Lady Macduff

She is the lady of Macduff's castle, left behind with her children when her husband slips away to England, and she reads his flight as betrayal rather than prudence. Her scene with her witty son — sparring over traitors, birds, and fathers — shows a woman whose fierce maternal love is matched by a refusal to be comforted by easy answers. Her insistence that Macduff 'loves us not' sharpens the play's question of what a man owes his family when his country is at stake, and her household becomes the moral counterweight to Macbeth's court.