Thread by @GCSE_Macbeth

I'm making a small but significant change in how I approach a couple of key moments in Macbeth.

I won't be using the words "regret", "remorse" or "guilt" to describe the emotions of Macbeth or Lady Macbeth.

Let me explain...

1/

What Macbeth experiences in 2:2, staggering out of Duncan's chamber, isn't guilt. It's horror. It's digust at his own actions, and a quickening sense of deep psychological damage done to himself.

It isn't guilt or remorse for his actions.

2/

Someone who says "I am afraid to think what I have done" is not feeling remorseful. They are feeling repulsion and fear.

Macbeth's desperation to clear his hands of blood isn't a sign of feeling *guilty* as such. It's wanting himself to be clean, not to see the deed undone.

3/

It's sometimes instructive to think about what characters DON'T say -- and Macbeth never says he regrets killing Duncan. He has the rest of the play to mention it and he never does. He isn't afflicted with guilt, but with an ever-growing madness and bloodlust.

4/

So in Act 5 Sc 1 when Lady Macbeth is seen sleepwalking and washing her hands...again, I wouldn't call this remorse or guilt. She's trapped in the same moment of horror that she was able to survive in Act 2 Sc 2 -- replaying that night in her head, also wanting to be clean.

5/

There's a glimmer of remorse when she asks "The Thane of Fife had a wife; where is she now?"

The murder of Macduff's family is properly centred here as Macbeth's greatest evil.

But again, "make my hands clean" isn't the same as "I wish I hadn't done that."

6/

I'm happy to be challenged on this, but I increasingly think that reading Lady Macbeth as guilty or remorseful is a bit of a wrong turn.

7/7