King Lear

The female characters in King Lear are powerful figures who are often as aggressive as, and at times more ruthless than, their male counterparts. Cordelia, who is pure, unselfish, and unflinchingly loyal, is a more standard Shakespearean woman than her strong, assertive, conspiratorial, violent, and regal sisters, Goneril and Regan. While the older sisters are clearly very different in personality from the youngest, and while Goneril and Regan are clearly villains, all three daughters resemble their father. In Goneril and Regan, the similarity rests in their pride, arrogance, and fierce temper; in Cordelia, it rests in her aura of royal dignity, courage, and uncompromising stubbornness. All three sisters help to propel the plot, and Goneril and Regan are even effective killers (Regan, most unusual for a Shakespearean woman, kills with a sword). The presence of these three women becomes even more interesting when we remember that, as often happens in Shakespeare, there are no mothers present in the play; Lear’s and Gloucester’s dead wives are mentioned neither by these men nor by their children. Without guidance from other females, the sisters actively pursue their desires as they themselves see fit.

The two elderly characters who suffer the most in the play are Lear and Gloucester. Their stories are similar in many ways; however, while Lear slowly goes mad, Gloucester is blinded but remains sane. Shakespeare implies a parallel between the two conditions: Lear and Gloucester both seem to be able to perceive certain things more clearly after they lose their faculties. Lear realizes only as he begins to go mad that Cordelia loves him and that Goneril and Regan are treacherous flatterers. He comes to understand the weakness of human nature, the emptiness of royal claims to power, and the similarity of all human beings as he rambles in his insanity. Similarly, Gloucester comes to understand which son is really good and which is bad at the very moment of his blinding. Still, both Lear and Gloucester sink into despair before their deaths. It is interesting to note that Lear’s eyesight fails in the moments just before he dies, while Gloucester wishes himself insane, thinking he might thus bear his misery more easily. This grim irony suggests a hopelessness that contributes to the general gloom surrounding the play’s end.