| king lear s often read as a misogynistic play which reinforces patriarchal hegemony and punishes women for subverting the stereotypical passive role | Opening on the female role/Patriarchal world |
| underrepresentation of women and in particular, women in power | What does the fact that there are only 3 females in King Lear signify? |
| lear’s response to goneril further reinforces this idea; ‘the hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long, that it’s had it head bit off by it young’, this proverb metaphorically connotes goneril’s ingratitude. | Goneril’s argument against Lear having knights is measured and balanced and her speech is written in blank verse which shows us that she is not only prepared but that she is also showing her authority. |
| ‘tigers’ and ‘not daughters’ which seems to justify misogyny and further reinforce why women should not be given equal power. | The problem we have is that whilst Goneril and Regan subvert gender roles and characteristics, they are represented as …. |
| goneril is described as having ‘scornful eyes’ and he asks the god’s to ‘infect her beauty’. he also commands ‘into her womb convey sterility’ and in doing so – he ironically asks the god’s to make her less feminine | Lear, horrified by his emasculation at the hands of his fiend like daughters, rages in fitful gusts of grotesque misogyny as he struggles to defend his manhood against a femininity that almost seems to spring from within him. |
| i am asham’d that thou hast power to shake my manhood’ | Lear’s emasculation |
| sometimes reversed in the play ee albany as feminine – milky gentleness | Stereotypical roles of masculinity and femininity are… |
| the misogyny of king lear both the play and its hero is constructed out of an ascetic tradition, which presents women as the source of the primal sin of lusg | Critic on misogyny |
| cordelia’s struggle to attain her identity while poised between political necessity in a patriarchal world and her own moral wisdom defines her tragic experience, her simultaneous movement toward retribution and atonement. | Interestingly, for all Cordelia’s goodness, she too wields power in the political arena when she wages war against Britain with France’s troops. She is also a part of the anarchy arising from female empowerment. |
| o! how this mother swells upward toward my heart! hysterica passio! down, thou climbing sorrow! | Lear’s descend into madness also represents his emasculation at the hands of his ‘sharp tooth’s’ daughters. His sorrow is epitomised on this line having discovered that Kent is in the stocks and Regan has betrayed him. |
| perceptive of feminine issues in striking contrast with the misogynistic implications observed in his work- in effect the depiction of lear’s three daughters as characters superior to the sovereignty in the hierarchal world of the play substantiates shakespeare’s substantial portion in advocating women’s equality and individualism | The tragedy of King Lear presents Shakespeare as being profoundly… |
| family relations in this play are seen as fixed and determined, and any movement within them is portrayed as a destructive reversal of the rightful order | Critic on family order and female insubordination |
LT4: Female Role in King Lear
July 27, 2019