Many important literary critics contributing to the conversation on King Lear have examined such diverse topics from archetypes in the play (Knight) to the unsolvable mysteries of the work (Bradley). Though these contributions have expanded and heavily influenced the overall understanding of the play, one angle of King Lear remains unexplored by some of the most influential critics on Shakespeare’s work, which is the angle of gender roles in the play. Some less influential critics have reasoned on this topic with the view that the gender role reversals and female abuses and misuses of power in the play are less a manifestation of the wickedness of the women involved, but rather the result of “patrilineal structures” which the female characters must survive under (Alfar). However, this view suggests an underlying plot of men in society to keep women oppressed which cannot be proven from the text. Instances of the abandonment of authoritative positions by men in Lear allow women to take up the mantle of authority figure to the detriment of the societal structure. In this case, the fault lies with both men and women in their abandonment of their normative and complementary roles in their communities. Therefore, Shakespeare’s King Lear uses the reversal of gender roles to reveal the destruction of society under an ailing social order.
To begin with, the play reveals the ailing social order through the leadership reversal of Lear and his two older daughters. For example, the kingdom’s trouble starts when Lear abandons his leadership as king. Near the beginning of the play, Lear abandons his post as king and divides the kingdom up between his two older daughters though he originally intends for it to be among all three of his daughters. He proclaims this intent to abdicate responsibility by saying that he has “divided / In three our kingdom / …conferring them on younger strengths while we / Unburdened crawl toward death” (1.1.37-41). Later in this speech Lear does try to make it clear that the husbands of his daughters should take leadership of their wives’ parts of the kingdom, but he does not make sure of this. Instead, he abandons the kingdom to figure things out for itself. As the play continues, Lear continually absents himself from his duties and when Lear asks the fool if he is calling him a fool, the fool wisely observes that “all thy other titles thou hast given away; that thou / wast born with” (1.4.146-47). Lear abdicates the responsibility of his roles as both a father and a king and proves himself a fool in the act of discarding those things which made him valuable to society and which gave him identity as a person. This loss of identity and value reveals a destruction of societal norms that harms the social order through the selfish actions of the individual.
This troubling reversal of leadership continues when Goneril and Regan take advantage of the king and persecute him. For example, when the king wants to be flattered in exchange for dividing the kingdom among his daughters, his two older daughters respectively say that “I love you more than word can wield the matter” and “I am alone felicitate / in your dear highness’ love” to garner Lear’s favor (1.1.55, 75-76). Goneril and Regan take advantage of the situation and use flattery to gain the power that they desire to wield. Later in the play, Lear’s two older daughters seek to take all power away from their ailing father. When he has soldiers with him that he wants to protect him, they deny him entry into any sort of shelter if he refuses to divest himself of his followers, claiming that “to willful men / the injuries that they themselves procure / must be their schoolmasters. Shut up your doors” (2.4.303-305). This lack of sympathy for their mentally unwell father further reveals the coldness and deliberate usurpation of their actions, which leads them to begrudge the former king any sort of following except for a fool and an apparent beggar.
In addition to the reversal of leadership of the country, the play reveals the ailing social order through the leadership reversal of Lear’s older daughters and their husbands. The beginnings of this malfunction in leadership occurs when Goneril and Regan usurp their husbands’ authority and break their marriage vows. Near the end of the play, Regan discovers that Goneril has tried to carry on an affair with Edmund, though she is married. Though she herself has either talked of an affair to Edmund before becoming a widow or talked to him once her husband has been dead less than a day, Regan declares to Goneril’s messenger that “Edmund and I have talked, / and more convenient is he for my hand / than for your lady’s” (4.6.33-35). Regan and Goneril display an absolute disregard for their marriage vows and for any sort of respect that may be owed to their husbands. Instead, they pursue their political and sexual goals with no eyes for any object, but to get their way first, and in so doing ensure the destruction of the institution of their marriages.
This switching of leadership continues when Goneril and Regan’s husbands abandon their leadership positions. For example, when Lear comes wandering to his older daughters and their husbands after he has abandoned the throne, Goneril rebukes her husband with the charge that he is “much more a-tasked for want of wisdom / than praised for harmful mildness” (1.4.341-42). Though she tempers her insults with pleas for pardon, Goneril’s husband, the Duke of Albany, allows Goneril in her anger to insult him and to usurp his authority. He makes no definite decisions in the scene, always giving deference to his wife and never taking leadership in the situation. Later in the play when Gloucester is captured and tied up, Goneril quickly suggests that her sister’s husband “pluck out his eyes” which advice her brother-in-law takes, putting out the eyes of Gloucester shortly after (3.7.5). The women exercise their influence over the men to obtain violent ends, rather than to build up their society or better the men who are in the sisters’ spheres of influence.
Finally, the play reveals the ailing social order through the leadership reversal of Cordelia and her husband. An example of this occurs when Cordelia’s husband leaves his post as her protector. The Prince of France, Cordelia’s husband, comes to England to help rescue her father. But before Lear is secured, he returns quickly to France because of “something he left imperfect in the state / …which imports / to the kingdom so much fear and danger that his / personal return was most required and necessary” (4.3.3-6). Though the prince has a duty to his country, he also has a duty to his wife, who he leaves behind in England without his protection. He ultimately fails in his role as protector when Cordelia is captured and Cordelia’s sister and the villain of the play, Edmund, decide “to hang Cordelia in the prison and / to lay the blame upon her own despair / that she fordid herself” (5.3.259-61). Cordelia’s husband could have protected her from the plots of wicked people had he been present to defend her, but instead he decides to leave her and attend to things in France he should have dealt with before. He abandons his role as husband, and in doing so helps to bring about his wife’s death.
The reversal of gender roles culminates in Cordelia assuming leadership when the place of a male leader remains vacant. For instance, when her husband leaves France, Cordelia stays behind and takes on a leadership role, such as when she commands an army officer to “search every acre in the high grown field” for her father (4.4.7). Her commands are not entirely inappropriate since she is the wife of the prince, but it seems in the absence of the true leader, the army must find a substitute leader who cannot defend herself from harm. Once their opponents capture Cordelia and Lear, Cordelia states that “we are not the first who with best meaning have incurred the worst” (5.3.4). Cordelia recognizes the folly of trying to help her father in the precarious situation that she was operating in. Without her husband present, she becomes unguarded and exposed to capture and death.
King Lear utilizes the reversing of the roles of men and women to show what happens to a society when the social order is destroyed. The social structure in the world of King Lear upholds much more than Lear’s kingdom, but also has far-reaching implications for the world at large, both fictional and real. Gender roles maintain the status quo in society, and though some may dislike that, their objections do not excuse the actions of women who usurp and abuse their male counterparts. The dual issue of gender roles is the abdication of responsibility by men when women try to reverse gender roles. Neither the man’s problem nor the woman’s problem makes the fault of the other right. In a fallen world, gender relations will never be perfect. But they can be better if both genders take responsibility for their own actions. Though sometimes women must stand in a leadership gap that some men leave and though men sometime cannot fulfill all of their leadership duties in society, these imperfections should not define society’s view of gender roles but should rather motivate the people within it to remedy these gender relations issues. In a moment of supposed prophecy, the fool tells Lear that when morals in England are turned upside down and nothing is as it should be, then England will “come to great confusion” (3.2.93). The fool recognizes that when morals in a society turn upside down, that society crumbles. Not only do the fool’s words apply to King Lear’s world, but they also apply to the state of the people of modern societies who try to reverse gender roles for the sake of supposedly reversing any past inequalities, and who see the wicked actions of women as justified because of their societal situation. This great confusion reigns when standards are cast aside, as King Lear so clearly points out.
Works Cited
Alfar, Cristina León. “King Lear's ‘Immoral’ Daughters and the Politics of Kingship.” Exemplaria, vol. 8, pp. 375-400, 1996.
Bradley, A. C. Shakespearean Tragedy. U of Minnesota, 1904.
Knight, G. Wilson. The Wheel of Fire. Taylor & Francis, 1930.
Shakespeare, William. King Lear. Ed. by Stephen Orgel, Penguin Books, 1999.