[Act 1 Scene 5 lines 1-16] Using this speech, explain how far you think Shakespeare presents Lady Macbeth as a powerful woman

Lady Macbeth's soliloquy at the beginning of Act I Scene V is a turning point for the character, in which she asks to be transformed from being a powerful woman to that of a powerful anti-woman. She requests the 'spirits' to 'unsex' her, to 'make thick [her] blood', and to remove her of remorseful emotions. These demands are a way of ridding her of womanly characteristics, which should be replaced with 'direst cruelty', and for her body to be engulfed in the 'dunnest smoke of hell' – to become so diabolical that heaven dare not glance upon her. She asks the underworld to rid her breasts of milk - symbolising a rejection of motherhood and the principal responsibilities of Elizabethan women to lead a maternal, domestic, and family-orientated life - meaning that the scene would have been shocking to contemporary play-goers. The character makes these requests so that she is able to be an accomplice in the heinous crime of murdering King Duncan later that evening, indicating that she must relinquish some of her human nature in order to commit this unnatural act. Therefore, in this soliloquy, Shakespeare transforms Lady Macbeth from being a powerful noblewoman, married to the Thane of Glamis, to being a powerful anti-woman, whose sights are set on becoming queen.