Earlier in the play, Lady Macbeth was the person who was ready to dash her baby's brains out without remorse. She spoke ruthless words to urge the hesitant Macbeth to do the evil deed of murdering Duncan. She told Macbeth to control his horror after killing Duncan when he came back to their rooms shaken to the core and saying the green seas had turned red with blood.
Ironically, however, by act 5, Lady Macbeth has become the person who can't handle the guilt of what she and her husband have done. We find out that she was earlier almost all talk and bluster, with very little substance, because she cracks under the strain of the crimes they have committed. She sleepwalks at night in act 5, scene 1, compulsively washing her hands as she tries to wash her guilt away. But no matter how much she washes, she can't wash the blood off her conscience.
Macbeth becomes hardened as Lady Macbeth weakens from guilt and descends into madness.
In act 5, scene 1, Lady Macbeth wanders the corridors of Dunsinane Castle as if in a terrible trance. It would appear that she's in the process of going insane, her fraught nervous system cracking under the weight of guilt and paranoia. Earlier in the play, Lady Macbeth had appeared as strong and in control. It was she who acted as the main mover in the plot to murder Duncan and constantly cajoled a weak, vacillating Macbeth to put aside his moral qualms about killing the king and get on with carrying out the dirty deed.
Yet now, Lady Macbeth cuts a truly pathetic figure as she vainly tries to scrub the imagined blood-stains from her hands. In act 2, scene 2, things couldn't have been more different. Then, Lady Macbeth was so blithely complacent about the prospects of avoiding guilt:
A little water clears us of this deed.
But as she sleepwalks the corridors of Dunsinane, no amount of water or ceaseless scrubbing of hands will be enough to wipe away the guilt that has now indelibly stained Lady Macbeth's tortured soul.
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