Lady Macbeth's Motivation

In the book Macbeth, the two main characters Macbeth and Lady Macbeth developed a complicated relationship through words and mental activities over the course of the play. As a whole, Lady Macbeth is the spiritual support for Macbeth and the chief motivation for his killing spree in the first half of the play. In the latter half, she starts to reflect on her behavior and urges her husband to stop murdering further. In contrast, Macbeth turns from an allegiant thane to regicide and then a furious dictator. He gradually loses his mind as he kills whoever is in his way as he moves toward the crown. As the story develops, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth's characters exchange roles: Macbeth begins to take his wife's place as the most conspicuous character

Now, Macbeth and his wife seem to have interchanged roles. At the start of Act 3, Macbeth persuades the two murders that he has hired to kill Banquo and Fleance by blaming their miserable lives on Banquo and by questioning their manhood, which is the same method Lady Macbeth utilized on him: " Know/ That it was he, in the times past, which held you/ So under fortune, which you thought had been/ Our innocent self...Your patience so predominant in your nature/ That you can let this go?" (3.1.83-86, 97-98). He agitates them into taking revenge and proving themselves to be men. As to his wife, Macbeth tells her to pretend being nice to

Lady Macbeth finally has her nervous breakdown as she has the habit of sleepwalking every night, crying out "Out, damned spot, out, I say!...What, will these hands ne'er be clean?/ Here's the smell of blood still. All/ The perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little/ Hand. O! O!O!" (5.1.37, 53-55) Her irrational behavior indicates her further decline. Sarcastically contrasted with her earlier claim to Macbeth that "A little water clears us off this deed," (2.2.86), now she suffers from deep self-reproach and believes that nothing will ever wash the blood off her hands. Again she says,"What's done cannot be undone. To bed, to/ Bed, to bed," (5.2.71-72) As for Macbeth, he has already been desensitized to the violence at this point after killing all those people.

I have almost forgot the taste of fears.

The time has been my senses would have cooled

To hear a night-shriek, and my fell of hair

Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir

As life were in 't. I have supped full with horrors.

Direness, familiar to my slaughterous