ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -The blood on Macbeth’s hands symbolizes the guilt he feels for murdering Duncan . Lady Macbeth speaks these words at the end of the play, wandering around the castle in a delirium trying to wash out an invisible bloodstain, a symbol of her guilt.

Detailed explanation-2: -Lady Macbeth’s involvement in the assassination of King Duncan echoes in her conscience. Her confident words to her nervily blood-stained husband – ‘A little water clears us of this deed’ – come back to haunt her. Lady Macbeth’s hand-washing is the sign of guilt.

Detailed explanation-3: -Lady Macbeth’s hand-washing is the sign of guilt. It speaks of a contamination that can never be washed away. This scene at the beginning of the play’s fifth act is Lady Macbeth’s swansong – as Verdi realised in his opera, giving her a gloriously controlled aria at this point.

Detailed explanation-4: -’Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather the multitudinous seas incarnadine, making the green one red’ Macbeth (Act II, Sc. II).

Detailed explanation-5: -Q: Why does Lady Macbeth obsessively wash her hands? Lady Macbeth obsessively washes her hands in the fifth act of the play in order to wash off the imaginary blood on them, a reminder of the guilt she has over the killings she and her husband carried out.