Is Lady Macbeth a villain in the play Macbeth?

William Shakespeare’s one of the most famous tragedies is Macbeth. Although Macbeth himself is the central character of the play, the role of Lady Macbeth is no less significant. Lady Macbeth can be considered the most powerful and strong-willed among Shakespeare’s female characters. Although she is primarily a negative character, her personality traits and the psychological treatment of her character have made her highly important, and both readers and audiences remain deeply inquisitive about her.

From a psychological point of view, Lady Macbeth is considered an interesting character, even though we do not see any such qualities in her throughout the play. However, a combination of many characteristics is found in her, and Shakespeare has tried to portray this character beautifully and with considerable depth. To the audience of that era, Lady Macbeth may have seemed like a negative character who was the main villain of the play. In the play Macbeth, there is no villain in the true sense, because if we consider Macbeth as the hero, then we cannot consider anyone else as the villain, since it is Macbeth himself who commits all the evil deeds in the play. Moreover, Lady Macbeth can be identified as the main villain because she had no good qualities and encouraged and supported Macbeth in carrying out all the evil acts. Sometimes, when necessary, she actively tried to take action herself. Therefore, if we judge Lady Macbeth from a modern perspective, she must be regarded as an interesting character.

The first thing that will catch everyone’s attention is that she was a very powerful woman. In those days, women did not have much freedom, and in England or Europe, they could not even keep any property in their possession. Once women got married, they would come under the authority of their husbands, and this was the normal situation. Whether rich or poor, women, in the true sense, did not have much personal freedom or power of their own. Lady Macbeth was quite exceptional in this regard, and on the one hand, she was a very powerful woman. Her power did not come from winning wars or wealth, but from her personality. We do not find women with such a powerful personality in today’s world. Shakespeare showed this woman’s power through her intelligence. That is, Lady Macbeth was intelligent, and she knew how to influence her husband. Therefore, even though there was a king in England, the reality is that Lady Macbeth was more powerful than the king.

It has been said earlier that Lady Macbeth did not become powerful by winning battles or by acquiring wealth. She became powerful through the strength of her own intelligence. That is why she had a great deal of inner strength, and inner strength is a very important quality in a person. When a person does not have much, he or she can overcome many limitations with that inner strength and move forward in life. So, we must remember this quality of Lady Macbeth. Shakespeare has portrayed this inner strength in several ways. We see that she herself began to believe that her husband would become king, and for this reason, she started thinking about how to make her husband king. Though it was impossible in those days—because the king was alive and the prince was supposed to become king after him—still, Lady Macbeth did not give up hope and tried to find a way to put her husband in power.