Damnation:
Lady Macbeth's Descent into Hell
A study of Lady Macbeth's attempt at transformation
Jeremy P. Chapman
3726223
Engl. 320/3AA
Prof. M. Brian
Macbeth is fundamentally a tragedy of damnation; Macbeth must part with his humanity in order to achieve his over-inflated ambitions. However, there are other possibilities to be examined within the context of this critical platform. The play was written for James I, and is loosely based on historical facts about his life. James Stuart was already King James VI of Scotland when Queen Elizabeth's death made him James I of England as well. In the late 1500's, Scotland had a witch craze, with many people convicted of wicked secret practices without physical evidence. James I, who believed the witch hysteria, wrote a book about the supposed hidden world of wicked witches, entitled Demonology. This dogma about demons and angels led to a perception of sin that is different from more modern Christian thought. Salvation was a common theme in the biblical fables of the day, not so much as portrayed in the life of Jesus, but in the angelic and demonic scheme of creation, temptation and the fall of man leading to the incarnation, atonement and regeneration through Christ. An important part of Lady Macbeth's character and eventual madness is contained within the concept of sin according to one living in Elizabethan times. As Tillyard points out in The Elizabethan World Picture , "Atheism not agnosticism was the rule. It was far easier to be very wicked and think yourself so than to be a little wicked without a sense of sin." (1). This "awareness of sin" plays a major role in Lady Macbeth's development and eventual dissolution.
Lady Macbeth's Metamorphosis
Lady Macbeth undergoes a lengthy transformation that begins in Act 1, Scene 5; she has received a letter from her husband which tells of the witches' prophesies. The letter sows the seeds of greed and crime in her heart, and when she reads the line about not being ignorant of "what greatness is promised thee."(1.5 line 14), her ambition is set afire. She must then proceed with her plans, and make sure that her husband is thinking the same evil thoughts as herself. Thus, she begins an incantation that she hopes will provide her with the callousness needed in order to carry out her planned regicide. However, this chant seems to be said in a manner not entirely befitting her planned purpose; it is more along the lines of an actress calling for her assistants in making her up for the stage, applying the proper costume and make-up for the part she must play. Felperin comments that in her speech:
"give me the daggers. The sleeping and the dead
Are but as pictures. 'Tis the eye of childhood
That fears a painted devil. If he do bleed,
I'll gild the faces of the grooms withal,
For it must seem their guilt." (2.2 line 52-6)
"Her entire effort of depersonalization
lies compressed within the notorious pun: an inner condition of being ("guilt")
is to be externalized into sheer theatrical appearance ("gilt"), not simply
to transfer it onto others but to empty it of the substance of reality and make
it (stage-) manageable."
(2)
. This is an interesting quote because
it shows us how Lady Macbeth's mind is attempting to rationalize away her "awareness
of sin" that was previously mentioned. For instance, with this reading, the
blood on her hands becomes nothing more than ketchup or some similar stage trick;
therefore "A little water clears
us of this deed:/ How easy it is then!"(2.3 line 66-7). A problem with
this attempted transformation is that she never fully achieves the desired change,
remaining instead much like her "painted devil" reference. Hers is a superficial
metamorphosis. She calls "Come,
you spirits/ That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here," (1.5 line 42-3),
reminiscent of the weyward sisters in the first scene, sexless hags with beards
and magical powers. In order to do the foul deed that is brewing in her mind,
she must become as masculine as possible, believing that masculinity is analogous
to cruelty. After her appeal to the spirits to unsex her, she asks further that
they may "… fill me, from the
crown to the toe, top-full/ Of direst cruelty!" (1.5 line 43-4). This scene
is Lady Macbeth's most powerful time, when it seems that she will be a motivating
force throughout the play; unfortunately, this illusion of inner power is fleeting,
and we soon see that her very nature prevents her from attaining this state
of "direst cruelty". Lady Macbeth changes often throughout the
play, especially in her mode of speaking. Sometimes she speaks with a flowery
eloquence that illustrates her upper class schooling; sometimes in a naturalistic
speech that could be spoken in today's society without raising an eyebrow. She
also vacillates between her roles as feminine wife, and masculine killer, as
seen in the previous paragraph. In fact, Lady Macbeth's character is not well
defined in the way that Macbeth's is. This is in part because we see her character
in relation to Macbeth himself, not as a self-contained part. An example of
this is the scene where Duncan's body is discovered. She manages one line before
she faints, "What, in our house?"(2.3
line 89); and Macbeth does not even go to her aid, it falls to Macduff to help
her. She is evidently not a part of this masculine assembly, her feminine side
is "too weak" for the grisly business at hand. Lady Macbeth begins by manipulating Macbeth,
but ends up being manipulated herself. She begins the play as a leader, but
is eventually dominated by that which she led. In fact, it seems that she is
mistaken about her own nature, she says that she has: "…given suck, and know How tender 'tis to love the babe that
milks me: 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." (1.7 line 55-8) In actual fact, Lady Macbeth has no children,
has presumably never "given suck",
and is incapable of the cruelty required to murder her own child. She speaks
also of wounding with her "keen
knife" (1.5 line 53), and yet she cannot kill Duncan in his sleep because
he resembles her father. She is a character without well defined actions and
possibilities, one cannot know what her motivations are simply from reading
her lines, one must consider her husband's influence in order to have a fuller
understanding of her motives. She is also enfeebled by her awareness of sin
after the murder, as noted in the introduction to this essay, the awareness
of sin was one of the most psychologically stressful outcomes of breaking a
societal taboo. These factors are seen prior to Duncan's murder, and after this
event takes place, we are allowed the first unfettered glimpse into Lady Macbeth's
character; this being the first time she speaks directly of her own emotions.
Lady
Macbeth's Depression and Death "Nought's
had, all's spent, Where our desire is got without content: 'Tis safer to be that which we destroy Than by destruction live in doubtful
joy." (3.2 line 4-7) These lines are spoken when Lady Macbeth
is left alone in Act 3 Scene 2. She is able to momentarily stop the act that
she has been keeping up for her servants' sake, and her real emotions are allowed
to surface. She now seems to realize that her ambition led her to a false triumph,
for her "desire" has been
achieved but she is not "content".
She also realizes that it is "safer"
to be dead than to be damned to live in "doubtful
joy", or what could be seen as the awareness of sin. Evidently she has
also begun to understand that her husband is becoming further distanced emotionally
from her every day, and that soon he will be truly lost to her. She still uses
the collective "we" when speaking these lines, but is all alone on stage. Also,
the promises of greatness given her by Macbeth's letter are completely absent,
she can only dwell on past loss in the present moment. Macbeth himself is not
thinking along these lines at all, he managed to undergo a much more thorough
transformation than his wife; instead of pondering the rights and wrongs of
Duncan's murder, he is planning new bloodshed; that of Banquo and Fleance. In conclusion, Lady Macbeth is a multi-faceted
character. Her psychological breakdown and related problems arise from her incomplete
attempt at depersonalization. Had she been able to fulfill her oath to kill
Duncan, rather than making her husband commit murder, she may ironically have
fared much better in the play. As was noted in the introduction, for the Elizabethan
citizen the awareness of sin is enough to plague one's conscience with guilt
(not gilt), and to force one to live in Lady Macbeth's "doubtful joy" (3.2 line
7). The ambiguity of the witches' forecasts seem to point out the moral dilemma
facing the characters in this play. There is no rigid framework for ethics and
morals available to Lady Macbeth, only vague forecasts that could be (and were)
interpreted in various ways. Because all these factors converge on her, Lady
Macbeth is well and truly alone at the end of her life. Her husband has no time
for her, and has in fact succeeded where she has failed; he has become filled
with her "direst cruelty" and was able to perform the tasks that needed to be
done in order to achieve his ambitious goals. Macbeth is able to air his guilt
publicly before the assemblage in Scotland. However, when Lady Macbeth suicides,
and "confesses" her guilt finally, there is no-one present to witness it. Lady
Macbeth seems destined to die alone, unfulfilled, forgotten by her husband and
with far more feminine qualities than at any other point in the play. If redemption
is attainable in a tragedy of damnation, it is through the acceptance and public
forgiveness that is only possible when sin is aired publicly; because Lady Macbeth
is denied this final appeal, her soul is damned and we must assume that the
demons of greed and ambition added one more to Hell's swelled ranks of sinners'
spectral souls. Texts
Consulted Aristotle Ethics The
Colonial Press, Massachusetts 1950 Bloom,
Harold (editor) Modern
Critical Views - William Shakespeare: The Tragedies Chelsea House Publishers, New York 1985 Brown,
John R. Focus
on Macbeth Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, Boston
& Henley Rosenberg,
Marvin The
Masks of Macbeth University
of California Press, Berkeley 1978 Shakespeare Macbeth Penguin Books, Middlesex 1998 Tillyard, E. M.W. The
Elizabethan World Picture Vintage Books, New York
1 Tillyard, E. M.W. The Elizabethan World Picture
Vintage Books, New York
2 Bloom, Harold (editor) Modern Critical Views - William Shakespeare: The Tragedies
Chelsea House Publishers, New York 1985