Macbeth Essay
What Impression of Lady Macbeth do we get from reading Act 1 Scenes 5-7 and Act 2 Scene 2? How does this contrast with the impression we receive in Act 5, Scene 1.
My primary impressions of Lady Macbeth at the beginning of the play are that she is a Lady unlike any other. She has her own mind and is literate opposite to most women who were nice to look at but moronic. In Act 2 scene 2 her character is constant but seems more authoritative. This is portrayed in the way she speaks to Macbeth in a very stern manner and full of instruction. This is very interestiong because in Act 5 scene 1 it changes again, there is a direct contrast to the impression we receive in act 2 scene 2 because she is a strong commanding woman who changed into a weak scared woman.
In Elizabethan society and theatre women were looked down upon and couldn’t go to school or work as they were supposed to stay and organise the household. Unlike women, men were given respect and their only job was to pay the bills. In theatre it was the same case, women were not allowed to go on stage so men had to play the parts of women. This meant they had to be very passionate and very good at acting in order for their character to be believable even though everybody knew it was a man, that element was still important. Male relatives also controlled any property that the women had.
In act 1 scene 5 my first impression of Lady Macbeth is that she has at least two sides to her, she is kind, rational, and strong but wants to be ruthless and is also quite calculating. She also appears to be a woman of intelligence. I can visualise Lady Macbeth as being quite tall and thin with long dark hair. I can also imagine her being very attractive and that sometimes the way she looks makes people do things for her. Lines 16-18 talk about how she is, people look at her as if she is sweet with no ambition like most of the Elizabethan women but deep inside she knows she has ambition and a life. She begins to talk about her wishes in line 21. She knows she has potential, a lot more than the average woman and seems to be very passionate. Lady Macbeth is determined to see her husband put aside his “milk of human kindness” to fulfil the ambitions she has for him. She rejects her feminine nature by saying “Come, you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here and fulfil me from the crown to the toe top-full of direst cruelty. At this point Lady Macbeth puts herself in Macbeth’s situation. There is also an instance of dramatic irony here because a man was saying it so it would have had to have been dramatic and powerful.
