Lady Macbeth's Disturbing Speech

Lady Macbeth’s disturbing speech to herself while sleepwalking illustrates her clear downward spiral after committing the murders, demonstrating that the intense personal guilt she carries shows her to possess a conscious, and ultimately shows that she is the lesser evil between she and Macbeth.

In this passage, Lady Macbeth is found by the doctor and her servant wandering around, visibly awake, but mentally asleep. The doctor is told to examine her, and watch her exhibit this strange action, where she can be seen sleepwalking and talking to herself. Lady Macbeth proceeds to speak panickedly about the murders committed, scrubbing her hands and, referring to the metaphorical blood, “Out, damned spot! Out, I say!”. She is scrubbing her hands

Lady Macbeth was not as involved in this murder, as it was later in the play, but she knew that her husband ordered it and didn’t try to stop the killing of an innocent family. She says to herself, “The Thane of Fife had a wife”, and then questions where she is now. Even though Lady Macbeth knows exactly where Lady Macduff is and that she is in fact dead, she is almost coming to terms with it and causing herself more inner-torment by asking herself this question. Furthermore, these murders weren’t as much tied to her as Duncan’s was, and yet she still feels the same amount of guilt. At this point, she has even absorbed the guilt that Macbeth is supposed to have for what he did, and Lady Macbeth is starting to see it as what they did, or more accurately, what she let happen. After this, her language starts to become more fragmented and panicked, almost insane-sounding. She starts to state things that have been said by Macbeth, or something she’s said to Macbeth regarding the murders in the past. Lady Macbeth says, after asking about Lady Macduff, “no more o’that, my lord, no more o’that”, thinking that she is talking to Macbeth, and then echoes Macbeth’s past words, “you mar all with this starting”, meaning that you ruin or spoil everything that we’ve done with your nervousness. This shows that Lady Macbeth feels oppressed by Macbeth’s words, telling her to push her guilt down and bury what they did. After all of this, Lady Macbeth is still scrubbing, thinking that she’s smelling the blood on her hands. Even though there is no blood, she thinks that “all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten [her] little hand”, and that nothing can actually fix what they did, even though they may try to bury