When Ross tells her that she must "have patience" with her husband for not coming home immediately, she angrily responds that "he had none" / His flight was madness. When or actions do not,/Our fears do make us traitors." Even when Ross further advises that her husband might have "fled" out of "wisdom," she decries "Wisdom! To leave his wife and babes, / His mansion and his titles, in a place / From whence himself does fly? He loves us not" (2-8). Her anger towards her husband, her insistence that he should first protect his family before he proceeds with affairs of state (dealing with the tyrant Macbeth) provides a contrast to Lady Macbeth and her reaction to her own husband. While Lady Macduff is angry because her husband does not put his family first, Lady Macbeth (in act 1) cajoles her husband to put his ambition above all other matters, including his conscience. When the murders come, Lady Macduff says, "Do I put up that womanly defense, / To say I have done no harm? 976-77), which is another implicit swipe at her husband for putting her in a position to defend herself (instead of him defending her), and is also once again a contrast to Lady Macbeth who refuses any sort of "womanly defense," being, within the terms of the play, very "manly" in her violence.
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