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By considering the view that ‘’Cordelia is the living emblem of womanly dignity’’,
evaluate the presentation of women in the play
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In ‘King Lear’, Cordelia, indeed being the ‘living
emblem of womanly dignity’ is presented as an honourable and beloved daughter
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However, by the time ‘King Lear’ was written, attitudes to women in power had been modified
by Elizabeth I’s success as monarch, but women still had low status in society
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Cordelia represents the pure, unselfish, and loyal Shakespearean woman
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She
later states that her ‘love’s more richer than (her) tongue’
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Cordelia responds
quite differently to her sisters: she says ‘nothing’ and that she loves Lear ‘according to her
bond’
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Cordelia has nothing to say, no
flattering words to embellish the dutiful love she feels for her father
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She would rather suffer than lie to gain her father’s approval
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He cuts Cordelia’s asides before she speaks of her love, thus denying us a point of
sympathy with her
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This is explored in Lear’s speech about women
where he seems fixated by the way in which the seeming purity of a woman masks their
‘beneath’
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Despite
Lear’s vicious treatment of her, Cordelia seems to be determined to protect her father
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She calls Lear the ‘good man’
and urges for someone to ‘seek, seek for him’
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There is the image
of ‘tears’ to indicate Cordelia’s empathy towards Lear
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Shakespeare highlights Cordelia’s understanding of true love
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In the reunion of Lear and Cordelia, we still see her honouring and respecting her father
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Shakespeare uses gentle and loving language to
emphasise that Cordelia is ‘the living emblem of womanly dignity’
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The power is reiterated in the Quarto version of the
play, where music is played during Cordelia’s lines to show its healing properties
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Few of their lines carry hints of
motivations other than cruelty, lust or ambition, characteristics of the image of woman as an
enemy
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He doesn’t allow them to point out wrongs done to them in the past or to question
the fairness of their society’s distribution of power
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Gonerill states that she loves
her father more than ‘eyesight, space, and liberty’ and ‘as much as child ever loved’
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Their
language is clearly filled with hyperbole
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It can be said that Shakespeare was implying that women, although
regarded by many to be unequal to men, still lust for equality and hope to obtain it no matter
by what means
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Furthermore, the gender inversion of Regan and Gonerill is very persistent throughout ‘King
Lear’
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She challenges his
strength as ruler by pointing out his ‘milky gentleness’ and that he is more ‘ataxed for want of
wisdom’
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Therefore Shakespeare portrays Gonerill as
a Machiavellian character who goes against the natural order of things
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With eyesight being one of the most significant themes of the play,
Gonerill ordering to ‘pluck out (Gloucester’s) eyes’ adds to the tragedy
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Also, during
the torture, she plucks his beard and demands Cornwall to pluck ‘the other’ eye out
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They seem to lack ‘womanly dignity’
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In a letter from Gonerill to Edmond, she calls herself his ‘wife’
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The fact that they are both adulteresses and secretly
pursue the same man, Edmond, shows that they also lack decency and prudence
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Shakespeare presents Gonerill as a woman who
lacks understanding of the importance of family (unlike Cordelia)
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Cordelia’s struggle to attain her identity while poised between political necessity in a
patriarchal world and her own moral wisdom suggests a woman with ‘womanly dignity’,
fighting for her place
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Shakespeare therefore points out
that there were, and still are, differences in women’s personalities and beliefs

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