Although obvious polar opposites, Lady Macbeth and Ophelia are connected - their descent into insanity and eventual demise are the one linking variable.
Lady Macbeth was a strong, ambitious manipulative woman, unafraid of the means to come by her goals. Playing her husband the king like a puppet, she forces him to murder, turning him into a pawn in her strategic game of power. Eventually her crimes catch up with her conscience, and she is driven to suicide by her guilt.
Ophelia, on the other end of the spectrum, is a seemingly mindless young girl, all too willing to submit to the expectations of her father and brother. The stereotypical woman, submissive and eager to please, she goes insane when her idealized authority figures wrong her.
Sleepwalking and attempting to wash invisible blood off of her hands, Lady Macbeth kills herself. Ophelia, singing songs about flowers, falls into a pool of water and drowns. .
Although these two seem desperately different in their lives, personalities, and deaths, they are similar in their weaknesses. Both are victims to their own strengths, which turned into their eventual flaw. Lady Macbeth's ambition carried her so far that when the realization of her deeds arrived, it came in the form of insanity. Ophelia, so willing and completely involved in the desire to be what others wish of her, became a voluntary pawn in hamlet's story. She, in the process, idealized and idolized her father, brother, and hamlet so absolutely that when they deceive her, her whole world crumbles, resulting the dissolution of herself.
Both of Shakespeare's characters were victims of their apparent strengths, which eventually turned into their fatal weaknesses. Superficially, Lady Macbeth and Ophelia seem to be complete opposites, while in reality, they are quite similar.
Now there is when we see Lady Macbeth and Ophelia come into the picture. Lady Macbeth and Ophelia are both completely different characters but yet share various similarities. ... Lady Macbeth is an ambitious and manipulative woman, unlike Ophelia. ... While in difference from Lady Macbeth, Ophelia is pushed around by the men in her life. ... Both Lady Macbeth and Ophelia take their madness in different ways. ...
Ophelia was weaker against the poison and let it pull her into insanity. ... He believed that he could confide in Lady Macbeth, his wife. To speed the process of Macbeth becoming king, Lady Macbeth creatively devised of some way to murder the king. ... In the play Macbeth, ambition was the downfall of two more characters; Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. ... Knowing that his queen was dead, Macbeth went partially insane because he felt that Lady Macbeth was the only one he could confide in. ...
Ophelia was weaker against the poison and let it pull her into insanity. ... He believed that he could confide in Lady Macbeth, his wife. To speed the process of Macbeth becoming king, Lady Macbeth creatively devised of some way to murder the king. ... In the play Macbeth, ambition was the downfall of two more characters; Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. ... Knowing that his queen was dead, Macbeth went partially insane because he felt that Lady Macbeth was the only one he could confide in. ...
(Act 1, Scene 5, lines 38-39, and 53-54) is a quote from Lady Macbeth as she urges Macbeth to kill King Duncan. ... Lady Macbeth persuaded him into the act, so therefore the death of King Duncan occurred and led to many more deaths and a lot of complications. ... Lady Macbeth is a prime example of accepting the consequences of one's actions. ... Ophelia, the daughter of Polonious, the Lord Chamberlain, is not the lover of Prince Hamlet, but she had befriended him. ... Following that tragic accident, Ophelia is extremely distraught, going insane with such strong feelings of grief tha...
At first, Hamlet cannot trust anyone, so he goes to Ophelia to confide in her. ... MacDuff and Malcolm then unite against MacBeth and Lady MacBeth, which will not let Macbeth keep his position of power. ... Shakespeare also shows how all these deaths and deceit begin to affect Macbeth and Lady MacBeth as the play continues. ... Lady Macbeth is seen to be sleepless and sleepwalking as well. ... Lady MacBeth's death causes Macbeth to kill Siward. ...
He and Lady Macbeth had discussed murdering Duncan before the witches even showed up.10 Banquo knew the witches were women, but their beards forbade him to interpret that there were so. ... This meant that Lady Macbeth was recalling a time that Macbeth revealed his future plans never really put them into action because they never came across such opportunities before. ... Lady Macbeth scoffed, "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." ... He finally killed the king because of his ambitious plans but mostly because of the...
At first, Hamlet cannot trust anyone, so he goes to Ophelia to confide in her. ... MacDuff and Malcolm then unite against MacBeth and Lady MacBeth, which will not let Macbeth keep his position of power. ... Shakespeare also shows how all these deaths and deceit begin to affect Macbeth and Lady MacBeth as the play continues. ... Lady Macbeth is seen to be sleepless and sleepwalking as well. ... Lady MacBeth's death causes Macbeth to kill Siward. ...
For these reasons, namely his greedy lust for Desdemona and his need for power and authority, Iago Of all of Shakespeare's powerful females, one of the most recognized is Lady Macbeth, from the play Macbeth. (Kimple, p366) In this play, Lady Macbeth coerces her husband into murdering Duncan, the King of Scotland to satisfy her own lust for power. ... However, murder isn't the only evil act that Lady Macbeth commits in this play. ... By this, Lady Macbeth is referencing to the sleeping potion that she used to drug the guards. (Moore, allshakespeare.com) It is very obvious that...
This theory is stabilised via many of his female characters such as Lady Macbeth and Gertrude in Hamlet, as according to Dall (2000): "Through Gertrude's marriage to Hamlet's uncle and also through Lady Macbeth's unbridled political ambition, Shakespeare dramatizes real political concerns that evolved from and during the reign of Elizabeth Tudor.... For example, Shakespeare cleverly outlined the masculine qualities needed to portray an ambitious and elevated Lady Macbeth, by qualifying feminine characteristics of the man to whom played her on stage (Gerlach et al, 1996). .....
