Understanding Tragedy Tragedy and Gender

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Understanding Tragedy-Tragedy and Gender

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• Many feminist critics have written about the
  tragedies' portrayal of women and their
  relationships with men.
• There is, of course, no doubt that women's
  position in society was considerably worse in
  Shakespeare's time than it is today.
• Some influential authorities
• held them to be incomplete men.

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• When Goneril requests that Lear slims down this
  riotous crew -- for Lear the first concrete sign
  of resistance from his older daughters -- he is
  angry with her not for her lack of power was
  established what rouses him to fury is that his
  daughter could disobey him.
• Female disobedience is
• to Lear unthinkable.

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• Lear Hear, Nature, hear, dear goddess, hear!
• Suspend thy purpose, if thou didst intend
• To make this creature fruitful.
• Into her womb convey sterility,
• Dry up in her the organs of increase,
• And from her derogate body never spring
• A babe to honour her!

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Unlike her sisters, Cordelia has never challenged
patriarchy at all.

• Cordelia Good my lord,
• You have begot me, bred me, loved me I
• Return those duties back as are right fit,
• Obey you, love you and most honour you.
• Why have my sisters husbands if they say
• They love you all? Happily, when I shall wed,
• The lord whose hand must take my plight shall
  carry
• Half my love with him, half my care and duty.

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• The whole dramatic development of the play seems
  slowly to build up our sympathy for Lear, and
  never seems to put us in a position to question
  the play's subordination of women. A feminist
  critic may therefore condemn the play altogether.

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• Such feminist readings of the plays do not seek
  to prove that Shakespeare was a feminist, or
  indeed a sexist. Instead they try to reveal the
  ways in which ideology operates both to oppress
  women and
  to trap men into a way of behaving that entails
  violence.