Tuesday, February 5, 2013
A Reversal of Roles Discussion
From the onset of the play, characters appear to act in opposition of what their role would suggest (as everyone's favorite author mentioned): a king gives away his land, women are given the power then plot against their "beloved" father, logic seems to come mainly from a Fool's mouth... And, at the end of the play, those who cast off their archetypal roles wound up dead. So, what is Shakespeare implying about the act of rebelling against one's assigned role in society?
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In considering the essay by JCO, she focused on this idea of “the simple refusal on the part of a ‘character’ to conform to a ‘role.’” I think many of the characters throughout the text as you’ve mentioned seem to act in opposition of societal expectations; this, in large part, escalates the “mad” chaos present in the play. The women especially, as JCO refers to them as “goddesses, all, but of a totally unpredictable and possibly terrifying nature,” tend to be outspoken –we see Goneril and Regan protest against King Lear while Cordelia speaks her mind when admitting her love for her father. All in all, the Shakespeare makes these rebellious daughters die in the play to reveal how women of the time were denied praise for “standing up” to masculine authority.
ReplyDeleteShakespeare often uses imagery in suggesting the unattractive nature of women rebelling societal roles. King Lear refers to his outspoken and stubborn daughter, Regan, as “a vulture (2.4: 152)” and “most serpentlike (2.4:182)” revealing his despise in seeing his daughter acting so unladylike; her animal-like description also suggests she is "dangerous" to society. Even one of the servants who had witnessed the daughters’ outlandish actions in the play says, “Women will all turn monsters” (3.7:124). These unpleasant images along with the deaths of the daughters in the play allow Shakespeare to suggest how the women rebelling against their societal roles were unacceptable during his time.
I like what you said regarding the unacceptable fact of women not acting "ladylike," and I want to further that to encompass more of the characters. For example, the one who caught my attention most was Lear - a king that decides to give away his land, who relies on the whims of his daughter, who listens to the Fool above else and banishes faithful knights. For me, Lear made the least sense regarding his role. A king ought to be the one in charge, not "on [his] knees to beg" for protection from his daughters (II,iv,176). In the end, I reach the same conclusion as Katherine - Shakespeare is commenting on the rebellion against societal roles as a travesty. After all, those that rebelled ended up dead.
ReplyDeleteI agree with both Katherine and Karen, and I especially like the pattern of unattractive descriptions of rebellious women that Kath pointed out. I noticed that additionally, all of those ugly descriptions were references to animals. This suggests Shakespeare's belief that breaking from societal expectations is not only unbecoming of a lady and unattractive, but almost subhuman. By acting as individuals, people - especially women, to which these descriptions refer - lower themselves to the level of animals and make themselves dirty, unrespected social outsiders.
ReplyDeleteI think these are all really great idea's one aspect of the play that wasn't touched upon yet was the control the woman have over then men. It seems as though the women within the play alomst have more power than this King. In the beginning Lear divies up the land to his daughters, after this point in the text the women really have much more power than the men. Both Regan and Goneril had the power to disown their father as we saw they did when they both kicked him out of the house. He essentially went into the wicked storm because his daughters wouldn'd take him in. And of course we cannot forget that Regan killed a man. I would argue that Shakespear is the most well-known play writter in many aspects, but especially when it comes to the usual gender roles. This was the first play that he outstepped the norms and chose to make the women in the play extremley powerful. I have yet to discover why he chose this play to do so!
ReplyDeleteI agree that there is a distinct patten of uunattractive worrds used to describe the rebellious actions in King Lear. I also feel that Shakespeare looks at women in a negative light throuhg the user of Lear. In King Lear, women are often seen as emasculating, disloyal, promiscuous, and the root of all the problems in the world. This is particularly true in how Lear reacts to his daughters; Regan and Goneril's, betrayal. Lear blams them for his action of walking out into the storm after their fight. He has a growing resentment towards women that he would rather walk into a dangerous storm than spend another second in thier presence. It is in this reaction that we see how Shakepeare uses the role reversal of woman acting as the dominant force and how that is affecting the actions that Lear is makng.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Angela when she brings up the concepts of how the gender roles within King Lear are reversed. As we both read and watched the scene in which Regan stabs her servant in the back and multiple times at that, I couldn't help but be shocked at the hostile and aggressive act. Typically (shown in King Lear and other tragedies by Shakespeare) when a character dies or is killed, it is offstage as was discussed in JCO's essay on King Lear, but this vivid image that Shakespeare writes into the scene goes much deeper than simply killing off a minor character. Angela's introduction of the concept that Shakespeare really outstepped the norms is valid and could be attributed simply that because the entire society in King Lear, let alone Lear himself, is mad, every aspect of the society is also mad and not acceptable to societal norms. Therefore in order to properly portray the manipulated and unnatural society, every aspect including gender roles must be manipulated as well.
ReplyDelete--Fiona M-S
I agree with what Fiona and Angela said. Since Shakespeare gave the women all that power in the first place, I think there's more to his motives than just showing what happens to women who don't act "ladylike". After the storm hits, there is an obvious shift in the book: everyone goes mad. King Lear really goes crazy, traveling during the storm rather than staying with his daughters, and hallucinating his daughters on trial. For the daughters, the storm represents them really starting to step out of their gender roles and take control of their newfound power. For example, after the storm, Cordelia fights against her father's kingdom, Regan kills someone, and Goneril plots to kill her sister! Even King Lear notices that something is up with them; when he is hallucinating the trial, he laments "Is there any cause in nature that makes these hard hearts?" (III.vi.81-82). The "cause in nature" that Lear speaks of implies that he thinks his daughters are potentially mad. I think that this shows that all of the characters have to deal with their own type of madness.
ReplyDeleteI feel that Shakespeare used the character of Lear to exaggerate the personality of the royalty of the period. He made his pride and demand of respect so extreme so that he could justify bring other characters out of their roles as well. Namely the three sisters who, in a way, all stood up to their father which at the time was unheard of. The fact that they all die in the end was Shakespeare commenting on the conformity of his era. If anyone rebelled in any way, they were shut down, even King Lear, the leader of his country ends up falling because he has pushed his limits of power too much. Even though Lear seems to have come back to reality right before he dies, he is then no longer in any control of his kingdom, so he went from one extreme to another and therefore he dies because he could not stay in his set role.
ReplyDelete-Jackson J
I would like to build off of Jackson's comment regarding how Shakespeare used the ending of King Lear to show how no good could come of breaking the social norms for the time. Most people have been analyzing how the characters breaking their roles throughout the story go mad. I would like to examine how a character staying in her role as a daughter is shown in good light in Act V. Cordelia is shown in a wonderful light with (as I took it) a euphonious tone as she says, "We are not the first/ Who with best meaning have incurred the worst./ For thee, oppressèd king, I am cast down;/ Myself could else outfrown false Fortune's frown." The daughter whose love was initially questioned ended up as the only daughter to maintain her proper role in society and therefore "approval" from Shakespeare.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Angela and Fiona in that I feel the women are given more power than the men. In England today, because the royal born was a girl(Queen Elizabeth), she will receive the thron, and her husband will earn the title 'prince' because that is lower than 'queen'. Shakespeare almost predicts this happening by having Lear split up his kingdom and giving the power to his daughters. Lear mentions giving his kingdom to his daughters, but at no point does he tell their husbands their role in running his former kingdom. Albany is the only man in the play that seems to try to check the power of Goneril. In the end of the play, the only characters that were not killed were Albany, Kent and Edgar, the three that never went 'truly' mad, or tried to go against the social norms. Regan and Goneril essentially went mad with all of the power that Lear left for them, so therefore the only way for their stories to end was in death.
ReplyDelete