Macbeths Change Through Lady Macbeth Essay

What would make any man change himself and his personality? Marriage? Without a doubt, Macbeth’s real tragedy is his marriage. Macbeth changed from good to evil from Lady Macbeths influence through manipulation and her dominance in her marriage role. From the beginning Lady Macbeth is viewed as very controlling, strong, and certain. â€Å"First, she has very little regard for her husband’s humanity and actually derides him for being â€Å"too full o’th’ milk of human kindness† (Thompson 1). This shows how cold Lady Macbeth is, as milk is the food of new born children, she is implying Macbeth is too much like a kind child to murder anyone. Once Macbeth has the courage to tell her he does not want to continue with the murder she rallies, calling him a ‘coward’, saying that if he could murder Duncan ‘he were a man’. This to Macbeth, a proud and mighty warrior is a deep insult, and he soon is convinced that he will carry out the murder. Macbeth’s real tragedy is his marriage lies with the fault of his wife Lady Macbeth (Thompson 1). â€Å"Macbeth’s violent behavior is correctly understood as, and deemed to be, bravery because it is in service of his friends and â€Å"cousins.† His loyalty is what is being lauded. But, mangled by the blood-spotted hands of his wife, he becomes a traitor to his â€Å"brother band† and to himself. Her monomaniacal ambition changes him into a monster.† She is literally â€Å"awakened† by her blind and vaulting ambition to realize she did not want the kind of man she thought she wanted (Scheil 2). â€Å"She is desperate to fit in with her husband’s warrior society, and fails to do so.† Lady Macbeth’s downfall comes more quickly than Macbeths when we see her weaknesses coming through, only on her own however. We see that she is troubled by guilt, saying that they never should have murdered Duncan. She’s a guilty wreck; she is sleepwalking and talking gibberish. She says ‘What, will these hands never be clean? These words echo her word earlier in the play, when she talks of washing ‘their hands of this deed’; she has now realized that the guilt that has overcome her will never leave. She willingly commits suicide leaving her husband not to mourn her passing but to simply comment ,†She should have died hereafter† â€Å"Macbeth’s life of striving for greatness, as he himself now realizes, has blossomed into no more than a withered leaf† (Pellikha 2). Macbeth no longer fears anything, for he has seen too much violence and fear to be affected anymore. â€Å"Macbeth, on the other hand, determines not to surrender and not to fall upon his sword, for at the end his overconfidence blinds him to any possible danger† (Thompson 7).