After reading most of Act I, I have come to the conclusion that every character in King Lear gets extremely angry at the simplest occurrences. First, in Act I Scene I, when King Lear announces his daughters' inheritances, Cordelia is disowned by her father because her sisters have essentially just stolen everything she had wanted to say. I feel like I can relate to Cordelia because she and I both have a difficult time expressing our feelings, and we both have annoying older sisters who have just too much to say. Cordelia says, "I am sure my love’s more ponderous than my tongue," which shows her anxiety of trying to speak to her father, but also Cordelia trying to reassure herself to believing that her father will understand her inability to express herself.
When Cordelia cannot express her thoughts, King Lear gets obnoxiously angry. The degree of his anger is actually unnecessary. I also think that he spends more time being angry and thinking about being angry than actually feeling it, especially because Cordelia was supposedly his favorite daughter before this.
And also what bothers me is that after Goneril received her land filled with "dense forests, fertile fields, rivers rich with fish, wide meadows," she tells the the steward, Oswald, in Act I Scene III that she doesn't want to talk to him because he offends her, and to be a lazy servant. It's obvious that the promises that Goneril and Regan make to their father will certainly not be kept, when they already received their huge inheritance, and that any promise Cordelia would have made to King Lear would have been kept (in my opinion) yet she received nothing because she was unable to profess her love.
Well said. The concept of this story seems so insane to me. Either a) Cordelia, just say you love him or b) Lear, stop being an impetuous child.
ReplyDeleteEither way, I think you have seen some very human responses to this.
I would like to point out one thing though, I think Cordelia never had intentions of saying, "I love you, Dear father." The second Lear asks for declarations, Cordelia expresses worry. She doesn't want to declare her love because it's stupid to declare one's love for another. If my parent's said to me, "Do you love?" I would probably respond with, "Don't be stupid. Of course."
The idea of declaring love for Cordelia is ridiculous.
This anger you focus on is very smart and be aware of it throughout the play, because people do get very (very) angry in this play. Great post!
I agree with you about Lear getting angry too easily. Actually, when I first read it, I didn't even understand why they were declaring there love for him. It seemed lie he was saying "alright, I'm about to give you your inheritances, but first, tell me how much you love me!" ...Actually, if I understand correctly, that was exactly what he was saying. He judges them based on their responses, which seems to be the opposite of what a normal parent would do. Then he turns into a jerk for his daughter saying one thing he didn't like? What good father does that?
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree that so far in the play, characters get angry too easily. I feel like the characters let their anger get the better of them, leading them to make irrational decisions. As you said, Lear himself gets angry only because his "favorite daughter" could not express in words how much she loves him. If she was his favorite, why would he act in a childish manner? I think the anger that he expresses is ridiculous. It makes me question what morals they have. How can you judge someone solely on how they verbally convey their love for you? Why would you ask them to do so in the first place? And the fact that Lear gets angry to the extent of taking away her inheritance is definitely irrational. I think it is simply that, irrational anger. Either that or he just has a serious anger problem.
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