User:Subrata Ray/sandbox/Lady Macbeth A Tragic Heroine

Lady Macbeth a tragic heroine or Lady Macbeth’s character. Or How far is lady Macbeth instrumental or responsible in Bringing about the tragic end of Macbeth .? Discuss. Subrata Ray 17-9-16.

‘Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth is perhaps the most contradictory tragic heroine in the realm of tragic drama. Before the opening of the play ,she had the ambition to see her husband ,-Macbeth as the future king of Scotland. King Duncan’s visit to her castle stirred that possibility .And her resolution of murdering Duncan got activated. But her error of judgement was that she was a poor judge of her husband’s character. She knew only that her husband was ‘too full of the milk of human kindness’   and nothing of his true nature. Again she had firm confidence of changing   Macbeth’s mind by pouring her spirit in his ear and provoking him with the valour  of her tongue. Yes she got done the ‘business’ by her husband. This was her hubris or over self-estimation. In the tragic play Macbeth we first meet Lady Macbeth in Act-I ,Scene-v at Macbeth’s castle. Here after going through Macbeth’s letter on Duncan’s incoming visit to her palace, she screwed her ambition to achieve what was prophesised by the witches. Then in Act II scene-ii in the murder scene. With the murder of Duncan an unbridgeable psychic –gap between her and her husband was visible. The reversal of fortune was gaining ground. We meet her second time in Act III scene ii, 3rd time in Banquet scene (Act III ,Scene iv) and for the last time in Sleep Walking Scene(Act V scene i)   Shakespeare’s presentation of Lady Macbeth’s character get revealed to us through Lady Macbeth’s psychology and actions in the above scenes. The news of Duncan’s visit added fuel to the fire of her ambition of becoming the queen .To her it was the ‘fatal entrance of Duncan’ under her ‘battlement’. She in order assassinate Duncan prays to the evil spirit to send his womanly tenderness into sleep ,’unsex me here /And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full /Of direst cruelty ‘ .Here her sole purpose is to generate the blackest evil and infuse that in Macbeth. Again her womanly nature is unable to commit the murder. This is why she prompts Macbeth to ‘catch the nearest way’ of obtaining the ‘golden round’. Observing her ominous nature German critic cum philosopher Goethe calls her ‘the super witch’ and A.C Bradley ,’The fourth witch’. Lady Macbeth’s tragedy is self-invited. She without knowing her own woman nature stirs her psychic recesses. The resultant is the break of the elastic-limit of her psychic. This we find in the sleep-walking scene where she is a psychiatric patent and in delirium  mutters ,-“ Had he not resembled /My father as he slept ,I had done it”, “Yet who would have thought old man …had so much blood ..”, He has forgotten her own identity –“ The thane of Fife had a wife , where is she now’. She feels the smell of blood in her hand and finds no remedy of washing out that by a little filthy water, rather “all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten ‘ her blood stained hands. Lady Macbeth in her own case fails to retain her words to Macbeth ,-“ To beguile the time/ Look like the time”. Stark irony happens in her case .The tender woman in her fails to tackle the fringed woman. She utterly falls a victim to her assumed courage. In the play she is indomitable in the first act and up to the murder scene Act II ,Scene ii, and then a least of the residue of her courage remains in the banquet scene. But all her mental strength gradually withers ,and she dips into unfathomed darkness  and vainly tries to hold a lighted candle. As a tragic heroine Lady Macbeth is certainly is the single one in the whole province of tragedy. For through her Shakespeare presents the universal phenomena of evil oriented  greed and its retribution. She echoes the modern psychology and psychiatry.