Lady Macduff

Lady Macduff is a good woman who loves her husband and her family. When her husband flees Scotland without a word to her, she does not know what to think. Macduff seems to behave as the traitor he is accused of being. Yet, although she accuses him of not loving his family and of being traitor, the prattling tone she uses with her son indicates that she does not quite believe what she says. Rather, her one scene indicates distress and confusion, not certainty of Macduff's motives. But all confusion is dispersed, of course, when the Murderers enter. She shows fierce loyalty to her husband and makes no attempt to save her own life at his expense. "Where is your husband?" demands one of the Murderers as he enters. 

"I hope in no place so unsanctified,/ Where such as thou may'st find him," 

replies Lady Macduff without a thought for her life. In her distress and confusion, in her tenderness for her son, in her fierce loyalty to her husband Lady Macduff symbolises the good and innocent people who are mindlessly slaughtered by the tyrant Macbeth.

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