Saturday, March 3, 2012

In Act 1 why does lady Macbeth ask the spirits to "unsex" her?

Lady Macbeth asks them to do this (or wishes they could) because she wants to help her husband kill Duncan and do the other things that he needs to do in order to become king.  Her request is based on the idea that women, by their nature, are unsuited for doing brutal things like that.


Lady Macbeth is worried that her husband lacks the guts and the drive to do what is necessary to take power.  She thinks she has them, but she would need to stop being a woman in order to act on her impulses.


As a woman, she is too likely to feel guilt and remorse, she says.  So she wants to be filled with cruelty like a man.



Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here
And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full
Of direst cruelty! Make thick my blood,
Stop up the access and passage to remorse,(45)
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose nor keep peace between
The effect and it!


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