Lady Macbeths role in both the play and the movie

By: Milena Lugo Acevedo

Lady Macbeth is assumed as a dichotomic character who presents
female and masculine features not only in the Shakespeares tragedy
Macbeth but also in the Roman Polanskys movie (1971) which has the
same name.
To begin with, some of the female characteristics which were
outlined for Lady Macbeth were her physical appearance, her role as an
equable person and her condition as a vulnerable woman. First of all, her
physical appearance was not described in the play, the reader just imagine
her as a young lady whose features might belong to the Anglo-Saxon
prototype of woman who is mainly blonde, slim, tall and has light eyes.
That is the reason why, Polansky chose the British actress Francesca Annis
because she portrayed these characteristics, in regards to this fact Calderon
asserts:

El personaje de Lady Macbeth aparece como una mujer

perseverante pero delicada y dulce, algo propio de su juventud (2007). At

first, these details generate in the spectator the idea that she is just the
innocent couple of the brave and apparently lucky Macbeth.

Secondly, Lady Macbeth is presented as a woman who maintains her

composure excusing her husbands behavior during the banquet which was
organized in Macbeths castle. During this event he had some visions about
Banquo who was killed and throwed to a lake by his men.
Macbeth: Dulce recordadora! Ahora, que la buena digestin acompae el apetito, y la
salud a ambas cosas
Lennox: Tened la bondad de sentaros, Majestad
Macbeth: Aqu tendriamos ahora bajo nuestro techo, el honor de nuestro pas, si
estuviera presente la agraciada persona de Banquo, a quien ojala pueda reprochar su
descortesia y no lamentar su desgracia
Ross: Su ausencia, Seor, deja en mal lugar la promesa. Querria Vuestra Majestad
Darnos gracia con su real compaia?
Macbeth: La mesa est llena
Lennox: Aqu un sitio reservado, Seor
Macbeth: Donde?
Lennox: Aqu, mi buen seor. Que es lo que agita a Vuestra Majestad?
Macbeth: Quien de vosotros lo ha hecho?
Nobles: Que, mi buen seor?
Macbeth: No puedes decir que haya sido yo: No agites contra mi tus melenas
ensangrentadas.
Lady Macbeth: Sentaos, ilustres amigos: a mi seor le pasa esto a menudo, desde su
juventud. Por favor, seguid sentados el ataque es de momento, y en menos que se piensa
volver a estar bien. Si os fijais mucho en l, le ofenderes y aumentares su malestar.
Comed, comed, y no le mires. (Act II Scene V Pag157)

Lady Macbeth: Buenos nobles, considerad esto como cosa acostumbrada en el: No es
ms, aunque estropee el placer del momento. (Act II Scene V P 159)
Lady Macbeth: Por favor, no hableis: Cada vez se pone peor: las preguntas le
enfurecen: Buenas noches, de una vez. No os preoccupies del orden con que debeis
salir, sino marchaos en seguida. (Act II Scene V Pag 159)

In those lines Macbeths sense of fault made him felt hysteric and
imprisoned of those feelings. Therefore, Lady Macbeth as a devoted and
calmed woman controlled the situation using her skills for convincing to
the nobles that her husband was experimenting a nervous attack.
The last aspect which would be developed is the role of Lady
Macbeth as a vulnerable woman. Almost at the end of the play, she could
not hold the remorse about all the machiavellian acts which were
premeditated

for her in order to Macbeth achieve the power. Therefore,

she turned into a sleep-walker and spent her nights recreating and
remembering the facts which happened when the regicide took place. She
washed her hands many times because she believed that those are full of
the King Duncans blood while her servant and a doctor observed her
Dama: Mirad, ah viene: as es como hace siempre, y dormida del todo, por mi vida:
observadla, acercaos. (Act V Scene I Pag 179 )
***
Mdico: Que es lo que hace ahora?. Mirad como se frota las manos.

Dama: es un gesto acostumbrado en ella: parece asi como si se lavar las manos:
Aveces la he visto hacerlo un cuarto de hora seguido.
Lady Macbeth: Sigue habiendo una mancha fuera mancha maldita, fuera digo.
Una dos. Si ahora es el momento de hacerlo Pero quien hubiera creido que el
viejo tuviera tanta sangre adentro
.Que, ! no van a quedar nunca limpias estas manos ! Basta de eso, seor mio
Lvate las manos, ponte el camison, no estes tan plido: te vuelvo a decir que Banquo
est enterrado: No puede salir de su tumba. (Act V Scene I P180)

Through the repetitive action of washing her hands, this female character
experiments a decline of her strong personality and is immersed into a
neurotic episode as Vega quoting to Freud asserts:
La histeria como una etapa en la que se desencadena gran cantidad de excitacin que
no logra ser liberada [Por tanto ] las mujeres desencadenan una histeria por accin de la
conciencia moral que las impulsa al fnomeno histrico de lavarse las manos.

This action is a manner in which Lady Macbeth remained tied to the

memory of the murder of the King Duncan and it turned into a moral issue
until the point she releases herself committing suicide. Moreover, the
reader and the spectator might think that the behavior that Lady Macbeth
was trying to handle in her husbands episode of nervous was being
reproduced in her due to the fault she felt and which became her into a
victim of her own macabre plan.

In despite of those female characteristics, Lady Macbeths

psychological features showed her as a woman who presents certain number
of masculine attitudes, in relation to that

Freud quoted by Colorado,

Arango & Fernndez claims: El complejo de castracin puede tener como

consecuencia un complejo de masculinidad (1998). It means that the
absence of penis does not allow women having a deliberate attitude, in this
case the penis is assumed as a symbolic manner of representing the power.
In the case of Lady Macbeth she presents a strong and dominant personality
which influence most of the actions that her husband did during the play
and the movie for achieving his goal of being the king of Scotland. These
masculine attitudes are: her thirst of power represented by the issue of
rejecting her female condition and her plan for eliminating the King
Duncan.
First of all, Lady Macbeths obsession with the power after reading
the letter which was sent by Macbeth in which he told her about the title he
was acquired as Thane of Cawdor from the King Duncan took her to reject
to her female condition saying :
Lady Macbeth: Venid a mi espiritus que animais los pensamientos de muerte;
privadme ahora de mi sexo y llenadme de la mas temible crueldad Venid a mis
pechos de mujer y cambiad mi leche por hiel (Act I, Scene V pag 131).

While she was experimenting this sensation she realized that her female
condition is an impediment for reaching the glory, that is the reason why
she transferred these desires of power to Macbeth who becomes for her in
the possibility of having a high-up position that can not be assumed for
Lady Macbeth as a defenseless female creature.
Second, Lady Macbeth was the mastermind of the murder of the
King Duncan using Macbeth as an instrument for consolidating her
intentions since she knew that Duncan was going to spend the night in her
castle.
Macbeth: Mi amor querido Duncan viene aqu esta noche
Lady Macbeth: Y cuando se va de aqui?
Macbeth: Maana segn se propone
Lady Macbeth: Nunca vera el sol ese maana. Tu cara, baron mio, es como un libro
en que los hombres pueden leer cosas extraas: para engaar el tiempo, toma el
aspecto del tiempo, lleva la bienvenida en tus ojos, tus manos, tu lengua. Toma el
aspecto de la flor inocente, pero s la serpiente debajo de ella. Hay que ocuparse del
que llega, y t dejars a mi cargo el gran asunto de esta noche, que a todas nuestras
noches y das del porvenir ha de dar dominio soberano y seoria. (Act I Scene V pag
131).

Lady Macbeth persuaded Macbeth in a subtle manner suggesting that he

must deal the king with diligence but taking into account which was going
to be his mission if he wanted to achieve the crown. Furthermore, she
arranged the preparations for the regicide saying:
Lady Macbeth: Deje preparados sus puales: No ha podido dejar de verlos. Lo
habria hecho yo misma, sino se hubiera parecido tanto a mi padre, dormido.

(Act II, Scene I pag 139)

In this quote the reader can perceive Lady Macbeths intentions of

obtaining the power; however, her inner struggles produced by her female
condition did not allowed her being the killer of the king.
To sum up, the play and the movie sketched Lady Macbeth as a
character whose personality is divided in two facets, one female another
masculine being the last the result of her impotence for achieving the
power by herself as a woman and takes her to use her husband as an
instrument for accomplishing her intentions.
References
Calderon C (2007) MACBETH DE W. SHAKESPEARE Y DE
R. POLANKSY. Universidad de Sevilla. Revista Comunicacin
no 5. Retrieved
fromhttp://www.revistacomunicacion.org/pdf/n5/articulos/mac
beth_de_w_shakespeare_y_de_r_polanski.pdf
Colorado L, Arango P & Fernandez F (1998) MUJER Y
FEMINIDAD Universidad de Antioquia. Retrieved from
http://bibliotecadigital.udea.edu.co/bitstream/10495/181/1/Muj
erFeminidad.pdf
Shakespeare. W (2001) Hamlet/Macbeth. Casa Editorial El
Tiempo
Vega L (2010) Una lectura desde Freud a la obra Macbeth de
Shakespeare. Universidad Industrial de Santader.
Bucaramanga. Retrieved

fromhttp://repositorio.uis.edu.co/jspui/bitstream/123456789/85
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