lk for gall, you murdering ministers, . . . (1.5.40-48).This soliloquy that she makes appears to be an attack on her reproductive system. The thickening of the blood represents her menstrual cycle, and her reasons for stopping up of remorse " . . . suggest[ed] that she imagin[ed] an attack on the reproductive passages of her own body, on what [made] her specifically female" (Adelman 111). The blood of a menstrual cycle is compared to a woman's seed and is thought to nourish a baby in the womb. By asking the spirits to take her reproductive abilities away, Lady Macbeth is taking her woman hood away and becoming like a man. It is unnatural for a woman to request that her menstrual cycle be stopped. Jenijoy La-Belle writes, "She abjures her womanhood in order to impregnated with cruelty . . ." (La-Bell 383There is proff that Lady Macbeth succeeds in having herself unsexed. Not only does Lady Macbeth renounce her womanhood so that she can be cruel, but in doing that, she also causes mental ailments tha tshe did not expect to happen. Jenijoy La-Belle writes that Lady Macbeth faints, swoons, has melancholy passions, and is fearful because of her defeminization. These are alls ypmtoms of a woman that has an inactive womb. She faints in Act II when Duncan is found murdered. Fear and melancholy are apparent all through the play with Lady Macbeth's worries of being caught as an accessory to Duncan's murder.Because of Lady Macbeth's tendency to be melancholy, she she is affiliated with being a witch. Draper writes, " . . . Melancholy was thought to make one subject to demonic agencies . . ." (Draper 80). Elizabethans believed that witches sold their souls to the devil for their power. Since Lady Macbeth was melancholy, then in her weakened state, she can easily be tempted by the devil to sell her soul. Therefore, it is logical that Lady Macbeth could be the fourth witch of the play through her weakened state of mind.Another character...
