For Writergrrl101

¶ … Macbeth, choose a complex and important character, who might, on the basis of the character's actions alone be considered evil or immoral. Explain both how and why the full presentation of the character in the work makes us react more sympathetically than we otherwise might.

At the beginning of Macbeth, Lady Macbeth seems almost like a fiendish force of nature, begging to be unsexed so that she can urge her husband to commit the murder of his king. It is Lady Macbeth who refuses allow her husband to turn away from his half-formed impulse to kill Duncan:

What beast was't, then,

That made you break this enterprise to me?

When you durst do it, then you were a man;

And, to be more than what you were, you would

Be so much more the man (I.7).

However, despite her murderous urges, Lady Macbeth is evidently trusted by her husband. Macbeth sends her a letter immediately informing her of what he has heard from the witches. Lady Macbeth sees herself as the more active, less moral half of their partnership, and is willing to sacrifice her own morality for what she sees as the good of her husband. Of his nature, she says: "It is too full o' the milk of human kindness/To catch the nearest way:" (I.5). However, once she is forced to see Duncan's bloody body, the relationship between the Macbeths, once so close, changes. Lady Macbeth is never as confident as she is before the death of Duncan. She faints when she hears Macbeth describe the murder of Duncan in graphic detail, and while this could be a ploy to divert attention from him, her later actions indicate that she is wracked with guilt. She obsessively reenacts the scene of the murder as she sleepwalks at night, and perhaps most tragically, she grows more and more estranged from her husband. While before Macbeth told her everything, now, before making the critical decision to kill Banquo, Macbeth says: "Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck, / Till thou applaud the deed" (III.2).