Macbeth
Prompt #17 · Macbeth
Prompt Type: Character Arc
Analyze how Lady Macbeth's shifting relationship to gender and power—from calling to be "unsexed" to her final collapse—reveals Shakespeare's exploration of the costs of rejecting one's humanity in pursuit of ambition. Explain how it contributes to the meaning of the work as a whole.
Quote 1
“Come, you spirits / That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, / And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full / Of direst cruelty!”
Act I, Scene 5
Argument
Early in Lady Macbeth's arc, this invocation to be 'unsexed' establishes her baseline rejection of feminine identity and humanity in favor of masculine cruelty, using violent imagery ('direst cruelty,' 'crown to the toe') to demonstrate her willingness to transform herself into an instrument of ambition.
Quote 2
“I have given suck, and know / How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me: / I would, while it was smiling in my face, / Have pluck’d my nipple from his boneless gums / And dash’d the brains out, had I so sworn as you / Have done to this.”
Act I, Scene 7
Argument
At a turning point in her arc, Lady Macbeth's shocking hypothetical infanticide—declaring she would dash out her nursing baby's brains—represents the extreme of her self-dehumanization, weaponizing the most sacred feminine role (motherhood) to prove her commitment to masculine ruthlessness and ambition.
Quote 3
“Naught’s had, all’s spent, / Where our desire is got without content: / ’Tis safer to be that which we destroy, / Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy.”
Act III, Scene 2
Argument
In the middle stages of her psychological collapse, this quote reveals Lady Macbeth's dawning recognition that their ambition has brought only emptiness ('Naught's had, all's spent'), marking the beginning of her descent as the costs of rejecting humanity—contentment, peace, joy—become unbearable.
Quote 4
“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? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account? Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?”
Act V, Scene 1
Argument
In Lady Macbeth's final collapse, her sleepwalking obsession with the 'damned spot' and the old man's blood reveals the complete breakdown of her earlier resolve to be 'unsexed'—the humanity she tried to reject (guilt, conscience, feminine compassion) returns as madness, demonstrating the psychological cost of her self-transformation.
Quote 5
“Here's the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.”
Act V, Scene 1
Argument
At the end of her arc, Lady Macbeth's recognition that 'all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand' marks her ultimate defeat—the hyperbolic imagery of permanent contamination shows that her attempt to reject her humanity has left her irreparably damaged, unable to cleanse herself of the guilt she once claimed to transcend.