At the beginning of the play, Lady Macbeth is displayed as a dominant, cruel, and manipulative character. She manipulates Macbeth into listening to his own "black and deep desires" and killing king Duncan. She achieves this by questioning and ridiculing Macbeth's manhood. She shows no fear and wants to come across as rather cruel:
I have given suck, and knowHow tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me:I would, while it was...
At the beginning of the play, Lady Macbeth is displayed as a dominant, cruel, and manipulative character. She manipulates Macbeth into listening to his own "black and deep desires" and killing king Duncan. She achieves this by questioning and ridiculing Macbeth's manhood. She shows no fear and wants to come across as rather cruel:
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.
In this speech, Lady Macbeth proclaims that she would kill her own baby if she promised someone she would because she would never be able to break her promise. This shows she is very manipulative and calculating and that she wants Macbeth to murder Duncan at any cost.
Towards the end of the play, Lady Macbeth becomes a mere shadow of her former self. She has descended into madness and is consumed by guilt and fear. She is haunted by her guilt-ridden conscience because she played a key role in persuading Macbeth to commit atrocities for the sake of achieving his personal goals. Now, we see Lady Macbeth as a very fragile character whose hallucinations reveal how tormented her mind is by all the misdeeds her husband committed:
The thane of Fife had a wife: where is she now?—
What, will these hands ne'er be clean?—No more o'
that, my lord, no more o' that: you mar all with
this starting.
Lady Macbeth serves as an example of what happens when a person embraces evil.
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