Duessa and Lady Macbeth

For some reason I find the villainess to be significantly more interesting than her male counterpart. I am by no means inspired by wicked women - just strangely fascinated. I am not a huge fan of Duessa, but she does remind me a bit of my favorite villainess, Lady Macbeth. Both women have a high degree of duplicity. It is quite obvious that Duessa is pure evil, but Lady Macbeth's villainous status is slightly less defined (she does display her guilty conscience in her sleep). While both women commit their evil deeds for different reasons, they both focus greatly on keeping up their appearances (I've noticed that appearance vs. reality seems to be a common theme among Renaissance literature). Duessa covers her ugliness and fiendishness with magic and beautiful, rich clothing, and Lady M tries to hide her sins with royal regalia. Lady M sums it up perfectly when she says that she will "look like th'innocent flower / But be the serpent under't" (1.5.65-66), and like Duessa, she succeeds in manipulating a weak and well-intentioned man. Duessa is ultimately exposed to be an ugly, deformed old hag in Book I, Canto 8, stanzas 47-48 (kind of reminds me of what Grendel's mother would look like) and is released to cause more mischief, I presume. We never actually see Lady Macbeth's evil deeds being exposed, but it is implied that she took her own life (and she probably proceeded to join Duessa in the underworld). I'd bet that Lady M looks on the inside how Duessa looked after being exposed (did I say that right?).