Notes

Context:
- The play is set in Scotland during the mid 11th century.
- This era was completely dominated by men, and women had to know ‘their place’ in society.
- Within towns, society would have dictated what jobs a woman could do and her role in a medieval village would have been to support her husband.
- Women would have done many of the tasks men did on land, but they were paid less for doing the same job.

Quotes and Analysis:
- (Pages 42-43) Lady Macbeth uses several significant metaphors: Macbeth's face is like "a book, where men May read strange matters"
- "Look like th'innocent flower, But be the serpent under't" She’s telling him to act like he’s innocent and appear like he always has, kind, brave and fair, but actually be a cunning, cruel, ambitious person in order to become king.
- “Yet I do fear thy nature. It is too full of milk of human kindness to catch the nearest way. Thou wouldst be great, art not without ambition, but without the illness that should attend it” Here she is saying how she is concerned that Macbeth may be too kind hearted to do anything dire in order to become king.
- Macbeth is having second thoughts about it all. When he tells Lady Macbeth this, she acts like he is weak for wanting to do what is right, like he isn’t man enough.

- "What beast was ’t, then, That made you break this enterprise to me?" tries to make him feel like he is failing his wife - she uses a rhetorical question which makes him question his masculinity.

- When Lady Macbeth discovers that Macbeth had not put the daggers where they were supposed to go, and refuses to go back to the scene of the crime, she is infuriated and calls him a coward and when she comes back, she says this, “My hands are of your colour, but I shame to wear a heart so white.” This means that she is as much involved in the murder as he is, but she is not weak enough to let it affect her like he has.

- Lady Macbeth has gone mad. Like her husband, she cannot find any rest, but she is suffering more clearly from a psychological disorder that causes her, as she sleepwalks, to recall fragments of the events of the murders of Duncan, Banquo, and Lady Macduff.

- Her actions show how guilty and ashamed she feels for her and Macbeths previous actions/crimes. She does not try to blame anyone but herself. Her words come back to haunt her.
- She was devastated by the slaughter of Lady Macduff and her children. This may show some compassion, sympathy and womanly features of Lady Macbeth. By witnessing the death of Macduff's children and wife, Lady Macbeth may have felt some type of relation as she had lost her own child, maybe explaining why she was so devastated at the death of Macduffs family.

- Lady Macbeth is seen to rub her hands in a washing action that recalls her line "A little water clears us of this deed" in Act 2, Scene 2.

- The most obvious way we see her change is her mindset and attitude toward guilt. In the beginning she is ruthless and will do anything to make sure her husband becomes king. We see this right away when we first meet her in Act 1, scene 5. She receives the letter from Macbeth and immediately sees the opportunity and starts to make plans. She questions Macbeth's strength and if he's too kind to go through with

- By referring to Lady Macbeth's weakness I assume you are talking about Act II scene 2, when she says to herself as she is anxiously waiting for her husband to return from killing Duncan:
"Had he not resembled"
"My father as he slept, I had done't."
Personally, I think this admission of weakness on the part of Lady Macbeth is very unexpected and not something that we would have anticipated.