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Sam Kratman

AP English Literature

Mr. Morgan

3 April 2022

By portraying Cordelia as a representation of virtue and her sisters as representations of vice

in King Lear, William Shakespeare promotes the idea of unorthodox women and female

sexuality as the root of all evil.

I. Introduction

II. Goneril’s masculinity

A. Albany and Goneril’s power swap

B. Goneril’s curse of sterility

III. Goneril and Regan as “Other”

A. Daughters as disease

B. Tigers, not daughter

C. Daughters as hags

D. Women as centaurs

E. Eventual emancipation

1. Loss of their husbands

2. Reliance on Edmund

IV. Cordelia and Virtue

A. Cordelia’s establishment as “golden child”

1. View on marriage
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2. Marriage to France

3. Virginity and implications

B. Cordelia and silence

V. Women’s reproductive organs as the root of all evil

A. Vagina

1. “Sulphorus pit”

2. “Dark and vicious place”

3. Goneril and Edmund

B. Hysterica Passio

C. Religious Implications

1. Virgo vs. Viagra

2. Women as Eve

VI. Conclusion
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Unorthodox Femininity as the Engendering of Vice in King Lear

Some literary characters are two-dimensional - those who are assured in their morals

and missions. Others are morally gray - complex characters who straddle the line between

good and evil. Women of literature often fall into this category, whether they are traitorous

wives trying to maintain moral high ground or conniving daughters trying to better their

situation. William Shakespeare writes of such women in his tragedy King Lear, which follows

the downfall of the eponymous king and his family. He has three daughters: the

power-hungry elders, Goneril and Regan, and the gentle and honest youngest, Cordelia.

Goneril and Regan are two of the main villains of the play - both lie and backstab (literally)

in a struggle to gain power. Cordelia, however, is the exemplary daughter - virtuous, kind,

and filled with an honest love for her father. All three sisters eventually meet a tragic end, but

they all serve the greater thematic purpose of defining femininity as a source of corruption.

By portraying Cordelia as a representation of virtue and her sisters as representations of vice

in King Lear, William Shakespeare promotes the idea of unorthodox women and female

sexuality as the root of all evil.

Goneril is the first sister introduced in King Lear, and it is clear from the beginning

that she is not particularly righteous. She lies outright to her father (in a very dramatic

manner) in order to gain more power. Obviously, this fails, and she spends the remainder of

the play trying to claw her way to the top. Almost everyone in the play despises her and she

is constantly insulted by everyone except for Regan and Edmund. These insults commonly

take the form of her being described as “masculine”; these comments are often violently
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misogynistic, but Goneril makes her own comments that establish her as the “man” in her

marriage. Her husband, Albany, begins the play as an irrelevant body, but slowly evolves into

a character who is firm in his place on the moral high ground. He is portrayed as considerate

and just; this stands in stark contrast to Goneril who is cruel and brutish. She resents him for

this and for her own position in life being dictated by her gender. In a particularly scathing

exchange, Albany says “howe’er thou art a fiend, // A woman’s shape doth shield thee” and

Goneril responds with “Marry, your manhood-mew!” (IV. ii. 65 -68). Albany’s remark about

her fiendish nature being disguised by her feminine body places the two descriptions at odds

- furthering the argument that nontraditional women are immoral. Goneril’s comment, on

the other hand, polarizes herself and her husband as well as placing them in opposite gender

roles: Goneril as the ruthless masculine leader and Albany as the gentle feminine

subordinate. Goneril also mocks Albany's “milk gentleness” (I. iv. 332-335) and refers to him

as a “Milk-livered man” (IV. ii. 51-52), furthering their juxtaposition and establishment as her

unorthodox nature. Another profound moment in the play is when King Lear condemns

Goneril for her betrayal. He goes on a tirade, declaring:

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 organs of increase,

And from her derogate body never spring

A babe to honour her! If she must teem,

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Create her a child of spleen, that it may live

And be a thwart disnatur’d torment to her! (I. iv. 265-279)

Lear’s diatribe professes his desire for Goneril to be sterile - eliminating a defining factor of

femininity. If she does have a child, he wishes that it comes from her spleen instead of her

womb, making her less feminine. This theme of female organs being evil is a topic that is

pertinent throughout King Lear, and is something that will be further discussed later on.

These small passages that evince Goneril as an unorthodox woman build the theme of such

nontraditional women being the genesis of malevolence by associating the evil character

with these traits.

Although Goneril is the most fleshed-out of the evil sisters, Regan also plays a role in

the development of the theme. She and Goneril are constantly referred to as “other”: Lear

calls them “a boil, // A plague-sore, or embossed carbuncle” (II. iv. 218-222), “unnatural hags”

(II. iv. 271-279), “Tigers, not daughters” (IV. ii. 40-50), and centaurs - all things that do not

have positive connotations. He also contrasts all of these things with feminine identities:

diseases and tigers compared to daughters and centaurs and hags compared to women. These

things all serve to alienate Goneril and Regan from their femininity. The sisters are further

alienated by the loss of their husbands with Cornwall’s death and Goneril’s infidelity to

Albany. Such “emancipated” women are not viewed as traditional in this time period,

especially if they are young. This requires them to seek a man they can use for their gain.

Both women have an affair with Edmund, arguably the most corrupt character in the play.

As Peter Rudnystky writes:

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The dilemma of the situation of Lear’s elder daughters, conversely, is that they

cannot achieve their political aims without allying themselves with the feckless

Edmund. Emancipated women are by definition evil and dangerous, but even

they are barred from genuine autonomy in Shakespeare’s patriarchal universe.

(303)

By association, Goneril and Regan are in a cohort with the evil that is Edmund. Their

unfaithfulness is thought of as a sin and not proper for anyone, never mind a woman in this

time period. Their infidelity further propels the perception of their sin and the establishment

of unconventional femininity as the source of evil in King Lear.

While Goneril and Regan are nonconformists, their younger sister Cordelia is the

picture-perfect young woman. She is honest, kind, and loves her father with pure intentions.

It is made very clear from the first scene that Cordelia is the “golden child” - Lear refers to

her as “our joy” (I. i. 81-85) in her first introduction. Cordelia is also established to have many

traditional values. She wants to be a good wife whose husband “shall carry//Half my love

with him, half my care and duty” (I. i. 98-103). She ends up in the most strategically powerful

marriage of her sisters, marrying the King of France and becoming Queen. Her sisters are

characterized as promiscuous and volatile sexual beings, while Cordelia is notably a virgin,

presumably until her wedding night. One of Cordelia’s defining character traits is her silence

- in comparison to her father and sisters’ passionate verbal onslaught, Cordelia is

soft-spoken, if she speaks at all. Her silence is so instrumental to her character that it is what

Lear notes while he is speaking over her dead body. This idea “that women should be chaste,

silent, and obedient is a cornerstone of patriarchal doctrine; and Lear’s praise of Cordelia
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[after her death] ironically attests to the shackles he has sought to impose on her”

(Rudnytsky, 303). Though this misogynistic view is looked down upon now, the setting of

the play and the time in which it was written relies on these patriarchal ideas for women.

They were meant to be subordinate and controllable to be desirable. Catherine Cox asserts

that “both virginity and silence are valorized attributes for women” (149) in King Lear. By

making these traits the most prominent in Cordelia, Shakespeare affirms her position as the

morally good, angelic character of the play - making the divide between her and her sisters

very obvious. It is important to note that Cordelia’s gender identity is more complex than her

sisters - her rebellion against her father’s farce and her later role as a commander for the

French army point toward her being less feminine. However, her rebellion against her father

was out of love and honesty (both good and gentle things) while her leadership of the

French army was both under the rule of her husband and in favor of her father. Rudyntsky

writes that “The idealization of Cordelia is but the obverse of the demonization of Goneril and

Regan and should thus be viewed with suspicion as the symptom of, rather than an antidote to,

the play’s underlying misogyny,” (301). On this divide, Cordelia stands on the good side while

her sisters stand on the bad, forcing their traits to be associated with their respective sides.

King Lear’s daughters serve as obvious representations of good and evil, virtue and

vice. However, Shakespeare works more commentary about female sexuality throughout the

play with subtle symbolism and innuendos. Shakespeare is well-known for his various sex

jokes and double entendres - Much Ado About Nothing can translate in Elizabethian slang

to Much Ado About Vaginas; Romeo and Juliet mentions swords and sheaths much more

than necessary; Hamlet often makes interesting comments about Ophelia. King Lear does
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not rely on Shakespeare’s bawdy humor - it is a tragedy after all - but there are implications

throughout. Some of the most obvious are subtle nods to the vagina being an evil hellscape.

Vaginas and the female reproductive system as a whole are described as “the dark and vicious

place” (V. iii. 169-172). When comparing women to centaurs, Lear says that below the waist

there is a “sulphurous pit - burning, scalding,//Stench, consumption…” (IV. vi. 122-127). Out

of context, this seems to be a description of the fiery pits of perdition. Shakespeare

establishes a clear divide through his similies - “The line of demarcation is the loins, with the

human or divine region above and the bestial or demonic below” (Rudnystky, 301). Women are

also deemed solely responsible for their children when they turn out nefarious throughout

King Lear. This is explained by Peter Rudnytsky:

By branding Goneril a “Degenerate Bastard”, Lear establishes a parallel

between his own lawfully begotten progeny and Edmund, Gloucester’s literal

bastard. What is more, although only Gloucester’s adultery is real, both

protagonists blame the conception of their repudiated children on the women

in question - namely, Lear’s wife and the anonymous whore with who

Gloucester enjoyed “good sport” when he fathered Edmund. (294)

This is an interesting concept, as excluding Lear’s daughters, there are no female characters

in the play. The mothers of the sisters, Edmund, and Edgar are notably absent and none of

the sisters have children (that are mentioned). It makes sense that Cordelia, who was just

married, has no children - if she did, she would not be the virtuous virgin that she is

described as. However, Goneril and Regan have been married for longer and live in a society

where motherhood is one of, if not the most, important roles a woman can have. This further
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separates Goneril and Regan from the idea of traditional womanhood and emphasizes their

sin.

Along with the vagina double entendre, Shakespeare also mentions hysterica passio.

Lear speaks of this affliction in Act II as he realizes the situation his daughters have put him

in, saying:

O how this mother swells up towards my heart!

Hysterica passio! down, thou climbing sorrow!

They element’s below. Where is this daughter? (II. iv. 54-56)

Hysterica passio is defined as a physical disorder in women caused by dysfunction of the uterus.

Not only does the accepted definition define it as a disease women suffer from, but the actual

name also implies femininity - hysterica is the feminine form of hystericus, which means

“suffering from the womb”. Lear suffers from this after his daughters wronged him and it is a

marked turning point for him as he begins to dissolve into insanity. This places his emotional

reactions and his descent into insanity into the “feminine” category, furthering the misogyny in

the play and holding women reliable for issues that occurred.

It would be impossible to write of Shakespeare and not discuss the religious

implications of the time period. King Lear, like Shakespeare’s other works, was written in

Elizabethan England - a place where religion was not only prominent but also political.

Queen Elizabeth I was Protestant, but her father was Henry VIII who established the Church

of England just so he could divorce his wives. Catholicism was still prominent, but people

were firmly set in their religious ideals. Elizabeth I’s nickname was also “The Virgin Queen”.

Shakespeare was a smart man and often sought to write his works in a way that would make

the monarch happy. Macbeth has a plethora of nods to King James I (and VI of Scotland)
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who had recently ascended at the time it was written. It is very possible that he lionized

virginity and feminity and condemned sin and infidelity in order to please Queen Elizabeth I.

This would line up with Cordelia (resembling Elizabeth) being good and pure while her

sisters (perhaps a nod to Bloody Mary) were evil and unvirtuous. Although King Lear is set

in a pre-Christian society, it is very clear that “Lear’s representation of women in general owe

much to both Christain and secular intellectual traditions' ' (Cox, 143). First and foremost,

women are seen as weaker and designed to be fruitful and multiply. The first sin was

committed by a woman - Eve - when she ate the apple in the Garden Of Eden. This basic

understanding of a woman’s place and purpose was in the roots of Elizabethan society, and

therefore in the roots of Shakespeare’s writing. Coppélia Kahn comments on this idea,

stating:

Moreover, [women were] like Eve, temperamentally and morally

infirm—skittish, prone to err in all senses. Woman’s womb, her justification

and her glory, was also the sign and source of her weakness as a creature of the

flesh rather than the mind or spirit. (240)

This falls back on the sisters and the gender roles they inhabit - Cordelia is very much a

feminine woman while Goneril and Regan occupy a masculine role in both their lives and

marriages. Cordelia falls into the Virgo archetype, while her sisters are Viagros. This also

establishes Cordelia as a martyr, though she is not implicitly religious - rather, she dies for

her belief of goodness and justice, while her sisters contributed to her death.

In conclusion, Shakespeare employs the juxtaposition between Cordelia’s virtue and

her sisters’ villainy to posit unorthodox women and female sexuality as the root of conflict in
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King Lear. This relies heavily on the characterization of the sisters and how they are

perceived by the characters around them. Although Shakespeare was progressive for his time

in many senses, a significant portion of his work relied on patriarchal ideation. Women were

often villainous and flat-out evil while even the most despised male characters usually had

some redeeming character traits - a sexist perspective, but one that allows readers to both

view and analyze the societal standards set for women during the time.
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Works Cited

Cox, Catherine S. "An Excellent Thing in Woman: Virgo and Viragos in King Lear." Modern

Philology, vol. 96, no. 2, Nov. 1998, pp. 143-57. EBSCOhost,

https://doi.org/10.1086/492737. Accessed 7 Mar. 2022.

Kahn, Coppélia. "The Absent Mother in King Lear." Critical Insights: King Lear, Pasadena,

Salem Press, 2012, pp. 239-62. EBSCOhost. Accessed 7 Mar. 2022.

Rudnytsky, Peter L. "' The Darke and Vicious Place': The Dread of the Vagina in King Lear."

Modern Philology, vol. 96, no. 3, Feb. 1999, pp. 291-311. EBSCOhost. Accessed 7 Mar.

2022.

Shakespeare, William. King Lear. Oxford School Shakespeare, Ed. Roma Gill. Oxford

University Press, 2002.