor, that he will become king and that Banquo’s sons will become kings. These three prophecies slowly change his opinions on life and turn him into a greedy, dishonest, tyrant, full of ambition. Lady Macbeth’s thoughts change as well when she is told about the three prophecies that were told to Macbeth. In the beginning of the play, Lady Macbeth is ambitious, controlling and domineering. She is the one who encourages him to kill the king, she not only encourages him, she makes all the plans herself, which shows her determination and persistence."Yet I do fear thy nature, it is too full o’th milk of human kindness. To catch the nearest way thou wouldst be great. Art not without ambition, but without the illness should attend it." (Act 1, scene 5). Lady Macbeth is the force behind Macbeth’s sudden ambition and she tries to manipulate him into feeling guilty and unmanly for not following through with the murder, by using her husbands emotions, she manages to convince Macbeth to murder Duncan.
Lady Macbeth is an extremely ambitious woman and wants more than anything for her husband, Macbeth, to be the next King of Scotland. When King Duncan announces that his son, Malcolm, is to be the next King, Duncan’s murder is planned. Lady Macbeth’s crucial role in the play is to persuade Macbeth to carry out the murder of Duncan. In the beginning she is ambitious, controlling and strong. However as the plot concludes there is an extreme change in her character and personality which surprises the audience. Lady Macbeth’s guilt eventually becomes too much for her to handle which leads to her death.
So far, in the play, Lady Macbeth has been shown to be a very powerful and ambitious character. After reading Macbeth's letter, she says, "Thou wouldst be great, / Art not without ambition, but without / The illness that should attend it"(I.v 17-19), here, she is saying that he needs more evil or "illness" in him to become King, and therefore implies that she will "poison" him and give him the illness he needs to increase his ambition. Here she is also undermining her husband's authority (which is very unusual for a woman in the Elizabethan era) by saying he is unable to become a King, and is undermining his masculinity as she is thinking about things that a man would usually take charge of. To try to persuade Macbeth to kill Duncan when the audience first see them meet on stage, she is very bold, "Your hand, you tongue, look like th'innocent flower, / But be the serpent under't" (I.v 65-66), she shows her strong female identity, whose ambitions speak for her obsession with power.
has sent to her, Lady Macbeth begins to plot and plan how Macbeth can become
Macbeth turns on the King and becomes a very insane and disloyal man as the witches prophecies began to come true.
She requests that Arden’s body be brought to her and, upon seeing him, she speaks to Arden and confesses to the murder, and expresses her guilt, wishing he were still alive, by saying “...And would my death save thine thou shouldst not die” (“Arden” 8). Though she previously conveyed how free she felt, the combination of the hand-towel and knife used to kill Arden, his innocent blood stains on the floor, and his distorted, unmoving body triggers Alice to feel an overwhelming and unbearable sense of guilt. Once this guilt comes upon her, she cannot stop herself from begging her dead husband for forgiveness, though he cannot offer it to her now. The guilt of her actions causes her to expose the people who helped her enact this heinous crime. Because Alice reveals the truth behind Arden’s murder, every character pays a penance for their
Even though Lord Macbeth is generally the one to have the final say in the many killings that take place in the play, Lady Macbeth plays the role of a villain alongside him. She mocks her Lord if he frets over something she has instructed him to do, saying he would be less of a man if he does not follow through on their plan (I. vii. 56-57). She gives Lord Macbeth a short lecture in deceptiveness when they are planning to kill King Duncan (I. vi. 73-78). She also prepared the daggers for Macbeth to kill Duncan in advance (II. ii. 15-16). Though her Lord was still having doubts, she was, in the most literal sense, ready to go in for the kill.
Lady Macbeth is a very loving wife to Macbeth and she wants to do anything she can for him to achieve his goals. She just takes it a little too far, and she puts too much pressure on Macbeth to commit crimes that he is not sure he wants to do. After Macbeth sends her a letter about the witches’ premonitions, Lady Macbeth is no longer the sweet innocent lady we expect her to be. She turns into a person who is just as ambitious as her husband and she wants to do whatever it takes to help him get Duncan out of the way. She even goes to the point of calling Macbeth a coward, and mocking his bravery when he fails to complete the job. She is even willing to do it herself (plant the bloody knife with the guard). Lady Macbeth is constantly putting the pressure on Macbeth to do things that he is not sure about. She almost turns into a bully who dares Macbeth to go out and do evil things. She even says in a soliloquy that she wants to be released of all her morals and values so that she can help him commit these crimes.
In the beginning of the play she seems much more blood thirsty in her quest for power, but later it seems that the throne was not worthy enough to constitute the means used to gain it.
She will do just about anything to take care of her son, “The night is the time I dread most in my life. Yet, if I am to live, I must depend on it” (Danticat 83). However, she can’t keep the fact that she sells her body from her son forever, “I will tell him that his father has come, that an angel brought him back from Heaven for a while” (Danticat 88). That shows that she is embarrassed from her work and prepared to lie to her son to keep him from knowing the truth. This character’s determination to survive and protect her family makes the reader anxious to know more about her and discover what’ll happen to her and her