In Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Leskov’s “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk”, the main women of both tragic stories, had one goal in mind for their lovers; to try and change the fundamental nature of their partners as a way of helping their men gain what they want (power, money, authority, and so on). But unfortunately because of their strong will and own ambition to satisfy their partners, they end up ruining their own happiness of trying to ironically keep it by easily trusting and relying on men who are in several ways weaker than they are.

In Macbeth, her husband tells Lady Macbeth in a letter, that he was told that he would become a great king, once she takes note of this her ambition for power for her family sets in, “and shalt be what thou art promised.” (Act I, Scene 5; 1-2), she sees that after he was told that he would become king, it would be of great advantage for him, and she automatically concludes that the current king should be taken care of (and ultimately killed). Meaning that Lady Macbeth decided that the best time for Macbeth to become king was the current time or ‘now’, she retorted to automatically doing something very evil in order to get what she wants for him, or what he and fate really wants for himself. This is a great mistake she first makes that she allows to happen. She does understand that, “Yet do I fear thy nature; it is too full o' th' milk of human kindness to catch the nearest way: thou wouldst be great, art not without ambition, but without the illness should attend it.” (Act 1 Scene 5; 2-7). Lady Macbeth knows her husband is too of a good man and is modest, but she see this as a weakness and that he lacks fire to his ambition to commit or do anything extreme or evil to hurt anyone, not even the king, for his own personal gain to get what ‘should’ belong to him. But she doesn’t not care, she believes that she can persuade her husband into doing this; after all it is for the self-benefit of him and of her. Here is the first place that is seen that she is planning something desperate and evil because she has one thing on her mind, which is power. The thing she most focuses on is getting it, the very corruptive and evil way, the way that people use to get what they believe that belongs to them for their own happiness. She was later told that the king was coming to sleep over at their place, and here is where she finally decides, “That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan under my battlements.” (Act 5 Scene 2: 29-30), the king shall be killed at her house, she tells Macbeth about it convincing him that he has to do it if he does want to become king. Macbeth conflicts with himself, debating weather or not he should actually do it, he does say that, “but only vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself and falls on th' other.” (Act I Scene 7; 27-28) where his motivation to commit this act is his growing ambition but yet he still backs out of it, his wife tells him to stop acting like a coward and do what is best for them, but he says that he does want to do anything bad because he is a man, she insists that he isn’t because he backed out of it. She tells him they won’t get caught and that everything will be executed perfectly, from there he finally agrees into killing the king. Lady Macbeth changed the fundamental nature of Macbeth in this act. After persuading him to kill the king for their own advantage, Macbeth changes from his modest and good man, into a man that will kill anybody who gets in his way. This new trait becomes the couple’s downfall, especially for Lady Macbeth. As Macbeth beings to loose his conscious and sympathy towards people, Lady Macbeth starts to regain hers as she starts to sleep walk and relive the night of the murder of the king. She knows she is at fault for forcing Macbeth’s hand into killing him and the chain reactions of other innocent people that followed. She could not live with the guilt any long and decides to kill her self to end her mental suffering of the