Gender and Sexuality in Shakespeare's King Lear

A Reversal in Gender Roles and the Portrayal of Women

Jan 31, 2009

King Lear is another of Shakespeare's plays that has ideas of a patriarchal society running through it.

The King is the father of his country. However, Lear is not only ruler of his country, but also of his family. His rule over his daughters ultimately causes his downfall and their deaths.

For contemporary critics, the position of women in this society and the ways in which their non-compliance caused them to be banished or killed strongly emphasises the problems that a patriarchal rule can cause. By not agreeing to her father’s demands, Cordelia shows the problems that can be caused both in political society, and therefore also in the family, when the main figure loses his power. By wanting his daughters to prove their love for him, Lear ends up losing everything.

The play demonstrates that traditional roles in both society and the family should be adhered to. Van Laan writes in Role-playing in Shakespeare that this is "because it is through them that both society and the individual find their only possibility of order". Whilst traditional critics would agree that the breakdown of the patriarchal society leaves chaos in its wake, and shows its necessity, a feminist critic could argue that if the dominant male had not forced such a vain ceremony from his daughters, it would have prevented the tragedy that followed.

Two Sides of Women

Questioning why Cordelia does not comply with her father’s request, Catherine Cox writes in An Excellent Thing in a Woman that "her elusive and evasive speech is interpreted by some readers and viewers as a demonstration of love and goodness, by others as an assertive rejection of patriarchal authority, and by still others an exhibition of arrogance, a kind of haughty naïve".

Whilst her two older sisters give theatrical speeches claiming their love for their father, it is they who turn against him for their own means. Here we have two sides of women represented. Feminist critics see the main problem in their family unit as the absence of a mother. Lear is the sole parental unit for them and therefore has all power over them. Likewise, Gloucester has an absent wife figure. Both fathers have children who are "good" and "bad".

A Lack of Manhood

As with Macbeth, King Lear portrays emotional weakness with a lack of manhood. When cheated by his daughters, Lear prays "let not women’s weapons, water drops, stain my man cheeks". Lear’s masculinity is challenged here as crying is seen as feminine, which would challenge any power that he may have. Rudnytsky writes in The Dark and Vicious Place that Lear’s "antithesis between anger and weeping confirms that the play’s relentless dichotomizing of “good” and “evil” characters is based on a gender polarity".

An example used for this is when Lear asks the Earl of Kent how old he is, he replies "not so young sir to love a woman for singing, nor so old to dote on her for anything". By showing himself as un-influenced by women, he is accepted by Lear.

At the start of the play, Goneril taunts Albany for his "milky gentleness". Similarly, Lady Macbeth worries about Macbeth "I fear thy nature, it is too full of the milk of human kindness". Both women spur on their husbands by attacking their masculinity. The links with milk also symbolise a mother’s care, and it is the women themselves who believe that the men need to toughen up and act more manly. The women in King Lear are however more treacherous than Lady Macbeth. Goneril and Regan turn against their father and cause him immense suffering.

On the sister’s corrupt behaviour, Dusinberre writes in Shakespeare and the Nature of Women that "the adulterous woman adopts a male role; her feminity no longer stands in the way of physical violence". Once they have broken free from typical female conventions, there is nothing stopping them from progressing further into "masculine" aggressivenesss. She goes on to explain that in Elizabethan times, adultery is expressed as a woman’s only revenge, where "action is strength".

The copyright of the article Gender and Sexuality in Shakespeare's King Lear in Shakespeare Tragedies is owned by Holly Thacker. Permission to republish Gender and Sexuality in Shakespeare's King Lear in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.