Scene summary:
Lady Macbeth arrives and changes everything. She is introduced to us as a person of extreme willpower and determination. She is willing to do anything to get into a position of power, in this case queen. She goes into a soliloquy explaining how she is unsure if Macbeth has enough cruelty in him and that he is “too full of the milk of human kindness”. She is also willing to become a vessel of the witches and other missionary’s of darkness. She is willing to do anything to get to queen and physically wants to be “filled from the crown to the toe top full of direst cruelty.” Have “Thick blood. Stop up the access and passage to remorse, that no compunctions visiting of nature shake my purpose, nor keep peace between the effect and it!” It almost seems she is desperate to become queen.
Paragraph:
Lady Macbeth uses metaphors to demonstrate her willpower and determination.
“…Come you spirits that tend mortal thoughts, unsex me here…”
She is willing for envoys of darkness to come down and physically change her body and gender from female to male using dark and forbidden methods that are considered evil. She is essentially saying ‘make me less of a woman and more of a man.’ She is prepared to call in forces of extreme evil and chaos to make her dream happen and fulfill her husbands destiny/fate as well as her own. In Shakespeare’s time women where seen to be inferior to men, thus being she wants to throw away the stereotype and responsibility of a woman of the time and adopt instead the willpower and strength of a man.