The Repression Of Guilt In Lady Macbeth By William Shakespeare

Women have to endure various forms of physical and mental pressures, enforced by societies’ ideals’, the people around them, and their own driving ambitions. In Scotland, during the time of the middle Ages, women were often viewed as weaker, and less intelligent, being restricted to only maintaining the house and serving the people in it, especially the patriarchal figure. Larger than the household, in any society, there is always a hierarchy or some sort of established power head, fit for only the strongest. The taste of power often blurs the line between right and wrong, driving people to make questionable decisions that may sometimes be malicious. In the Tragedy of Macbeth, Lady Macbeth cannot the handle the guilt over, convincing and helping Macbeth, her husband, the Thane of Cawdor, carry out a murder. Hysteria is defined as “a state …show more content…
According to American psychiatrist Isador Coriat, repression is “voluntary banishment” and happens when “the subconscious or unconscious experience, does not lose its activity or vividness, but retains all the intensity of the original experience” (Coriat, 6). Lady Macbeth doesn’t believe that they had done anything wrong, until she sees how it is affecting Macbeth. While Macbeth is focused on the fact that he has just ended a life, Lady Macbeth is more focused on covering up the murder, by framing the guards, and the payoff, in a promotion of power, that they will receive as a result of it. She feels remorseless, downplaying the deed saying that “a little water clears us this deed/ how easy is it them!” (2.2.67-68). However, she fails to realize that she can’t have a clean slate until she feels and deals with guilt over it. When she wakes up to find out that Macbeth has murdered the guards, she feels very differently about the situation, so much so that she passes