Lady Macbeth

• Lady MacDeur: '"Make thick my blood, stop up th access and passage to remorse." (Act 1)'
• Imperative "make thick my blood"


  Illustrates how she commands for emotional restraint and a callous (cruel) indifference
• Lady Macbeth

  • Recognises that her aspirations for tyranny require a detachment from femininity and the accompanying emotions
  • Seeks to rid herself of these elements to pave the way for her ruthless ambitions
• Lady Macbeth

  • A seductive and manipulative woman who can lure men into danger or sin
  • A femme fatale as she not only is manipulative but rejects her womanhood and motherhood
• Lady Macbeth: '"A little water clears us of this deed (Act 2)'
• Lady Macbeth's ambitions

  • Omnipotent (all-powerful)
  • Blind her to the profound mental turmoil Macbeth is experiencing
• Lady Macbeth's callousness (cruelness)


  • Becomes apparent as she employs litotes, such as the understatement "a little" to trivialise (make it seem less important) the act of murder
  • Encourages Macbeth further along his murderous path
• Lady Macbeth's use of euphemism


  • Substituting a phrase or word with something less harsh or blunt to characterise regicide as a mere "deed"
  • Highlights a paradoxical (conflicting) aspect of her character
• Despite her ambitions to shed feminine traits and embrace tyrannical brutality, Lady Macbeth struggles to articulate the gravity (seriousness) of the heinous (evil) act
• This foreshadows her descent into a melodramatic state of insanity in Act 5, where she grapples with an inability to fully grasp the enormity of the sins committed