The Power of Defiance
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The Power of Defiance

Lessons from Shakespearean women

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The Power of Defiance
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Throughout history everyone has had a designated place in society. Most often this determined how one should act in every aspect of one’s life. Men are the rulers-- the ones in charge of the money, nations, bringing home the “bacon”. Women were there to keep the house and children in check. With this method, men were the ones who were supposed to have the final say and make all of the decisions in everything. Yes, they would sometimes ask women for their advice and counsel, and the man may choose to listen, but the man still had the final say. In the play King Lear this is very much not the case. Our two princesses, Goneril and Regan, have their weak minded father, King Lear, and several other men wrapped around their fingers, and manipulate them into doing their will. It is clear to see that these women in King Lear went against all of the gender roles for women of that time period in a very big and dramatic way.

We first see an example of this in Act I, Scene iii when Goneril is talking with her steward, Oswald, about her attitudes and thoughts concerning Lear. She compares him to a baby, saying, “Old fools are babes again and must be used with checks and flatteries, when they are seen abused” (1.3.20-22). She is not at all pleased with her father because of his treatment of her husband, Duke of Albany. In line four, she mentions her disappointment with her father, “Every day and night he wrongs me. Every hour he flashes into one gross crime or other that sets us all at odds. I’ll not endure it” (1.3.4-6). With these lines, you can see that she already has plans in motion to deal with her father the king.

From the bitterness of Goneril, we then move to the anger and ferociousness of Regan. In the beginning of this play we see Regan as the one who does what she told and bitter about it. Now she has changed with the disappearance of her father into the massive storm. She has turned into a bit of a vicious dictator. We see this when she puts her father’s banished advisor, Kent, into the stocks. Regan at this point will not deal with anyone who is loyal to her sister Cordelia or to her father.

The jealousy of these two women towards their sister, and the bitter hatred of their father for loving Cordelia, is what brings these two women to step so heavily out of their placement in the world. When looking at this play, one must also look to what the possible ramifications are for such bad behavior. Russ McDonald, in his book, The Bedford Companion to Shakespeare, mentions what problems could emerge with the switching of power from the man to a woman, saying, “In order to ensure social stability, the traditional place of a woman was determined by moralists and social theorists into an ideology of subordination and domestic responsibility” (McDonald 255). These two women are not holding a stable society. Already, in the short time since their father went out into the storm, many problems have emerged, and they are not dealing with it well.

We see the viciousness of these two sisters most when the Duke of Gloucester is tortured and when his most loyal servant is murdered. Gloucester is accused by the sisters as being a traitor, and they want to figure out where their father is so that they put the kingdom the way they would like for it to be. Gloucester, being a loyal man, does not tell them. For this, they pluck out one of his eyes to compel him to speak. When he does not, Regan takes a sword and stabs his servant in the back. “Give me thy sword. A peasant stand up thus!” (3.7.97). After she kills his servant, she has his other eye removed, and then he is tossed out of his own home into the storm. He has been ripped of his title by the sisters, and his bastard son Edmund, their accomplice, is made the new Duke of Gloucester.

These women, with this act of murder and torture, have completely gone against every typical stereotype for women of this time period. Women were to be thought of as weak and dainty and unable to do anything cruel. As seen in Act III, these women are capable of instigating and doing horrible acts. McDonald, in his book, brings up one woman who went against all of these stereotypes. Mary Firth was a woman who resisted. She wore her clothes like a man and had man-like habits such as smoking pipes and carrying swords (McDonald 256). In her time, this would have been an extreme statement. While she did not murder people or attempt patricide, she still embodied what it meant to defy the stereotype.

The violent Regan and Goneril were not the only women in this play to defy the stereotype. Cordelia, though innocent and sweet, did in a way defy her father in his somewhat lucid state. The King was asking each of his daughters who loves him the most, and she did not give the answer that he was wanting. Her sisters both went off on long tangents on their love for their father. Cordelia, however, says, “Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave my heart into my mouth: I love your majesty according to my bond; nor more nor less” (1.1.100-103). Cordelia, in a sense, knows that her sisters will say anything to their father if it means he will reward them with what they want. Cordelia refuses to play this game, and she just simply states that she loves him and that she will not indulge him in a long spout of things that she does not mean. Her refusal to play the game her father wishes was her defiance to him. This small, innocent defiance is what sets the king off and sends us into the massive tragedy of this play. It only took the refusal of the one he treasured most for him to lose his mind.

At the end of this play everyone pays for his or her mistakes. Both Regan and Goneril die in a murder suicide. Edmund dies from a wound he sustained in a fight. Cordelia is murdered by a servant of her sister’s. King Lear dies from a broken heart when he loses his dear Cordelia, and the King’s loyal servant dies from an unknown cause. In the end it is her sister Goneril’s husband, Albany, who we can assume is left to rule the kingdom. With this great havoc these women wrought, it can be assumed that the entire kingdom slipped into chaos because the social order was put out of balance.

From the murderous power of Goneril and Regan's defiance to the subtle power of Cordelia's defiance, we see that these Shakespearean women, like Mary Firth of the 17th century (and perhaps like you and I) have the power to disrupt society by choosing an alternative to the norm. This potential could destroy a kingdom, or it could bring people to love deeply in the way King Lear loved Cordelia. Which path will you choose?

Resources

McDonald, Russ. The Bedford Companion to Shakespeare : An Introduction with Documents. Bedford of St. Martin's, 1996. Print.

Shakespeare, William, ., and Mowat, Barbara A. ; Werstine, Paul. The Tragedy of King Lear. Washington Square, 2004. Print

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