“Double, double, toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble,” chant the three witches in Macbeth, leaning over their mysterious brew in the “fog and filthy air,” stirring up plans for the ruin of kings as well as their other ingredients (Green). “Fair is foul and foul is fair,” the famous line that echoes through the play, sets the tone of anarchy and injustice (shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/macbeth/quotes/the-supernatural). Soon the strongest men in Scotland will be reduced to madness, driven into “dusty death” by the dark reality they uncover in their quest for power (Spark Notes). The woman who starts this madness, Lady Macbeth, is like the three witches in her deceptive and evil powers, her manipulative wordplays, and her unusual authority over men. Yet at the close of the story, as she destroys herself, we feel more sympathy for her than for Macbeth at his end. In Macbeth, Shakespeare’s play about murder, ambition, revenge, and especially guilt, Macbeth and his wife Lady Macbeth find themselves spiraling deeper and deeper into a hell of psychosis caused by their deceptions; and though it seems that Lady Macbeth caused her husband’s fall, the darkly feminist tone of the play, as well as clues within the character’s monologues, suggest that Lady Macbeth is less guilty than her husband.

From start to finish, Macbeth raises more questions than answers. Is Lady Macbeth a victim or a perpetrator? If so, who or what victimizes her? What motivates Macbeth? Who is guiltier, Macbeth or Lady Macbeth? Yet none of these questions compares to the horror of meeting the “weird sisters,” who may be real or hallucinatory, natural or supernatural, whose mystery vividly brings to life the power of evil women over the fates of men. Whatever answers this play holds are contained in the female characters. Macbeth is the biblical Garden of Eden story reversed: women are not the deceived ones, as Eve was, but women are the serpents who deceive. Women always lead to the downfall of men (shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/macbeth/themes/gender).

“I have given suck, and know how tender ‘tis to love the babe that milks me…but I would, while it was smiling in my face, have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums and dashed the brains out, had I so sworn as you have done to this,” says Lady Macbeth, using the strongest imagery she knows to show her husband how important is it to her that he kill good King Duncan for his seizure of the throne (Green). Since Lady Macbeth says she was once a nursing mother, and likely her baby died, she is saying that she would sooner kill her poor, lost baby, than lose this political opportunity. She is a cruel, pitiless woman. Indeed, Macbeth is more about Lady Macbeth wanting to be queen than about Macbeth wanting to be king. In Macbeth, men and women are equal—only in that they are both evil. There is a strong tension of distorted gender roles (shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/macbeth/themes/gender). Macbeth’s weakness, in that he has no strong morals, is as harmful as Lady Macbeth’s unnatural strength.

Yet Lady Macbeth carries a dauntless personality, and her outspokenness makes her an exciting character, rather than Shakespeare’s virtuous women. Joining the ranks of Shakespearean “bad girls,” such as King Lear’s Goneril and Regan, Lady Macbeth wants to be a man. In her most daring speech, scandalous for a 17th century audience, she calls upon spirits to, “unsex me here/And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full/Of direst cruelty. Make thick my blood. /Stop up th' access and passage to remorse, /That no compunctious visitings of nature/Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between/Th' effect and it” (shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/macbeth/quotes/violence). She accuses her husband of being “too full o’ the milk of human kindness” (Green). In wishing away her menstrual periods and wanting her breast milk to turn to gall, Lady Macbeth defies all of mankind and sets herself apart in a strange isolation of purpose. She has defied God, becoming a witch. In Macbeth, where Protestant Christian references such as “God,” “Heaven,” “Hell,” and “The Lord’s anointed temple” replace Shakespeare’s earlier polytheistic, pagan-based references, Lady Macbeth becomes the scourge of Christendom and all that is holy. Still, she raises questions about the overbearing role of men in society and the so-called divine right of kings. In a world where men are warriors and kings, and women are either witches, prostitutes, or housewives, what was she supposed to do with herself? She must work through men to get her way. She feels that men like Macbeth have been her enemy so long that she must become one of them to defeat them.

This discouraged attitude repeats as we meet Lady Macduff. Although critics view Lady Macduff unfavorably, as Shakespeare’s ideal domestic figure, she speaks the most feministic lines in the play. She starts out by criticizing her husband for leaving her. Like the three weird sisters and Lady Macbeth, Lady Macduff is a liar. She falsely tells her son that his father is dead when Macduff goes to England to join the rebel army. Dragged as a pawn into Macbeth’s spiteful struggle against fate, Lady Macduff in vain protests when ruthless murderers come for her and her children. Her husband cannot protect her, so she fights back with words: “Whither should I fly? /I have done no harm. But I remember now/I am in this earthly world; where to do harm/Is often laudable, to do good sometime/Accounted dangerous folly: why then, alas, /Do I put up that womanly defence, /To say I have done no harm? (Open Source Shakespeare)”

Refusing to use her womanhood to make herself look weak, Lady Macduff has the most integrity of anyone in Macbeth. She poignantly shows the isolation, oppression, and terror women experience while men fight and kill. In Macbeth, men are at the mercy of women, but can we really despise the women? They have been misunderstood, idealized, ignored, and oppressed. The men regularly make widows of them by going out to fight for honor. Macduff left his wife to be killed by Macbeth in an ironic effort to defeat Macbeth from afar. The women’s enemies are closer, more personal, and more intimate than the men’s enemies, and they must use subtler weapons to defeat them. They are also strangely united, as the weird sisters are when they speak in unison.

Lady Macbeth’s guilt and suffering detaches her from her husband and eventually makes him indifferent to her, even in death. “She should have died hereafter/There would have been time for such a word,” he sighs (Spark Notes). In fact, Lady Macbeth’s heart, on the brink of murder, is once softened by seeing the king asleep, saying, “Had he not resembled my father as he slept I had done’t” (Green). This is a subtle clue that the woman has a heart. For all Macbeth’s moral agony, he does not sleepwalk and have unconscious guilt as his wife does. Unconscious emotions are far more powerful than conscious ones, so Lady Macbeth’s struggle is deeper. As Macbeth’s guilt all but disappears, Lady Macbeth’s guilt grows stronger. Her one moment of softening is enough to make her a sympathetic character, showing that Macbeth is guiltier than she is.

“Thou hast it now: King, Cawdor, Glamis, all, as the weird women promised; and, I fear, thou play’dst most foully for’t,” says Macbeth’s friend Banquo, as the murders begin (Green). Macbeth conquers whole world, but he is brought down by “weak” womenfolk. In a world where “fair is foul and foul is fair,” underestimating the power of women leads to the destruction of everyone, and this is the harsh lesson of Lady Macbeth.

Works Cited

Green, Kai. “Double, Double, Toil and Trouble! 75 Macbeth Quotes to Get You Prepped for Denzel's Take on the Scottish King.” Parade, 16 Jan. 2022, Green/1313952/kaigreen/macbeth-quotes-about-power-ambition-guilt/.

“Speeches (Lines) for Lady Macduff in ‘Macbeth’ Total: 19.” All Speeches (Lines) and Cues for Lady Macduff in "Macbeth" :|: Open Source Shakespeare                , opensourceshakespeare.org/views/plays/characters/charlines.php?CharID=ladymacduff&WorkID=macbeth&cues=1.

Shmoop Editorial Team. “Quotes about Violence in Macbeth.” Shmoop, Shmoop University, 11 Nov. 2008, shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/macbeth/quotes/violence.

Shmoop Editorial Team. “Macbeth Gender.” Shmoop, Shmoop University, 11 Nov. 2008, shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/macbeth/themes/gender.

Shmoop Editorial Team. “Macbeth Supernatural Quotes.” Shmoop, Shmoop University, 11 Nov. 2008, shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/macbeth/quotes/the-supernatural.

Sparknotes, SparkNotes, sparknotes.com/nofear/shakespeare/macbeth/act-5-scene-5/.