Lady Macbeth's Guilt Analysis

Being caught red handed is a universal symbol of guilt in the sense that one has done something unwholesome, but it usually does not equate to the feeling of remorse, as it does in Shakespeare’s tragedy of Macbeth. No one catches Lady Macbeth with literal blood on her hands, but she still has an unclean conscience long after the murder. Bloody hands symbolize the guilt held within Lady Macbeth, significantly playing into her character development, transitioning her from cold hearted and unfeeling to insane from remorse, leading her to kill herself with her own hands.
Directly after the murder of Duncan, Macbeth feels much more guilty than Lady Macbeth, and creates a metaphor comparing guiltiness to the cleanliness of one’s hand, while Lady Macbeth does not yet understand the remorse that he feels. Macbeth, instantly feeling guilty following his first murder, references the redness of his hands and the inability to wash it of Duncan's blood, asking no one in particular, "Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood/ Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather/ The multitudinous seas incarnadine,/Making the green …show more content…
By saying this, she mocks Macbeth for expressing his guilt while she does not yet feel remorse for her role in Duncan’s murder. Lady Macbeth uses the symbol of unclean hands as a symbol for her unclean conscious, admitting guilt, but denying that she feels guilty.. In response to Macbeth's guilty conscience, Lady Macbeth comments on how the blood can simply be washed away with water, explaining, "A little water clears us of this deed./ How easy is it, then!" (2.2.86-87). Lady Macbeth does not yet feel the guilt that is overwhelming Macbeth, and thinks that the guilt could flow away from their hands as easily as water. Later, her repressed guilt causes her to succumb to madness and