The doctor, in this scene, comments about "a great perturbation in nature" when he hears that Lady Macbeth has been sleepwalking. His remark links to the theme of disorder and reversal in nature. Macbeth and his wife's malicious assassination of King Duncan, as well as the tyrant's deliberate murder of Banquo and Macduff's entire family, is an unnatural act. Duncan's murder and Macbeth's ascension to the Scottish throne are disruptions in the...
The doctor, in this scene, comments about "a great perturbation in nature" when he hears that Lady Macbeth has been sleepwalking. His remark links to the theme of disorder and reversal in nature. Macbeth and his wife's malicious assassination of King Duncan, as well as the tyrant's deliberate murder of Banquo and Macduff's entire family, is an unnatural act. Duncan's murder and Macbeth's ascension to the Scottish throne are disruptions in the natural order of things. Duncan was supposed to die a natural death. He was to be succeeded by Malcolm, his direct heir, whom he had appointed Prince of Cumberland. The Macbeths' malice stopped this process in its tracks, and Macbeth essentially usurped the throne.
When Lady Macbeth rubs her hands in an attempt to remove imagined stains from them, two themes are depicted. The first is the theme of appearance versus reality. What Lady Macbeth thinks she sees are really figments of her imagination. Just as her husband imagined seeing a dagger before murdering Duncan, she is visualizing non-existent bloodstains on her hands. When Macbeth saw what he believed to be a dagger, he realized that it was not real and concluded that the vision was caused by a "heat oppressed brain."
Lady Macbeth is similarly distraught at this point, and her imagination is running wild because she is losing her mind. Her distress is clearly indicated when she also later imagines the smell of blood on her hands:
Here's the smell of the blood still: all the
perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little
hand. Oh, oh, oh!
This brings us to the second theme, which is guilt. Lady Macbeth's strange conduct is caused by her overriding guilt. She is overwhelmed by her husband's sheer brutality and utter thirst for blood. He has even declared that he is "steeped in blood" because he has had so many of his erstwhile friends and subjects brutally slain. Both the doctor and gentlewoman witness the extremity of Lady Macbeth's anguish.
Doctor
What a sigh is there! The heart is sorely charged.Gentlewoman
I would not have such a heart in my bosom for the dignity of the whole body.
Lady Macbeth now feels that the weight of responsibility for having set her husband on his seemingly unstoppable course has become too much to bear. She is so overcome with guilt and regret that she later commits suicide.
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