Lady Macbeth’s character is first introduced to the audience in Scene 5, Act 1. Today, I want to discuss some key differences in Lady Macbeth that have been noticed in Act 2 compared to her first appearance.
When we first see her character, it’s when she is reading Macbeth’s letter out loud which describes the whole supernatural situation with the witches. At that moment, we see her care towards Macbeth and her sensitivity towards this topic. For instance, she understands why Macbeth may not want to resolve to violence in order to get the crown. We know this because she says ” 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. What thou wouldst highly, That wouldst thou holily; wouldst not play false, And yet wouldst wrongly win. Thou’ld’st have, great Glamis, That which cries, “Thus thou must do,” if thou have it, And that which rather thou dost fear to do.” She seems to display a genuine worry for him (1.5.15). Not only this, but we see that she has always been very passionate about the matters of gaining royalty. From the start to Act 2, she has been very invested to commit this cream and fueled about it. We can see her manipulative techniques come through already when she says “hurry home so I can persuade you and talk you out of whatever’s keeping you from going after the crown.” There are many more examples of how manipulative Lady Macbeth is, as discussed in my previous post “Lady Macbeth’s Persuasion” which discusses whether she was the driving force behind the killing of King Duncan.
Act 2 is where the murder takes, and though Lady Macbeth does not necessarily become less manipulative, we don’t see many of her persuasion skills in action anymore as Mabeth has already been convinced to kill King Duncan. But when Macbeth refused to kill Duncan, she had to manipulate him to listen to her and what she wanted in Act 1. One of her manipulative techniques includes questioning his masculinity, his pride, and love for her too. However, when the deed has been done and Macbeth needs help getting over the guilt and remorse he feels, she simply dismisses him by either saying “A foolish thought, to say a sorry sight,” when he mentions that this is not what they should be doing and “Infirm of purpose! Give me the daggers,” for not wanting to complete the job by going back in the chamber and seeing the murder scene again (2.2.20 – 55). She simply becomes rude. She starts disgracing him again. It does not seem anymore that she is carefully crafting her words to make Macbeth sync to her tune as she does not really need him to do the deed anymore (she needs him to the deed as King Duncan sleeping looks like her father and she is not able to kill him, or else, she claims, she would have committed the murder). All in all, Lady Macbeth seemed sort of a family-oriented person (excluding the exception that she would have killed a baby), and now she acting the complete opposite towards her husband. Her husband whom she loves. This sort of shows that before, she wanted Macbeth to be King, but now more than ever in any scene, we wonder how much of this she wants for her personal gain.
Lastly, when Macbeth writes to his wife and calls her ” …my dearest partner of greatness,…” it shows that they love each other so much and have such a great relationship. It shows that the gender divide and roles that suggest that women are less than men in those times did not seem to matter to them and did not cause a hindrance in their relationship (1.5.?). In fact, we see that when we realize that Lady Macbeth had the upper hand in the planning of the killing. However, in Act 2 after the murder, though not mentioned anywhere explicitly, we see their relationship grow apart. We see the two become distant from each other when Lady Macbeth just wants to get over and finish off the deed for good and Macbeth… still is not able to get over what he has done as he is being haunted by his crime.
I wonder whether this would act in reverse soon. I wonder if Macbeth gets complacent when he becomes King and the guilt starts to seep into Lady Macbeth instead.