麦克白夫人性格分析

Analysis Of Lady Macbeth’s  Character

Abstract ：As it known, Lady Macbeth is the most evil and terrifying woman character of Shakespeare. She has a significant function in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. She plays different roles in different acts throughout the play. Undoubtedly, Lady Macbeth is an evil, vicious and greedy woman. She functions as a pushing force to drive Macbeth to be enough cruel to pursuit his ambition. Lady Macbeth is a horrible yet necessary character in Macbeth.

Keywords: character; evil; vicious; greedy

In the beginning, after a long drastic fighting and struggle, Macbeth returns with success, glory and honor, but she doesn’t care about this. When she has learned the three witches’ prophecy, she becomes excited.

She is too eager and hungry for power. Thus she doesn’t give Macbeth any tender and sweet words to wipe out his toils: “Yet do I fear thy nature. /It is too full o’ th’ milk of human kindness /To catch the nearest way.”

Moreover when she learns that king Duncan’s visit, her reaction reveals her greed for power. The very beginning of the following soliloquy shows her evil and cruel intention to murder king Dunca. She is such a quick-responder that as soon as she has learned the news, she knows what she should do. She makes up her mind to steer Macbeth to spur his action. She is very clear that her husband, as a man, is too soft to make it. He needs her help and assistance to become cruel and ambitious. Lady Macbeth, a woman thus implores the dark power to take off all her feminine characteristics in order to gain  herself enough determination and capacity. “The imagery of blood, violence, darkness and death reflects her true nature, for from the first she is set on an unrelenting course of destruction.”

Lady Macbeth never feels fear to do anything which can help Macbeth overturn the king Duncan. She is really a helpful and capable assistance in the process of committing crimes. She possesses not only single-minded but also extraordinary calm. In the feast scene, Macbeth’s uneasiness and strange words arouses doubts from the guests. Lady Macbeth keeps a cold mind and tries to find excuses for Macbeth’s abnormal behavior. She tries her best to wake Macbeth from his fantasies, even at the cost of offending his dignity by saying “Are you a man?” Then she dismisses all the guests in order to disguise the truth and calm down Macbeth.

Actually Lady Macbeth’s characteristics change simultaneously with the ones of Macbeth, but in an opposite direction. Lady Macbeth is really an evil, vicious and brutal in the early part of Macbeth, while at first Macbeth is loyal and kindly. However, later Lady Macbeth knows nothing about the crimes in Scotland that Macbeth has committed. Tortured by the killing of Duncan, Lady Macbeth suffers a lot from sleepwalking. Later lady Macbeth rubs her hands continuously; her gentlewoman says it is an accustomed action with her, “to seem thus washing her hands” (Mac.V.ii.29)

Lady Macbeth gives us the answer: “Out, damned spot! Out, I say!” (Mac.V.ii.35) “Here’s the smell of the blood still. All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh, oh, oh!”(Mac.V.ii.50)  However, Macbeth is finally made a cruel and savage murderer from a timid thane.

It is evident that Lady Macbeth is the beginner of the whole crime. And still she acts a non-stop force to push Macbeth forward to a cruel, cold and merciless murderer. Her function is to give Macbeth the vital initial push and then sustain him he can hold his own against his own conscience. Once this has been achieved, she ceases to take an active part in the play. “Lady Macbeth’s function is therefore at an end by Act IV, and she now disappears from the play until the famous sleep-walking scene in Act V. we do not see her again after this scene. Her madness is one aspect of the general collapse and chaos that attend the final convulsive throes of the tragedy.”(Angela Pitt, p68)

Bibliography

[1] Pitt, Angela. Shakespeare’s women. New Jersey: Barnes & Noble books, 1981

[2] Bradley, A.C. Shakespearean Tragedy. London: Macmillan &Co.Ltd., 1958

[3] Foakes, R.A.  Shakespeare & Violence. UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003

[4] Harbage, Alfred. Shakespeare The Tragedy: A collection of Critical Essays. US: Prentice-Hall,ING & Englewood Cliffs, 1964

许  静：青岛大学文学院。