Was Lady Macbeth ultimately responsible for Macbeth's downfall?

During Shakespeare’s time, the status of women was very low. They were not allowed to get educated and did not have right of speech. Contrary, a man was at the head position in the society. Shakespeare has shown the actual side of women in his other plays except Macbeth. In Macbeth, he has given women very high powers by giving Lady Macbeth and the witches the right of speech. For instance, when Lady Macbeth gets the letter from Macbeth mentioning the witches’ prophecy and him being given the thane of Cowdor, it shows Lady Macbeth’s ability to read and involve in her husband’s matter which was a typical for women in those times.

I think that Macbeth’s downfall was because of Lady Macbeth as she was the one who provoked him to kill King Duncan even though he was not willing to kill him. This is shown in Act 1 Scene 5 when first Lady Macbeth gives Macbeth the idea to kill King Duncan in order to get the throne earlier. Also Lady Macbeth knows that her husband was a man with white blood, so he will not kill the King. So she finds another way to succeed in her plan. She starts questioning Macbeth’s manhood, because of which Macbeth felt that in this case he has to prove himself infront of his wife. So later, he agrees to kill the King. This is also shown in Act 1 Scene 7 (Lines 46 through 47), when Macbeth says, “I dare do all that may become a man; who dares do more is none”, by which we can say that the effort of Lady Macbeth by questioning Macbeth’s manhood has succeeded.

On the other side, still Macbeth is thinking on the plan and again decides to deny the plan of killing the king to which again Lady Macbeth by telling that the plan was made and that Macbeth has to only go and kill the king when he is sleeping. After a lot of effort Macbeth gets ready to murder the king which was the first step to Macbeth’s downfall. This made him unable to sleep which gave rise to his cruel acts. Also during this time, Lady Macbeth gives strength to Macbeth by telling him that washing their hands will free them from their deeds.

Lady Macbeth gave Macbeth strength to do all the evil deeds and made him feel that she is with him in whatever he did. This encourages him the most, because of which he gradually went towards his downfall.