All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.
– William Shakespeare
Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 1. This is spoken by a sleepwalking Lady Macbeth as she imagines her hands stained with the blood of her and Macbeth’s innocent victims. She believes that her hand is forever fouled by the stench of murder, which no amount of perfumes can erase. Her words reflect an unredeemable guilt, so great that she hallucinates and shows signs of complete mental breakdown. Despite Lady Macbeth’s earlier call to “unsex me” as she plotted the murder of Duncan, we are reminded that she is still a woman. This passage with its reference to perfumes reflects that and displays her femininity. Full of guilt and paranoia, she presents a very isolated figure here.