In Act V, Lady Macbeth's behavior is unrecognizable. At the beginning of the play, she comes across as an evil, strong, and manipulative woman who questions her husband's courage and encourages him to murder his relative Duncan, who is also the king. She appears to be cruel and relentless:
Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty!
In this soliloquy, she invokes the evil forces to fill her with cruelty and strength because she wants to help her husband in his quest to murder king Duncan.
Nevertheless, in Act V, Lady Macbeth is a completely altered person. She has stepped into madness and begins to hallucinate and sleepwalk. Her guilty conscience will not give her peace. Lady Macbeth's realization that she encouraged and forced her husband to commit atrocious acts begins to haunt her, and she is no longer a self-possessed and strong character. We realize she has become fragile and neglected by her husband.
By embracing evil, Lady Macbeth initiates her own demise, as did her husband. They are both tragic characters because they could have had a good and normal life, but, instead, they chose corruption and evil.
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