Macbeth and Lady Macbeth - Book Report/Review Example

Lady Macbeth is a woman of a strong character, ambitious, imperious, and striving for power. And after her husband started his bloodshed, she is gripped by the sense of guilt and attacks of madness, and she suffers more than her husband does. Her emotional sufferings are so strong that she commits a suicide at the end of the play. Relations between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are determined with love and passion. The crime they committed together unites then and separates them from the other world, and their feelings grow stronger, while the bloodshed goes on.

Lady Macbeth places an important role among noble men, and she wins the same degree of popularity and devotion as her husband. Duncan calls her "our honor'd hostess" (Act I Scene VI page 9). This woman is loving and devoted to her husband, but she is ambitious and striving for power at the same time. She coolly decides that killing Duncan is the simplest and fastest way to obtain power. Lady Macbeth asks evil forces to help her "Of direst cruelty! Make thick my blood, Stop up the access and passage to remorse", (Act I Scene V, page 8) in order to keep to her intention.

The power and strength of Lady Macbeth's character reveal when she desires to get informed about all details of King's murder. She acts coolly and ruthlessly, forgetting about the moments of weakness, when she comes to the Duncan's body and daubs the servants with the King's blood. But she again reveals some moral features of her character before she notes that "Had he not resembled my father as he slept, I had done't." (Act I Scene II Page 13). The most probably, Lady Macbeth thought that her attempts to oppress her conscience are enough and she hoped that her thoughts about this murder would disappear.

But for some time Lady Macbeth applies all her strength and efforts to resist madness, she tries to keep her sanity and tries not to think over the murders, and she manages to do it better, than her husband. She also manages to rescue her husband from the horrors created by his own conscience. Macbeth meets a ghost of Banquo, Lady Macbeth finds a possibility to explain him it in a reasonable way. She restrains Macbeth, appealing to his manhood. "Fie, for shame!" (Act III Scene V page 24)Later, Lady Macbeth's conscience and the burden of her sins are too heavy for her, and this affects her mental and physical condition.

When a doctor watches her sleeping, she sees that Lady Macbeth tries to wash her hands from Duncan's blood. Thus, her conscience and guilt reveal when she sleeps and her will cannot oppress her morality. Being asleep, Lady Macbeth asks "will these hands neer be clean" (Act V. Scene I page 39) When she starts to recollect in mind her crimes, she starts with Duncan murder and how she made her husband do it: "Out, damned spot! Out, I say! One- two -why then 'tis time to do't. Hell is murky. Fie, my lord, fie!

A soldier, and afeard" (Act V Scene I page 38). Then she remembers the wife of Macduff: "The Thane of Fife had a wife; where is she now" (Act V Scene I page 38). Here she also convinces that she had made her husband do this murder, while he hadn't wanted to do it. And at the end she speaks about the ghost of Banquo. She understands that she won't be calm again. She speaks about the circumstances of Duncan's murder. The doctor tells that he cannot help Lady Macbeth, as