I think Coppelia Kahn's essay is very interesting and provides a unique insight into King Lear as his story progresses. As a king, I think Lear feels as though he has to supress any emotion he feels, so as to maintain his role. This act of stoicism gives him a misguided belief of strength. King Lear's attitude towards women and feminine instincts changes a great deal throughout the play. Looking at the first scene, King Lear forces his daughters to profess their love to him and punishes Cordelia for not acting like her sisters. He acts coldly, forgetting the connection that had existed between him and his youngest daughter, and banishes her. This reminds me of a temper tantrum a toddler would throw. He acts rashly, making serious decisons while angry. I like to believe that if Lear's wife had been alive she would not have allowed this to happen. She would have acted as a voice of reason in Lear's ear. It is this lack of a strong feminine influence that contributes to his downfall.
Lear's awakening to his own selfishness brings about a huge change in his behavior. Having originally thougt that tears and emotions belonged solely to women, his whole sense of identity is shaken when he finds himself alone, rejected by those he thought loved him. These emotions are a completely new experience for him and force him to bring his whole life into question. Going from a proud king, who believed emotional response as a sign of weekness, to a man wrapped in cheap clothes, kneeling before his beloved daughter truly emphasizes the gravity of his downfall.
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It does go back to our last topic of sentiment and politics mixing. I have some theories about Lear's wife as well- would she have been calm, attentive, and wise or , raising Goneril and Regan first, would she have been calculating, passive-aggressive, and just as malicious. I wonder just what his wife was like because that would make much of the play make sense. The fact that he has obligatorily become a single parent, he can only go with what he knows instinctively from his own upbringing.
ReplyDeleteI definitely think that life might not have been so cruel to him had he still had his wife. Maybe his daughters would not be so greedy or maybe he would have foreseen their selfish tendencies and done something about it.
I had not thought about the possibility of this whole catastrophe being prevented if the queen had still been in the picture. What an interesting thought! I would also like to think that she would have been a little bit like Cordelia and would have been the compassionate voice of reason in Lear's ear. It adds a bit of humanity to this otherwise disgustingly unnatural story!
ReplyDeleteYou also state at the end that his change shows the "gravity of his downfall." Has he fallen, I wonder? Or has he just become more of a human instead of a naive, immature, pompous king? In which situation is he "better?"